After a three days' journey the prince and his people reached the end of their journey.
It was dark when they arrived. All that the princess could make out of the château was its monumental appearance, but next day she had to confess that all that had been told her of Pampeln was short of the truth.
Built in the reign of the Empress Anne on a hill which overlooks the Wandau River, the residence of the Olsdorfs shows signs of the eclecticism which influenced Russian architecture in the eighteenth century. After having been Grecian in style, and then Italian, it did not take a truly national character until the time of the Czar Nicholas. Though, regarded as a building, the massive and heavy-looking château offered nothing remarkable to the view in its colossal dimensions, the Pampeln estate was, nevertheless, the most important in the neighborhood, from its extent, the richness of the soil, and the immensity of its forests.
A true gentleman farmer, as his father had been before him, Prince Pierre overlooked everything himself, sometimes being on horseback at day-break to visit the most distant parts of his property. His care was not wholly for the improvement of the land; as we have said before, he was ever anxious for the well-being of his tenants.
The inside of the château was luxuriously and comfortably furnished.
The wood-work, in cedar, of the great banqueting halls, in the style of Henry II., had been carved by the most skilled Flemish workmen. The fencing-room, the large Gothic windows of which looked on to the park, contained a curious collection of arms of all periods, from the heavy, damasked weapons of the forefathers of the house to the modern musket; while the chapel, whose service was performed by a pope who lived at the château the year round, was a marvel of Byzantine art.
As for the suite of apartments of the princess, it was easy for her to think in entering it that she had not left St. Petersburg, so scrupulous had the prince been about the furnishing of it, and every petty detail.
Besides the principal bed and reception-rooms there were forty guest chambers. The stables could accommodate at least a hundred horses, and the kennels were filled by the handsomest packs of hounds in the country.
The servants' quarters were at the end of the great shady park full of old trees, where huntsmen, grooms, and all the servants, to the number of forty or fifty, who were not employed within the mansion, were lodged. Counting in the gamekeepers who looked after his ponds and woods, the master of Pampeln had thus at his orders quite a small army, disciplined, alert, and wholly devoted to him.
The pride can easily be imagined that Lise Olsdorf felt when a few days after her arrival her husband conducted her over this splendid domain of which she was to be the queen, and wished to be the benefactress.