he was born a star had fallen on the house--on
her bosom she bore a mark resembling a cross within a heart. When ten
years old, she dreamed of palaces and gardens such as eye had never
seen on earth, and faces of unspeakable beauty, and voices that sang,
and self-moving dulcimers that played, as it were within her heart,
so sweetly and so well, that tongue could never describe it; and,
when she awoke from those dreams, she felt a light pressure on her
feet, and she thought she perceived that something was resting on
them with white wings folded; it was very sweet, and yet awful--and
in a moment all was gone. Sometimes she would meditate, sometimes she
would dream, she knew not what. Often, when prostrate before the
image of the Mother of God, she wept; and these tears she hid from
the world, like some holy thing sent down to her from on high. She
loved all that was marvellous; and therefore she loved the tales, the
legends, the popular songs and stories of those days. How greedily
did she listen to her nurse! and what marvels did the eloquent old
woman unfold, to the young, burning imagination of her foster child!
Anastasia, sometimes abandoning herself to poesy, would forget sleep
and food; sometimes her dreams concluded the unfinished tale more
vividly, more eloquently far."

We must give the pendant to this picture--the portrait of Obrazetz himself,
sitting in his easy-chair, listening to a tale of travels in the East.

"How noble was the aged man, free from stormy passions, finishing the
pilgrimage of life! You seemed to behold him in pure white raiment,
ready to appear before his heavenly judge. Obrazetz was the chief of
the party in years, in grave majestic dignity, and patriarchal air.
Crossing his arms upon his staff, he covered them with his beard,
downy as the soft fleece of a lamb; the glow of health, deepened by
the cup of strong mead, blushed through the snow-white hair with
which his cheeks were thickly clothed; he listened with singular
attention and delight to the story-teller. This pleasure was painted
on his face, and shone brightly in his eyes; from time to time a
smile of good-humoured mockery flitted across his lips, but this was
only the innocent offspring of irony which was raised in his good
heart by Aphonia's boasting, (for very few story-tellers, you know,
are free from this sin.) Reclining his shoulders against the back of
hi