Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 20.djvu/179

Rh up as a page to John Casimir, and had received some tincture of learning in his court. An intrigue which he had had in his youth with the lady of a Polish gentleman, having been discovered, the husband caused him to be bound stark naked upon a wild horse and let loose in that condition. The horse, who had been brought out of Ukraine, returned to his own country, and carried Mazeppa along with him, half-dead with hunger and fatigue. Some of the country people gave him assistance; and he lived among them for a long time, and signalized himself in several expeditions against the Tartars. The superiority of his knowledge gained him great respect among the Cossacks; and his reputation daily increasing, the czar found it necessary to make him prince of Ukraine.

While he was one day at table with the czar at Moscow, the emperor proposed to him to discipline the Cossacks, and to render them more dependent. Mazeppa replied that the situation of Ukraine, and the genius of the nation, were insuperable obstacles to such a scheme. The czar, who began to be overheated with wine, and who had not always the command of his passions, called him a traitor, and threatened to have him empaled.

Mazeppa, on his return to Ukraine, formed the design of a revolt; and the execution of it was greatly facilitated by the Swedish army which soon after appeared on his frontiers. He resolved to render himself independent, and to erect Ukraine and some other ruins of the Russian Empire into a powerful kingdom. Brave, enterprising, and indefatigable, though advanced in years, he entered