The Almayne physician is lodged by order of the Great Prince in one of the
three stone houses which Moscow could then boast--the habitation of the
voévoda Obrazétz, a fine old warrior, a venerable patriarch, and bigot,
such as all Russians then were. To him the presence of the heretic is
disgusting; his touch would be pollution; and the whole family is thrown
into the utmost consternation by the prospect of having to harbour so foul
a guest--a magician, a man who had sold his soul to Satan--above all, a
heretic. The voévoda had an only daughter, who, with Oriental caution, was
carefully screened from the sight of man, as became a high-born Russian
maiden.

"From her very infancy Providence had stamped her with the seal of
the marvellous; when she 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