By Servia her young Princess was received with open arms of welcome.  “Her reception,” we are told, “was beyond description.  The festivities lasted three days, and during that time the love of the people for their Prince, and their admiration of the beauty and charm of his bride, were beyond words to describe.”  Never did Royal wedded life open more full of bright promise, and never did consort make more immediate conquest of the affections of her husband’s subjects.  “No one could have believed that this marriage, which was contracted from love and love alone, would have ended in so tragic a manner, or that hate could so quickly have taken the place of love.”

But the serpent was quick to show his head in Natalie’s new paradise.  Before she had been many weeks a wife, stories came to her ears of her husband’s many infidelities.  Now the story was of one lady of her Court, now of another, until the horrified Princess knew not whom to trust or to respect.  Strange tales, too, came to her (mostly anonymously) of Milan’s amours in Paris, in Vienna, and half a dozen of his other haunts of pleasure, until her love, poisoned at its very springing, turned to suspicion and distrust of the man to whom she had given her heart.

Other disillusions were quick to follow.  She discovered that her husband was a hopeless gambler and spendthrift, spending long hours daily at the card-tables, watching with pale face and trembling lips his pile of gold dwindle (as it usually did) to its last coin; and often losing at a single sitting a month’s revenue from the Civil List.  Her own dowry of five million roubles, she knew, was safe from his clutches.  Her father had taken care to make that secure, but Milan’s private fortune, large as it had been, had already been squandered in this and other forms of dissipation; and even the expenses of his wedding, she learned, had been met by a loan raised at ruinous interest.

Such discoveries as these were well calculated to shatter the dreams of the most infatuated of brides, and less was sufficient to rouse Natalie’s proud spirit to rebellion.  When affectionate pleadings proved useless, reproaches took their place.  Heated words were exchanged, and the records tell of many violent scenes before Natalie had been six months Princess of Servia.  “You love to rule,” the warning voice had told Milan—­“to command.  So does Natalie”; and already the clashing of strong wills and imperious tempers, which must end in the yielding of one or the other, had begun to be heard.

If more fuel had been needed to feed the flames of dissension, it was quickly supplied by two unfortunate incidents.  The first was Milan’s open dallying with Fraeulein S——­, one of Natalie’s maids-of-honour, a girl almost as beautiful as herself, but with the beaute de diable.  The second was the appearance in Belgrade of Dimitri Wasseljevitchca, who was suspected of plotting to assassinate the Tsar.  Russia demanded that the fugitive should be given