Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/124

 100 laborious, for the 'Tcheti Mineï' of Macarius only chronicle the lives of two female saints in all. Russian hagiographers, indeed, appear to have-professed a certain scorn for these scarce beings, even when recognised and adopted by the Church. St. Olga and St. Euphrosyne of Polotsk, who lived, one in the tenth and the other in the twelfth century, found no biographers till the fifteenth—and both of them were Princesses!

One other opening there was for women who could not reach such heights as these—that world of supernatural forces to which the popular imagination ascribed so mighty a power over human life. Woman, banned out of society, scorned as a wife and mother, was dreaded as a sorceress and courted as a soothsayer. She could be queen of the magic kingdom of superstition. And in the raskol, where superstition played so great a part, the power of woman was to recover all its privileges and retake first rank. In ordinary life, at all events, was the wife and mother permitted to taste the joys of domestic existence?

Here an initial fact presents itself. In the upper class, the education of the children was generally taken out of the mother's hands. In this quarter, therefore, we find nothing at all. Maternal love and filial love both lay under the interdict of the Church. The only thing left was marriage. But marriage, in a young girl's case, did not mean that she had found a young man for whom she cared, or was even likely to care. Except in the case of second marriages, the matching of couples concerned the parents only, and they, as a rule, never thought of consulting the young people's inclinations; all the more, as the persons married were very frequently mere children. Twelve years old for a girl, fourteen for a boy, were considered quite marriageable ages. And before they went to the altar, even up to the very threshold of the nuptial chamber, the young couple might be, and, strictly speaking, ought to be, strangers. The bride, especially, must not be seen by her bridegroom until the supreme moment. To avoid surprises of a too painful nature, some lady relation of the man's assumed the delicate duties of the smotritiélnitsa, or looker (smotrit, to look). She was brought into a room decorated for the purpose, and caught a glimpse of the betrothed behind a curtain which was drawn aside for a moment. Substitutions, facilitated by such prearranged presentations, were not uncommon. The husband thus deceived had a right to make a complaint, demand an inquiry, and demand the revocation of the contract. As a rule, he preferred to solve the difficulty by