



Produced by Wanda Lee, Laura Natal Rodriguez and Marc
D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org (Images
generouslly made available by the Internet Archive.)





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 was
compelled to pause before a little village whilst a smith rudely mended
its broken wheel. The hamlet was composed of a few very poor dwellings
grouped around a large low horse-shoe shaped building, which was the
manorial mansion of the absent proprietor. It was gloomy, and dropping
to decay; its many windows were barred and shuttered; the grass grew in
its courts, and flowering weeds had time to seed and root themselves
on its whitewashed walls.

Around it the level ground was at this season covered with green
wheat, spreading for leagues on leagues, and billowing and undulating
under the wind that blew from the steppes, like the green sea which it
resembled. Farther on were woods of larch and clumps of willow; and in
the distance, across the great plain to the