ime, made love
to the wife of a neighbouring magnate, the _pane_ or Lord Falbowski. The
intrigue was discovered, and to avenge his wrongs the outraged husband
caused Mazeppa to be stripped to the skin, and bound to his own steed.
The horse, lashed into madness, and terror-stricken by the discharge of
a pistol, started off at a gallop, and rushing "thorough bush, thorough
briar," carried his torn and bleeding rider into the courtyard of his
own mansion!

With regard to the sequel or issue of this episode, history is silent,
but when the curtain rises again (A.D. 1674) Mazeppa is discovered in
the character of writer-general or foreign secretary to Peter
Doroshenko, hetman or president of the Western Ukraine, on the hither
side of the Dnieper. From the service of Doroshenko, who came to an
untimely end, he passed by a series of accidents into the employ of his
rival, Samoilovitch, hetman of the Eastern Ukraine, and, as his
secretary or envoy, continued to attract the notice and to conciliate
the good will of the (regent) Tzarina Sophia and her eminent _boyard_,
Prince Basil Golitsyn. A time came (1687) when it served the interests
of Russia to degrade Samoilovitch, and raise Mazeppa to the post of
hetman, and thenceforward, for twenty years and more, he held something
like a regal sway over the whole of the Ukraine (a fertile "no-man's
land," watered by the Dnieper and its tributaries), openly the loyal and
zealous ally of his neighbour and suzerain, Peter the Great.

How far this allegiance was genuine, or whether a secret preference for
Poland, the land of his adoption, or a long-concealed impatience of
Muscovite suzerainty would in any case have urged him to revolt, must
remain doubtful, but it is certain that the immediate cause of a final
reversal of the allegiance and a break with the Tsar was a second and
still more fateful _affaire du coeur_. The hetman was upwards of sixty
years of age, but, even so, he fell in love with his god-daughter,
Matrena, who, in spite of difference of age and ecclesiastical kinship,
not only returned his love, but, to escape the upbraidings and
persecution of her mother, took refuge under his roof. Mazeppa sent the
girl back to her home, but, as his love-letters testify, continued to
woo her with the tenderest and most passionate solicitings; and,
although she finally yielded to _force majeure_ and married another
suitor, her parents nursed their revenge, and endeavoured to embroil the