WANDA
BY
OUIDA
'Doch!—alles was dazu mich trieb;
Gott!—war so gut, ach, war so lieb!'
Goethe
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. I.
London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1873
TO
'A PERFECT WOMAN, NOBLY PLANN'D'
WALPURGA, LADY PAGET
NÉE
COUNTESS VON HOHENTHAL
This book is inscribed
IN ADMIRATION AND AFFECTION
WANDA.
PROEM.
Doch—alles was dazu mich trieb,
Gott! war so gut! ach, war so lieb!—GOETHE.
Towards the close of a summer's day in Russia a travelling carriage wascompelled to pause before a little village whilst a smith rudely mendedits broken wheel. The hamlet was composed of a few very poor dwellingsgrouped around a large low horse-shoe shaped building, which was themanorial mansion of the absent proprietor. It was gloomy, and droppingto decay; its many windows were barred and shuttered; the grass grew inits courts, and flowering weeds had time to seed and root themselveson its whitewashed walls.
Around it the level ground was at this season covered with greenwheat, spreading for leagues on leagues, and billowing and undulatingunder the wind that blew from the steppes, like the green sea which itresembled. Farther on were woods of larch and clumps of willow; and inthe distance, across the great plain to the westward, rolled a vastshining river, here golden with choking sand, here dun-coloured withturbid waves, here broken with islets and swamps of reeds, where thesinging swan and the pelican made their nests.
It was in one of those far-off provinces through which the Volga rollsits sand-laden and yellow waves. The scene was bleak and mournful,though for many leagues the green corn spread and caught the timidsunshine and the shadow of the clouds. There were a few stuntedwillows near the house, and a few gashed pines; a dried-up lake wasglittering with crystals of salt; the domes and minarets of a littlecity rose above the sky line far away to the south-east; and fartheryet northward towered the peaks of the Ural Mountains; the wall ofstone that divides Siberia from the living world. All was desolate,melancholy, isolated, even though the season was early summer; but thevastness of the view, the majesty of the river, the suggestion of thefaint blue summits where the Urals rose against the sky, gave solemnityand a melancholy charm to a landscape that was otherwise monotonous andtedious.
Prince Paul Ivanovitch Zabaroff was in Russia because he was on thepoint of marriage with a great heiress of the southern provinces, andwas travelling across from Orenburg to the Krimea, where his betrothedbride awaited him in the summer palace of her fathers. Russia, with theexception of Petersburg, was an unknown and detested place to him; hiserrand was distasteful, his journey tedious, his temper irritated; andwhen a wheel of his telegue came off in this miserable village ofthe Northern Volga district, he was in no mood to brook with patiencesuch an accident. He paced to and fro restlessly as he looked round onthe few and miserable cabins of a district that had been continuallyharried and fired through many centuries by Kos