CHAPTER XIV
AN INTERNATIONAL ROMANCE
ILLUSTRATING and emphasizing the isolation of California in the days of Spanish dominion, and the slowness with which meager news of other lands drifted to its people, comes the romantic story of Senorita Conception Arguello, who as Sister Mary Dominica, was the first novitiate of the first religious sisterhood in California, the Dominican Order at Monterey. Down through the centuries, historians have recorded great loves, and painter and poet have immortalized them. But for sweetness and purity, and for steadfastness of woman’s devotion, no more beautiful story was ever told than that unfolded by this tender romance of Spanish California.
Nikolai Petrovich de Rezanov was a Russian nobleman, tall, handsome and blond. He had been a protege of the great Catherine, and he continued a court favorite after the Queen’s death. In 1806, under Czar Alexander
