division of Poland, of which Warsaw is the
Capital.--TRANSLATOR.]

At last they reached the station, where the Count's steward was waiting
for them with a carriage and four, which brought them to their
destination almost as swiftly as the iron steed.

The numerous servants were drawn up in the yard of the ancient castle to
receive their master and mistress, and they gave loud cheers for her,
for which she thanked them smilingly. When she went into the dim, arched
passages, and the large rooms, for a moment she felt a strange feeling
of fear, but she quickly checked it, for was not her most ardent wish to
be fulfilled in a couple of hours?

She put on her bridal attire, in which a half comical, half
sinister-looking old woman with a toothless mouth and a nose like an
owl's, assisted her, and just as she was fixing the myrtle wreath onto
her dark curls, the bell began to ring, which summoned her to her
wedding. The Count himself, in full uniform, led her to the chapel of
the castle, where the priest, with the steward and the castellan as
witnesses, and the footmen in grand liveries, were awaiting the handsome
young couple.

After the wedding, the marriage certificate was signed in the vestry,
and a groom was sent to the station, where he dispatched a telegram to
her parents, to the effect that the hussar had kept his word, and that
Fanny Loewenfuss had become Countess Faniska W----.

Then the newly-married couple sat down to a beautiful little dinner in
company of the chaplain, the steward and the castellan; the champagne
made them all very cheerful, and at last the Count knelt down before his
young and beautiful wife, boldly took her white satin slipper off her
foot, filled it with wine, and emptied it to her health.

At length night came, a thorough, Polish wedding night, and Faniska had
just finished dressing and was looking at herself with proud
satisfaction in the great mirror that was fastened into the wall, from
top to bottom. A white satin train flowed down behind her like rays from
the moon, a half-open jacket of bright green velvet, trimmed with
valuable ermine, covered her voluptuous, virgin bust and her classic
arms, only to show them all the more seductively at the slightest
motion, while the wealth of her dark hair, in which diamonds hung here
and there like glittering dew-drops, fell down her neck and mingled with
the white fur. The Count came in a red velvet dressing gown trimmed with
sable; at a si