Tsehhov daam koeraga Chekov Lady and the Lapdog
Her real life
model was Princess Nataliia Petrovna Golitsyna, whom Pushkin knew personally (see figure 2). The princess served as a lady-in-waiting to five
generations of Russian em- perors and was ninety-two years old at the time Pushkin wrote his tale. She was an avid gambler, and because of her
failing eyesight, a deck of large-format cards was kept for her at the court.36 Once, her grandson, S. G. Golitsyn, had lost a large sum at cards
and came to his grandmother to beg for money. Instead of money, the princess told him of the three winning cards that Saint-Germain had once
revealed to her in Paris. The grandson bet on them and regained his loss.37
Vinogradov offered a more plausible explanation of the uncanny denouement; he cast the mysterious intrusion of the queen of spades at the end
of the tale as the materialization of Ger- mann's repressed guilt for the death of the old lady
annaabi.ee 
