Pan Tadeusz; or, The last foray in Lithuania
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Title: Pan Tadeusz; or, The last foray in Lithuania
Author: Adam Mickiewicz
Translator: George Rapall Noyes
Release date: March 2, 2009 [eBook #28240]
Most recently updated: June 20, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28240
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAN TADEUSZ; OR, THE LAST FORAY IN LITHUANIA ***
PAN TADEUSZ
OR
THE LAST FORAY IN LITHUANIA
_All rights reserved_
PAN TADEUSZ
OR
THE LAST FORAY IN LITHUANIA
A STORY OF LIFE AMONG POLISH GENTLEFOLK
IN THE YEARS 1811 AND 1812
_IN TWELVE BOOKS_
BY
ADAM MICKIEWICZ
TRANSLATED FROM THE POLISH BY
GEORGE RAPALL NOYES
1917
LONDON AND TORONTO
J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
PARIS: J. M. DENT ET FILS
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS IN “PAN TADEUSZ” WITH NOTES ON POLISH
PRONUNCIATION
BOOK I.—THE FARM
BOOK II.—THE CASTLE
BOOK III.—FLIRTATION
BOOK IV—DIPLOMACY AND THE CHASE
BOOK V.—THE BRAWL
BOOK VI.—THE HAMLET
BOOK VII.—THE CONSULTATION
BOOK VIII.—THE FORAY
BOOK IX.—THE BATTLE
BOOK X—THE EMIGRATION. JACEK
BOOK XI.—THE YEAR 1812
BOOK XII.—LET US LOVE ONE ANOTHER!
NOTES
PREFACE
THE present translation of _Pan Tadeusz_ is based on the editions of
Biegeleisen (Lemberg, 1893) and Kallenbach (Brody, 1911). I have had
constantly by me the German translation by Lipiner (ed. 2, Leipzig, 1898)
and the French translation by Ostrowski (ed. 4, Paris, 1859), and am
deeply indebted to them. The English translation by Miss Maude Ashurst
Biggs (_Master Thaddeus; or, The Last Foray in Lithuania_: London, 1885) I
did not have at hand until my own version was nearly complete; after that
I consulted it only very rarely. I do not think that I am under obligation
to it in more than a half-dozen scattered lines of my text. (Perhaps,
however, my use of _foray_ as a translation of _zajazd_ is due to an
unconscious recollection of the title of Miss Biggs’s volumes, which I
looked over several years ago, before I had even formed the plan of my own
work.) In my notes, however, my debt to Miss Biggs and her collaborators
in her commentary on _Pan Tadeusz_ is important; I have striven to
indicate it distinctly, and I thank Miss Biggs heartily for her kind
permission to make use of her work.
To my friend Miss Mary Helen Sznyter I am grateful for aid and advice in
the rendering of several puzzling passages. But my greatest debt I owe to
my wife, whose name, if justice were done, should be added to my own as
joint translator of the volume. Though she is entirely unacquainted with
the Polish language, nearly every page of the book in its phrasing bears
traces of her correcting hand. The preparation of the volume for the press
and the reading of the proof have been made easy by her skilful help.
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA,
_December 9_, 1916.
INTRODUCTION
“No European nation of our day has such an epic as _Pan Tadeusz_. In it
_Don Quixote_ has been fused with the _Iliad_. The poet stood on the
border line between a vanishing generation and our own. Before they died,
he had seen them; but now they are no more. That is precisely the epic
point of view. Mickiewicz has performed his task with a master’s hand; he
has made immortal a dead generation, which now will never pass away. …
_Pan Tadeusz_ is a true epic. No more can be said or need be said.”(1)
This verdict upon the great masterpiece of all Slavic poetry, written a
few years after its appearance, by Zygmunt Krasinski, one of Mickiewicz’s
two great successors in the field of Polish letters, has been confirmed by
the judgment of posterity. For the chapter on _Pan Tadeusz_ by George
Brandes, than whom there have been few more competent judges of modern
European literature, is little more than an expansion of Krasinski’s pithy
sentences. The cosmopolitan critic echoes the patriotic Pole when he
writes: “In _Pan Tadeusz_ Poland possesses the only successful epic our
century has produced.”(2)
Still more important than the praises of the finest literary critics is
the enthusiastic affection cherished for _Pan Tadeasz_ by the great body
of the Polish people. Perhaps no poem of any other European nation is so
truly national and in the best sense of the word popular. Almost every
Pole who has read anything more than the newspaper is familiar with the
contents of _Pan Tadeusz_. No play of Shakespeare, no long poem of Milton
or Wordsworth or Tennyson, is so well known or so well beloved by the
English people as is _Pan Tadeusz_ by the Poles. To find a work equally
well known one might turn to Defoe’s prosaic tale of adventure, _Robinson
Crusoe_; to find a work so beloved would be hardly possible.
_Pan Tadeasz_ is so clear and straightforward in its appeal that but few
words of explanation in regard to its origin are required. Its author,
Adam Mickiewicz, was born in 1798, near Nowogrodek in Lithuania. His
father, a member of the poorer gentry of the district, was a lawyer by
profession, so that the boy was brought up among just such types as he
describes with so rare a humour in the Judge, the Assessor, the Notary,
and the Apparitor. The young Mickiewicz was sent to the University of
Wilno(3) (1815-19), where he received a good classical education, and,
largely through his own independent reading, became well acquainted with
French, German, and Russian—even with English literature. On leaving the
university he obtained a position as teacher in the gymnasium at Kowno
(1819-23). Though even as a boy he had written verses, his real literary
career began with the publication in 1822 of a volume of ballads, which
was followed the next year by a second book of poems, containing fragments
of a fantastic drama, _The Forefathers_, and a short historical poem,
_Grazyna_. These volumes reflect the romantic movement then prevalent in
Europe, of which they are the first powerful expression in Poland. They
were in large part inspired by the poet’s love for a young woman of
somewhat higher station than his own, who, though she returned his
affection, was forced by her family to marry another suitor.
In 1833 Mickiewicz was arrested as a political criminal, his offence being
membership in a students’ club at the University of Wilno that had
cherished nationalistic aspirations. With several others, he was banished
from his beloved Lithuanian home to the interior of Russia; the following
years, until 1829, he spent in St. Petersburg, Odessa, and Moscow. During
this honourable exile he became intimate with many of the most eminent men
of letters in Russia, and continued his own literary work by publishing
his sonnets, beyond comparison the finest ever written in Polish, and a
romantic poem, _Konrad Wallenrod_, based on the stubborn resistance of the
Lithuanian folk in the fourteenth century to their German foes, the
Knights of the Cross, and showing in its style marked Byronic influence.
The poem unfortunately admitted, or rather invited, an application to the
resistance of the Poles to the Russians; Mickiewicz, fearing with reason
the anger of the Russian authorities, succeeded in obtaining, just in time
to save himself from serious consequences, a passport permitting him to
leave the country.
Arriving in Germany in 1829, Mickiewicz travelled through Switzerland to
Italy. His residence in Rome, with its sacred associations, and the
meeting with new friends of a deeply religious temperament, brought about
within him a new birth of Catholic faith that strongly affected bis later
writings, notably _Pan Tadeusz._ In Rome also he became intimate with the
family of the rich Count Ankwicz, for whose daughter Eva he conceived an
affection that is reflected in the passion of Jacek Soplica for the
Pantler’s only child. On the outbreak of the insurrection in Warsaw, at
the end of the year 1830, the poet meditated returning home to join the
national forces; but he delayed his departure, and never came nearer the
scene of action than Posen and its vicinity. The grief and discouragement
caused by the failure of the insurrection, instead of crippling
Mickiewicz’s powers, seemed to spur him on to new activity. During 1833 he
wrote a continuation of _The Forefathers_, in an entirely different tone
from that of his youthful poem of ten years before. The action is based on
the persecution by the Russian authorities of the Polish students in
Wilno; the lovelorn Gustaw of the earlier poem is transformed into the
patriotic martyr Konrad. In this same year he settled in Paris, along with
many other Polish exiles or “emigrants,” who were made homeless by the
downfall of the national cause, and who, if the truth be said, were split
up into bitterly hostile factions. Mickiewicz was now beginning to assume
the role of prophet and seer. For the reproof and instruction of his
fellow-countrymen he composed his _Books of the Polish Nation and of the
Polish Pilgrimage,_ a mystical work, written in biblical prose, and
intended to bring comfort and harmony to the distracted exiles. In Paris
also, in the course of about fourteen months (1832-34), he wrote _Pan
Tadeusz,_ his greatest poem—and (with insignificant exceptions) his last.
The story of Mickiewicz’s closing years may be passed over very briefly.
In 1834 he married; his wife was subject to attacks of insanity, and all
his later life was saddened by the struggle with misfortune and poverty.
In 1840 he was called to a newly founded professorship of Slavic
literature at the Collège de France. His lectures as holder of this chair
are the only literary work of great importance that he produced during
this last period of his life. Soon after the completion of _Pan Tadeusz_
he had become absorbed by a religious mysticism that caused him to turn
entirely aside from poetry. In 1841 he fell under the influence of Andrzej
Towianski, a teacher who announced himself as the prophet of a new
religion. His acceptance and promulgation of a doctrine which was
pronounced heretical by the Catholic Church, and which inculcated a
religious reverence for Napoleonic traditions, made it impossible for the
French government to retain his services in a government institution, and
in 1844 he was deprived of his professorship. The accession to power of
Napoleon III. filled him with new hopes. In 1855 he journeyed to
Constantinople, wishing to aid in the war against Russia, and there he
died of the cholera. His remains, first laid to rest in Paris, were
transferred in 1890 to the cathedral at Cracow.(4)
_Pan Tadeusz_ was not the result of a momentary inspiration, but grew
gradually under the author’s hand. On December 8, 1832, he wrote to a
friend: “I am now at work on a poem of life among the gentry, in the style
of _Hermann and Dorothea_. I have already jotted down a thousand verses.”
He had evidently planned a village idyl of no great length, probably based
on the love of Thaddeus and Zosia. In a draft of the first book that is
still preserved, Thaddeus sees on the wall a picture of Joseph Poniatowski
at the battle of Leipzig (October 19, 1813), “riding a mettled steed” but
“stricken with a mortal wound.” Thus the action of the poem could not have
taken place earlier than 1814. Later, Mickiewicz threw back the time of
his action to the autumn of 1811 and the spring of 1812; thus, by giving
his poem a political background in the invasion of Russia by Napoleon, he
transformed his village idyl into a national epic. The Monk Robak, or
Jacek Soplica, and not his commonplace son Thaddeus, now became the real
hero of the poem.(5) Nor was this hero wholly a product of the writer’s
invention. There has recently been discovered a petition by Mikolaj
Mickiewicz, the father of the poet, praying the authorities to grant him
protection from one Jan Soplica, “a man of criminal sort,” who had slain
the uncle of the petitioner and was now threatening to kill the whole
Mickiewicz family and burn their house. With the character of this person
the description of Jacek Soplica’s early years agrees as closely as his
name. Mickiewicz even mentions his own kindred as the ancestral enemies of
the Soplicas (page 45). Yet one of that hated family he now made the hero
of his greatest poem. By introducing him in the guise of Father Robak,
repentant and striving to atone for past misdeeds through heroic service
to his country, he infused into his poem a romantic charm. The mystery
surrounding this figure connects _Pan Tadeusz_, an epic that is truly
classic in its dignified elevation and restraint of feeling, with _Konrad
Wallenrod_, a romantic tale conceived in the spirit of Byronic passion.
In the work of Mickiewicz as a whole two characteristics predominate: a
great intensity of feeling, which sometimes sinks into sentimentality, and
at others rises into lyric fervour; and a wonderful truth, not only to the
general impressions of his experience, but to the actual concrete facts of
it, even to such trifles as the names of persons and places. Thus _The
Forefathers,_ despite all its fantastic elements, reproduces many
incidents in which the poet himself was concerned. Furthermore, in certain
works, as in his early tale _Grazyna_, Mickiewicz had shown a wonderful
ability suddenly to detach himself from passing currents of emotion and to
rise into regions of Olympian calm, giving to his work a classic, rounded
completeness worthy of Grecian art. All these aspects of his genius are
present in _Pan Tadeusz_. Echoes of the poet’s personal emotion are heard
in Jacek’s tale of his passion for Eva; and an ardent love of country
permeates the poem and breaks out again and again with lyric force. On the
other hand the book is faithful to reality in its picture of Lithuanian
manners and customs; the great romantic poet is at the same time the first
realistic novelist of Poland. Minor details beyond number are introduced
from the writer’s personal recollections; “even the Jew’s playing of the
dulcimer the poet had heard in St. Petersburg from the famous
Silbermann.”(6) Through the whole book runs a humour not often found
elsewhere in Mickiewicz; the reports of the debates in Jankiel’s tavern
and in Dobrzyn hamlet are masterly in their blending of kindly pleasantry
with photographic fidelity to truth. The poet sees the ludicrous side of
the Warden, the Chamberlain, the Seneschal, and the other Don Quixotes who
fill his pages, and yet he loves them with the most tender affection. In
his descriptions of external nature—of the Lithuanian forests or of the
scene around Soplicowo on the moonlight night just before the
foray—Mickiewicz shows a genius for throwing a glamour of poetic beauty
over the face of common things such as has never been surpassed. Finally,
the whole poem is perfect in its proportions; from its homely beginning,
with pictures of rural simplicity and old-fashioned hospitality, it swells
into rustic grandeur in the panorama of the hunt, and at last reaches the
most poignant tragedy in the scene about the death-bed of Jacek Soplica:
then, lest the impression should be one of total sadness, the narrative
concludes with the magnificent epilogue of the last two books, full of
hopes of rescue for Poland, full of gaiety and courage. A large epic calm
pervades the whole. The age-long conflict between Pole and “Muscovite” is
the theme of the epic, but the tone is not that of passionate hatred and
revolt such as fills _The Forefathers_; human kindliness breathes through
the whole work; not indignation and rebellion, but faith, hope, and love
are at its foundation.
This brief introduction may fitly close with some verses that Mickiewicz
wrote as an epilogue for _Pan Tadeusz_, but which he never finally revised
and which were never printed during his lifetime. Since his death they
have most frequently been inserted as a prologue to the poem rather than
as an epilogue.
“What can be my thoughts, here on the streets of Paris, when I bring home
from the city ears filled with noise, with curses and lies, with untimely
plans, belated regrets, and hellish quarrels?
“Alas for us deserters, that in time of pestilence, timid souls, we fled
to foreign lands! For wherever we trod, terror went before us, and in
every neighbour we found an enemy; at last they have bound us in chains,
firmly and closely, and they bid us give up the ghost as quickly as may
be.
“But if this world has no ear for their sorrows, if at each moment fresh
tidings overwhelm them, reverberating from Poland like a graveyard bell;
if their jailers wish them an early doom and their enemies beckon them
from afar like grave-diggers; if even in Heaven they see no hope—then it
is no marvel that they loathe men, the world, themselves; that, losing
their reason from their long tortures, they spit upon themselves and
consume one another.
* * * * * *
“I longed to pass by in my flight, bird of feeble wing—to pass by regions
of storm and thunder, and to search out only pleasant shade and fair
weather—the days of my childhood, and my home gardens.
* * * * * *
“One happiness remains: when in a grey hour you sit by the fireside with a
few of your friends and lock the door against the uproar of Europe, and
escape in thought to happier times, and muse and dream of your own land.
“But of that blood that was shed so lately, of the tears which have
flooded the face of all Poland, of the glory that not yet has ceased
resounding: of these to think we had never the heart! For the nation is in
such anguish that even Valour, when he turns his gaze on its torture, can
do naught but wring the hands.
* * * * * *
“Those generations black with mourning—that air heavy with so many
curses—there—thought dared not turn its flight to a sphere dreadful even
to the birds of thunder.
* * * * * *
“O Mother Poland! Thou wast so lately laid in the grave. No man has the
strength to speak of thee!
* * * * * *
“Ah! whose lips can dare to fancy that to-day they will at last find the
magic word that will soften marble-like despair, that will lift the stony
lid from men’s hearts, and will open eyes heavy with so many tears?
“Some time—when the lions of vengeance shall cease to roar, when the blare
of the trumpet shall be stilled, when the ranks shall be broken, when our
eagles with a flight like lightning shall settle on the ancient boundaries
of Boleslaw the Brave, and, eating their fill of corpses, shall be
drenched with blood, and finally fold their wings to rest; when the last
enemy shall give forth a cry of pain, become silent, and proclaim liberty
to the world: then, crowned with oak leaves, throwing aside their swords,
our knights will seat themselves unarmed and deign to hear songs. When the
world envies their present fortune they will have leisure to hear of the
past! Then they will weep over the fate of their fathers, and then those
tears will not soil their cheeks.
“To-day, for us, unbidden guests in the world, in all the past and in all
the future—to-day there is but one region in which there is a crumb of
happiness for a Pole: the land of his childhood! That land will ever
remain holy and pure as first love; undisturbed by the remembrance of
errors, not undermined by the deceitfulness of hopes, and unchanged by the
stream of events.
* * * * * *
“Gladly would I greet with my thoughts those lands where I rarely wept and
never gnashed my teeth; lands of my childhood, where one roamed over the
world as through a meadow, and among the flowers knew only those that were
lovely and fair, throwing aside the poisonous, and not glancing at the
useful.
“That land, happy, poor, and narrow; as the world is God’s, so that was
our own! How everything there belonged to us, how I remember all that
surrounded us, from the linden that with its magnificent crown afforded
shade to the children of the whole village, down to every stream and
stone; how every cranny of the land was familiar to us, as far as the
houses of our neighbours—the boundary line of our realm!
“And if at times a Muscovite made his appearance, he left behind him only
the memory of a fair and glittering uniform, for we knew the serpent only
by his skin.
“And only the dwellers in those lands have remained true to me until now;
some as faithful friends, some as trusty allies! For _who_ dwelt there?
Mother, brothers, kindred, good neighbours! When one of them passed away,
how tenderly did they speak of him! How many memories, what long-continued
sorrow, in that land where a servant is more devoted to his master than in
other countries a wife to her husband; where a soldier sorrows longer over
his weapons than here a son over his father; where they weep longer and
more sincerely over a dog than here the people weep for a hero!
“And in those days my friends aided my speech and cast me word after word
for my songs; like the fabled cranes on the wild island, which flew in
spring over the enchanted palace and heard the loud lament of an enchanted
boy: each bird threw the boy a single feather; he made him wings and
returned to his own people.
* * * * * *
“O, if some time I might attain this joy—that this book might find shelter
beneath roofs of thatch, and that the village girls, as they spin and turn
the wheel, humming the while their much-loved verses, of the girl who so
loved to make music that while fiddling she lost her geese, or of the
orphan, who, fair as the dawn, went to drive home the birds at eventide—if
even those village girls might take into their hands this book, simple as
their songs!
“So in my own day, along with the village sports, they sometimes read
aloud, under the linden tree on the green, the song of Justina,(7) or the
story of Wieslaw;(8) and the bailiff, dozing at the table, or the steward,
or even the master of the farm, did not forbid us to read; he himself
would deign to listen, and would interpret the harder places to the
younger folk; he praised the beauties and forgave the faults.
“And the young folk envied the fame of the bards, which in their own land
still echoes through the woods and the fields; of bards to whom dearer
than the laurel of the Capitol is a wreath plaited by the hands of a
village girl, of blue cornflowers and green rue.”
1 Quoted from a letter of Krasinski, by Kallenbach, _Adam Mickiewicz_
(Cracow, 1897), vol. ii. p. 174.
_ 2 Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature_ (London and
New York, 1903), p. 284.
3 Vilna on our maps; Wilno is the Polish spelling.
4 English readers are fortunate in possessing an excellent account of
the life and writings of Mickiewicz in the work by Miss Monica M.
Gardner, _Adam Mickiewicz, the National Poet of Poland_ (London and
New York, 1911).
5 I am here indebted to Kallenbach (_Adam Mickiewicz_, Cracow, 1897),
and Pilat (Introduction to edition of _Pan Tadeusz_ of _Towarzystwo
Literackie_, Lemberg).
6 Brückner, _Geschichte der polnischen Litteratur_ (Leipzig, 1901), p.
371.
7 By Franciszek Karpinski, 1741-1825.
8 By Kazimierz Brodzinski, 1791-1835.
LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS IN “PAN TADEUSZ” WITH NOTES ON POLISH
PRONUNCIATION
THE principal characters in _Pan Tadeusz_ are as follows. The approximate
pronunciation of each proper name is indicated in brackets, according to
the system used in _Webster’s New International Dictionary_.
Thaddeus (Tadeusz) Soplica [Ta-dĕ’ōōsh Sŏ-plē’tsä].
Jacek Soplica, his father [Yä’tsĕk],
Judge Soplica, brother of Jacek.
Telimena, a distant relative of the Soplicas and of
the Horeszkos [Tĕ-lĭ-mĕ’nä, Hŏ-rĕsh’kŏ].
Zosia, ward of Telimena [Zŏ’shä],
Hreczecha, the Seneschal [Hrĕ-chĕ’hä].
The Chamberlain.
Protazy Brzechalski, the Apparitor [Prŏ-tä’zĭ Bzhĕ-häl’skĭ].
The Assessor.
Bolesta, the Notary [Bŏ-lĕs’tä].
The Count, a distant relative of the Horeszko
family.
Gerwazy Rembajlo, the Warden, formerly a servant
of the Horeszko family [Gĕr-vä’zĭ Rĕm-baĭ’wŏ].
Rykov, a Russian captain [Rĭ’kŏf].
Jankiel, a Jew [Yän’kyĕl].
Maciej (Maciek) Dobrzynski [Mä’chā (Mä’chĕk)
Dŏb-zhĭn’skĭ].
Sprinkler (also called Baptist), Bucket, Buzzard,
Razor, Awl, the Prussian: all members of
the Dobrzynski clan.
Henryk Dombrowski [Hĕn’rĭk Dŏm-brŏf’skĭ].
Otton-Karol Kniaziewicz [Ŏt’tŏn-Kä’rŏl Knyä-zhĕ’vĭch].
The following names are frequently mentioned in the poem: Kosciuszko
[Kŏ-shchōōsh’kŏ], Rejtan [Rä’tän], Mickiewicz [Mits-kyĕ’vĭch]. Note also
the words _wojewoda_ [vŏ-yĕ-vŏ’da] and _kontusz_ [kŏn’tōōsh].
Polish names in this book are generally given in their original spelling,
except that the diacritical marks used on many letters in the Polish
alphabet are here omitted, and that _on_ (or _om_) and _en_ (or _em_) are
substituted for the nasal vowels indicated in Polish by _a_ with a cedilla
and _e_ with a cedilla. But the English names _Thaddeus, Sophia, Eva,
Rosa, Thomas_, and _Joseph_ have been substituted for the Polish forms
_Tadeusz, Zofia, Ewa, Roza, Tomasz,_ and _Jozef_. (Yet the Polish title of
the poem, _Pan Tadeusz,_ has been left unchanged, as it has become widely
known through works on Poland, and as a suitable substitute for it is hard
to find: _Pan Thaddeus_ would be a displeasing hybrid.) The few Russian
names that occur are given as though transliterated from the Russian, not
in the Polish form: _Suvorov_, not _Suwarow_.
The Polish _Pan, Pani_, and _Panna_ correspond roughly to the English
_Mr., Mrs._, and _Miss_. But _Pani_ may be used of unmarried women of high
social station; it is regularly applied to Telimena, and once, by the
reverent Gerwazy, even to little Zosia (page 320).
As an aid to the pronunciation of the minor names the following directions
may be of some service:—
Accent all names on the penult, or next to the last syllable.
Pronounce _cz_ as _ch, sz_ as _sh, rz_ as _zh_ (azure), _j_ as _y_ (_aj,
ej, oj_ as _ī, ā, oi_). _W_ is ordinarily pronounced as _v_, but before
surd consonants it has the sound _f_. _Ch_ is pronounced as in German, but
before vowels it need not be distinguished from the English _h_. The
Polish _l_ has two values, one of which resembles the English _l_, while
the other (the crossed _l_) approximates to the English _w_. _S_ is
ordinarily pronounced as in English, but before _i_ it has a sound
somewhat like _sh_; _si_ before a vowel (as in _Zosia_) has the same
sound, the _i_ not being pronounced, but serving as an indication of the
“soft” pronunciation of the preceding sibilant. In the same circumstances
_z_ (and _zi_) are pronounced somewhat like _zh_. The Polish alphabet also
contains a dotted _z_ (here represented by plain _z_) which is pronounced
like _zh_. _Dz_ before _i_ (and _dzi_ before a vowel) are pronounced
somewhat like English _j_ in _jet_. _C_ is ordinarily pronounced like
_ts_, but _c_ before _i_ (and _ci_ before a vowel) are sounded somewhat
like _ch_.
The vowels may be given the familiar “Italian” values; _y_ need not be
distinguished from _i_. (But on _i_ as a diacritical sign, modifying a
preceding sibilant, see the preceding paragraph.) Furthermore, _i_
following a consonant (not a sibilant) and preceding a vowel, is
pronounced like _y_, as in _Jankiel_ (Yän’kyĕl).
These rules, it must be said, are incomplete and inexact to a degree that
will shock any person with a scientific knowledge of Polish pronunciation.
In the present instance brevity seemed of more importance than strict
accuracy.
PAN TADEUSZ
OR
THE LAST FORAY IN LITHUANIA1
BOOK I.—THE FARM
ARGUMENT
Return of the young master—A first meeting in the chamber, a
second at table—The Judge’s weighty lecture on courtesy—The
Chamberlain’s political remarks on fashions—Beginning of the
quarrel over Bobtail and Falcon—Lamentations of the Seneschal—The
last Apparitor—Glance at the political conditions of Lithuania and
Europe at this period.
LITHUANIA, my country, thou art like health; how much thou shouldst be
prized only he can learn who has lost thee. To-day thy beauty in all its
splendour I see and describe, for I yearn for thee.
Holy Virgin, who protectest bright Czenstochowa and shinest above the
Ostra Gate in Wilno!2 Thou who dost shelter the castle of Nowogrodek with
its faithful folk! As by miracle thou didst restore me to health in my
childhood—when, offered by my weeping mother to thy protection, I raised
my dead eyelids, and could straightway walk to the threshold of thy shrine
to thank God for the life returned me—so by miracle thou wilt return us to
the bosom of our country. Meanwhile bear my grief-stricken soul to those
wooded hills, to those green meadows stretched far and wide along the blue
Niemen; to those fields painted with various grain, gilded with wheat,
silvered with rye; where grows the amber mustard, the buckwheat white as
snow, where the clover glows with a maiden’s blush, where all is girdled
as with a ribbon by a strip of green turf on which here and there rest
quiet pear-trees.
Amid such fields years ago, by the border of a brook, on a low hill, in a
grove of birches, stood a gentleman’s3 mansion, of wood, but with a stone
foundation; the white walls shone from afar, the whiter since they were
relieved against the dark green of the poplars that sheltered it against
the winds of autumn. The dwelling-house was not large, but it was
spotlessly neat, and it had a mighty barn, and near it were three stacks
of hay that could not be contained beneath the roof; one could see that
the neighbourhood was rich and fertile. And one could see from the number
of sheaves that up and down the meadows shone thick as stars—one could see
from the number of ploughs turning up early the immense tracts of black
fallow land that evidently belonged to the mansion, and were tilled well
like garden beds, that in that house dwelt plenty and order. The gate
wide-open proclaimed to passers-by that it was hospitable, and invited all
to enter as guests.
A young gentleman had just entered in a two-horse carriage, and, after
making a turn about the yard, he stopped before the porch and descended;
his horses, left to themselves, slowly moved towards the gate, nibbling
the grass. The mansion was deserted, for the porch doors were barred and
the bar fastened with a pin. The traveller did not run to make inquiries
at the farmhouse but opened the door and ran into the mansion, for he was
eager to greet it. It was long since he had seen the house, for he had
been studying in a distant city and had at last finished his course. He
ran in and gazed with eager emotion upon the ancient walls, his old
friends. He sees the same furniture, the same hangings with which he had
loved to amuse himself from babyhood, but they seemed less beautiful and
not so large as of old. And the same portraits hung upon the walls. Here
Kosciuszko,4 in his Cracow coat,5 with his eyes raised to heaven, held his
two-handed sword; such was he when on the steps of the altar he swore that
with this sword he would drive the three powers from Poland or himself
would fall upon it. Farther on sat Rejtan,6 in Polish costume, mourning
the loss of liberty; in his hands he held a knife with the point turned
against his breast, and before him lay _Phaedo_ and _The Life of Cato_.
Still farther on Jasinski,7 a fair and melancholy youth, and his faithful
comrade Korsak8 stand side by side on the entrenchments of Praga, on heaps
of Muscovites, hewing down the enemies of their country—but around them
Praga is already burning.
He recognised even the tall old musical clock in its wooden case near the
chamber door, and with childish joy he pulled at the string, in order to
hear Dombrowski’s old mazurka.71
He ran about the whole house and searched for the room that had been his
own when he was a child, ten years before. He entered, drew back, and
surveyed the walls with astonished eyes: could this room be a woman’s
lodgings? Who could live here? His old uncle was unmarried, and his aunt
had dwelt for years in St. Petersburg. Could that be the housekeeper’s
chamber? A piano? On it music and books; all abandoned in careless
confusion: sweet disorder!
Not old could the hands have been that had so abandoned them! There too, a
white gown, freshly taken from the hook to put on, was spread upon the arm
of a chair. In the windows were pots of fragrant flowers: geraniums,
asters, gillyflowers, and violets. The traveller stepped to one of the
windows—a new marvel was before him. On the bank of the brook, in a spot
once overgrown with nettles, was a tiny garden intersected by paths, full
of clumps of English grass and of mint. The slender wooden fence,
fashioned into a monogram, shone with ribbons of gay daisies. Evidently
the beds had but just been sprinkled; there stood the tin watering-pot
full of water, but the fair gardener could nowhere be seen. She had only
now departed; the little gate, freshly touched, was still trembling; near
the gate could be seen on the sand the print of a small foot that had been
without shoe or stocking—on the fine dry sand, white as snow; the print
was clear but light; you guessed that it was left in quick running by the
tiny feet of some one who scarce touched the ground.
The traveller stood long in the window gazing and musing, breathing in the
fragrance of the flowers. He bent down his face to the violet plants; he
followed the paths with his curious eyes and again gazed on the tiny
footprints; he kept thinking of them and trying to guess whose they were.
By chance he raised his eyes, and there on the wall stood a young girl—her
white garment hid her slender form only to the breast, leaving bare her
shoulders and her swan’s neck. Such attire a Lithuanian maiden is wont to
wear only early in the day; in such she is never seen by men. So, though
there was no witness near, she had folded her arms on her breast, in order
to add a veil to her low garment. Her hair, not spread out in loose
ringlets but twisted in little knots and wrapped in small white
curl-papers, marvellously adorned her head, for in the sunlight it shone
like a crown on the image of a saint. Her face could not be seen, for she
had turned towards the meadow, and with her eyes was seeking some one far
off, below her. She caught sight of him, laughed, and clapped her hands;
like a white bird she flew from the wall to the turf, and flashed through
the garden, over stiles and flowers, and over a board supported on the
wall of the chamber; before the young man was aware, she had flown in
through the window, glittering, swift, and light as a moonbeam. Humming to
herself, she seized the gown and ran to the mirror; suddenly she saw the
youth, and the gown fell from her hands and her face grew pale with fright
and wonder. The face of the traveller flamed with a rosy blush, as a cloud
when it is touched with the morning glow; the modest youth half closed his
eyes and hid them with his hand; he wished to speak and ask for pardon,
but only bowed and stepped back. The maiden uttered a pitiful, indistinct
cry, like a child frightened in its sleep; the traveller looked up in
alarm, but she was there no longer; he departed in confusion and felt the
loud beating of his heart; he knew not whether this strange meeting should
cause him amusement or shame or joy.
Meanwhile in the farmhouse they had not failed to notice that some new
guest had driven up before the porch. They had already taken the horses to
the stable and already, as befits an honourable house, had given them
generously of oats and hay, for the Judge9 was never willing to adopt the
new fashion of sending a guest’s horse to a Jew’s inn. The servants had
not come out to welcome the traveller, but do not think that in the
Judge’s mansion service was careless; the servants were waiting until the
Seneschal10 should attire him, who now behind the mansion was arranging
for the supper. He took the place of the master, and in his absence was
wont himself to welcome and entertain guests, being a distant relative of
the master and a friend of the house. Seeing the guest, he stealthily made
his way to the farmhouse, for he could not come out to greet the stranger
in a homespun dressing-gown; there he put on as quickly as he might his
Sunday garment, made ready since early morning, for since morning he had
known that at supper he should sit with a multitude of guests.
The Seneschal recognised the traveller from afar, spread out his arms, and
with a cry embraced and kissed him. Then began a hurried, confused
discourse, in which they were eager to tell the events of many years in a
few brief words, mingled, as the tale went forward, with queries,
exclamations, and new greetings. When the Seneschal had asked his fill of
questions, at the very last he told the story of that day.
“It is good, my Thaddeus,”—for so they called the young man, whose first
name had been given him in honour of Kosciuszko, as a token that he was
born at the time of the war11—“it is good, my Thaddeus, that you have
returned home this day, just when we have with us so many fair young
ladies. Your uncle is thinking of soon celebrating your marriage. You have
a wide choice: at our house a numerous company has for days been gathering
for the session of the territorial court, to conclude our ancient quarrel
with the Count. The Count himself is to arrive to-morrow; the
Chamberlain12 is already here with his wife and daughters. The young men
have gone to the wood to amuse themselves shooting, and the old men and
the women are looking at the harvest near the wood, where they are
doubtless awaiting the young men. Come on, if you wish, and soon we shall
meet your dear uncle, the Chamberlain, and the honoured ladies.”
The Seneschal and Thaddeus walked along the road towards the wood and
could not say enough to each other. The sun was approaching the end of his
course in the sky and shone less strongly but more broadly than by day,
all reddened, as the healthy face of a husbandman, when, after finishing
his work in the fields, he returns to rest: already the gleaming circle
was descending on the summit of the grove, and already the misty twilight,
filling the tips and the branches of the trees, bound and, as it were,
fused the whole forest into one mass, and the grove showed black like an
immense building, and the sun red above it like a fire on the roof; then
the sun sank; it still shone through the branches, as a candle through the
chinks of window shutters; then it was extinguished. And suddenly the
scythes that were ringing far and wide among the grain, and the rakes that
were being drawn over the meadow, became quiet and still; such were the
orders of the Judge, on whose farm work closed with the day. “The Lord of
the world knows how long we should toil; when the sun, his workman,
descends from heaven, it is time for the husbandman to withdraw from the
field.” So the Judge was wont to speak, and the will of the Judge was
sacred to the honest Steward; for even the waggons on which they had
already begun to load the sheaves of grain, went unfilled to the stable;
the oxen rejoiced in the unaccustomed lightness of their load.
The whole company was just returning from the grove, gaily, but in order;
first the little children with their tutor, then the Judge with the wife
of the Chamberlain; beside them the Chamberlain, surrounded by his family;
after the older people came the young ladies, with the young men beside
them; the young ladies walked a half-step before the young men: so decorum
bids. No one there had arranged the order, no one had so placed the
gentlemen and the ladies, but each without conscious thought kept the
order: for the Judge in his household observed the ancient customs, and
never allowed that respect should be neglected for age, birth,
intelligence, or office: “By such breeding,” said he, “houses and nations
win fame, and with its fall, houses and nations go to ruin.” So the
household and the servants grew accustomed to order; and a passing guest,
whether kinsman or stranger, when he visited the Judge, as soon as he had
been there a short time, accepted the established ways of which all about
him breathed.
Short were the greetings that the Judge bestowed upon his nephew. With
dignity he offered him his hand to salute, and kissing him on the temple
he gave him a hearty welcome; though out of regard for the guests he
talked little with him, one could see from the tears that he quickly wiped
away with the sleeve of his _kontusz_,13 how he loved young Thaddeus.
After the master all, both men and beasts, were returning home together
from the harvest fields and from the grove, from the meadows and from the
pastures. Here a flock of bleating sheep squeezed into the lane and raised
a cloud of dust; behind them slowly stepped a herd of Tyrolese heifers
with brazen bells; there the horses neighing rushed home from the freshly
mown meadow. All ran to the well, of which the wooden sweep ceaselessly
creaked and filled the trough.
The Judge, though wearied, and though surrounded by guests, did not
neglect the weighty duties of his farm, but himself went to the well: at
evening a farmer can best see how his stable prospers, and never entrusts
that care to servants—for the Judge knew that the master’s eye fattens the
horse.
The Seneschal and Protazy the Apparitor14 were standing in the hall,
lanterns in hand, and were arguing with some warmth, for in the
Seneschal’s absence the Apparitor had secretly ordered the supper tables
to be carried out from the mansion and to be set up hastily in the old
castle of which the remains could be seen near the wood. Why this
transfer? The Seneschal made wry faces and begged the Judge’s pardon; the
Judge was amazed, but the thing had been done; it was already late and
difficult to correct it; he preferred to make excuses to his guests and to
lead them to the ruins. On the way the Apparitor kept explaining to the
Judge why he had altered his master’s arrangements: on the farm no room
was spacious enough for so many guests—and guests of such high station; in
the castle the great hall was still well preserved, the vaulted roof was
whole—to be sure one wall was cracked and the windows were without panes,
but in summer that would do no harm; the nearness of the cellars was
convenient for the servants. So speaking, he winked at the Judge; it was
evident from his mien that he had other, more important reasons, but
concealed them.
The castle stood two thousand paces from the mansion, of stately
architecture, and of imposing bulk, the ancestral home of the ancient
house of the Horeszkos. The owner had perished at the time of the
disorders in the country;15 the domain had been entirely ruined by the
sequestrations of the government, by the carelessness of the guardians,
and by the verdicts of the courts; part had fallen to distant relatives on
the female side, the rest had been divided among the creditors. No one
wished to take the castle, for a simple gentleman could hardly afford the
cost of maintaining it; but the Count, a rich young noble and a distant
relative of the Horeszkos, when he became of age and returned home from
his travels to live near by, took a fancy to the walls, explaining that
they were of Gothic architecture, though the Judge from documents tried to
convince him that the architect was from Wilno and not a Goth. At all
events the Count wished to have the castle, and suddenly the same desire
seized the Judge, no one could tell why. They began a suit in the district
court, then in the court of appeal, before the Senate, again in the
district court and before the governor’s council; finally after great
expense of money, and numerous decrees, the case returned again to the
court of domains.
The Apparitor said rightly that in the hall of the castle there was room
both for the gentlemen of the bar and for the invited guests. This hall
was as large as a refectory, and it had a vaulted roof supported on
pillars, and a stone flooring; the walls were unadorned, but clean. Upon
them were fastened the horns of stags and roes, with inscriptions telling
where and when these trophies had been obtained; there too were engraved
the armorial bearings of the hunters, with the name of each written out in
full; on the ceiling gleamed the Half-Goat, the arms of the Horeszkos.
The guests entered in order and stood about the table. The Chamberlain
took his place at the head; this honour befitted him from his age and his
office; advancing to it he bowed to the ladies, the old men, and the young
men. By him took his station a Bernardine monk, a collector of alms for
his order, and next the Bernardine was the Judge. The Bernardine
pronounced a short grace in Latin, brandy was passed to the gentlemen;
then all sat down, and silently and with relish they ate the cold
Lithuanian salad of beet leaves.16
Thaddeus, though a young man, by virtue of being a guest, had a seat at
the head of the table, with the ladies, beside His Honour the Chamberlain;
between him and his uncle there remained one empty place, which seemed to
be awaiting some one. The uncle often glanced at this place and then at
the door, as though he were assured of some one’s coming and desired it;
and Thaddeus followed his uncle’s glance to the door, and with him fixed
his eyes on the empty seat. Marvellous to relate, the places round about
were occupied by maidens on whom a prince might have gazed without shame,
all of them high born, and every one young and pretty; but Thaddeus kept
looking at that spot where no one was sitting. That place was a riddle;
young people love riddles. Distraught, to his fair neighbour the
Chamberlain’s daughter he said only a few scattering words; he did not
change her plate or fill her glass, and he did not entertain the young
ladies with polite discourse such as would have shown his city breeding.
That one empty place allured him and dazzled him; it was no longer empty,
for he had filled it with his thoughts. Over that place ran a thousand
guesses, as after a rain, little toads hop hither and thither over a
lonely meadow; among them one form was queen, like a water lily on a fair
day raising its white brow above the surface of a lake.
The third course was being served. The Chamberlain, pouring a drop of wine
into Panna Rosa’s glass and passing a plate of cucumbers to his younger
daughter, said: “I must wait on you myself, my dear daughters, though I am
old and clumsy.” Thereat several young men started up from the table and
served the young ladies. The Judge, throwing a sidelong glance at Thaddeus
and adjusting somewhat the sleeves of his kontusz, poured out some
Hungarian wine and spoke thus:—
“To-day, as the new fashion bids us, we send our young men to the capital
to study, and I do not deny that our sons and grandsons have more book
learning than their elders; but each day I perceive how our young men
suffer because there are no schools that teach how to conduct oneself in
polite society. Of old, the young gentry went to the courts of the lords;
I myself was for ten years a member of the household of the Wojewoda,26
the father of His Honour the Chamberlain.” (As he said this he pressed the
Chamberlain’s knees.) “By his counsels he fitted me for the public
service, and did not dismiss me from his care until he had made a man of
me. In my home his memory will ever be dear; each day do I pray God for
his soul. If at his court I profited less than others, and since my return
have been ploughing the fields at home, while others, more worthy of the
regard of the Wojewoda, have since attained the highest offices in the
land, at least this much I profited, that in my home no one will ever
reproach me for failing to show respect or courtesy to all—and boldly do I
say it, courtesy is not an easy science, nor one of slight account. Not
easy, for it is not confined to moving one’s legs gracefully in bowing or
to greeting with a smile each man one meets; for such fashionable courtesy
seems to me that of a merchant, not that of old Poland, nor that of a true
gentleman. Courtesy should be extended to all, but for each it is
different; for not without courtesy is the love of children for their
parents, or the regard paid by a husband to his wife in society, or that
of a master for his servants, and yet each sort of courtesy has its
distinctive mark. One must study long in order without mistake to pay to
each his due respect. And our elders did study: in noble mansions the
discourse furnished the listener a living history of his land, and the
talk among the gentry formed the household annals of the county. Thereby a
brother gentleman was made to feel that all knew of him and did not esteem
him lightly; so a gentleman kept a watch upon his own habits. But to-day
you must ask no man who he is or of what parents, with whom he has lived
or what he has done. Every man enters where he will, so long as he be not
a government spy or a beggar. As Vespasian did not smell of money,17 and
cared not to know whence it came, from what hands or lands, so now they
care not to know a man’s family or habits. It suffices that he be of full
weight and that the stamp be seen upon him; thus men value friends as Jews
value money.”
While speaking thus, the Judge surveyed his guests in order; for though he
always spoke fluently and with discretion, he knew that the youth of
to-day are impatient, that they are bored by long speeches, even by the
most eloquent. But all were listening in deep silence; the Judge with his
eye seemed to take counsel of the Chamberlain; the Chamberlain did not
interrupt the speech by praise, but with a frequent nodding of his head he
assented to it. The Judge ceased speaking, the other with a nod begged him
to continue. So the Judge filled the Chamberlain’s beaker and his own cup,
and spoke further:—
“Courtesy is no slight thing: when a man learns to respect as is fitting
the age, birth, virtues, and ways of others, at the same time he comes to
recognise also his own dignity; as in weighing with scales, in order to
learn our own weight, we must put some one in the opposite pan. And worthy
of your especial attention is the courtesy that young men owe to the fair
sex, above all when the distinction of family, and the generosity of
fortune heighten inborn charms and talents. Through courtesy is the path
to the affections, and by it houses are joined in splendid union—thus
thought our elders. And therefore——”
Here the Judge with a sudden turn of his head nodded at Thaddeus and
bestowed on him a stern glance; it was evident that he had now reached the
climax of his speech.
Thereupon the Chamberlain tapped his golden snuffbox and said:—
“My dear Judge, in former times it was still worse. At present I know not
whether the fashion changes even us old men, or whether the young men are
better than before, but I see less cause of scandal. Ah, I remember the
times when on our fatherland there first descended the fashion of
imitating the French; when suddenly brisk young gentlemen from foreign
lands swarmed in upon us in a horde worse than the Nogai Tatars, abusing
here, in our country, God, the faith of our fathers, our law and customs,
and even our ancient garments. Pitiable was it to behold the yellow-faced
puppies, talking through their noses—and often without noses—stuffed with
brochures and newspapers of various sorts, and proclaiming new faiths,
laws, and toilets. That rabble had a mighty power over minds, for when the
Lord God sends punishment on a nation he first deprives its citizens of
reason. And so the wiser heads dared not resist the fops, and the whole
nation feared them as some pestilence, for within itself it already felt
the germs of disease. They cried out against the dandies but took pattern
by them; they changed faith, speech, laws, and costumes. That was a
masquerade, the licence of the Carnival season, after which was soon to
follow the Lent of slavery.
“I remember,—though then I was but a little child,—when the Cup-Bearer’s
son came to visit my father in the district of Oszmiana, in a French
carriage; he was the first man in Lithuania who wore French clothes.
Everybody ran after him as after a buzzard;18 they envied the house before
the threshold of which the Cup-Bearer’s son halted his two-wheeled chaise,
which passed by the French name of cabriolet. Within it sat two dogs
instead of footmen, and on the box a German, lean as a board; his long
legs, thin as hop-poles, were clad in stockings, and shoes with silver
buckles; the tail of his wig was tied up in a sack. The old men burst out
laughing at that equipage, but the country boors crossed themselves,
saying that a Venetian devil was travelling abroad in a German carriage.
To describe the son of the Cup-Bearer himself would be a long story;
suffice it to say that he seemed to us an ape or a parrot in a great
peruke, which he liked to compare to the Golden Fleece, and we to
elf-locks.19 At that time even if any one felt that the Polish costume was
more comely than this aping of a foreign fashion, he kept silent, for the
young men would have cried out that he was hindering culture, that he was
checking progress, that he was a traitor. Such at that time was the power
of prejudice!
“The Cup-Bearer’s son announced that he was going to reform us and
introduce order and civilisation; he proclaimed to us that some eloquent
Frenchmen had made a discovery, that all men are equal—though this was
written long ago in Holy Writ and every parish priest prates of it from
the pulpit. The doctrine was ancient, the question was of its application.
But at that time such general blindness prevailed that they did not
believe the oldest things in the world if they did not read of them in a
French newspaper. The Cup-Bearer’s son, despite equality, had taken the
title of marquis. It is well known that titles come from Paris, and at
that time the title of marquis was in fashion there; however, when in the
course of years the fashion changed, this same marquis took the title of
democrat; finally, with the changing fashion, under Napoleon, the democrat
arrived from Paris as a baron; if he had lived longer, perhaps he would
have shifted again, and instead of a baron would have called himself once
more a democrat. For Paris boasts of frequent changes of fashion, and
whatever a Frenchman invents is dear to a Pole.
“Thank God, that now if our young men go abroad, it is no longer for
clothes, nor to seek new laws in wretched printing shops, nor to study
eloquence in the cafes of Paris. For now Napoleon, a clever man and a
swift, gives us no time to prate or to search for new fashions. Now there
is the thunder of arms, and the hearts of us old men exult that the renown
of the Poles is spreading so widely throughout the world; glory is ours
already, and so we shall soon again have our Republic. From laurels always
springs the tree of liberty. Only it is sad that for us the years drag on
so long in idleness, and they are always so far away. It is so long to
wait!, and even news is so scarce. Father Robak,”20 he said in a lower
voice to the Bernardine, “I have heard that you have received tidings from
beyond the Niemen; perhaps you know something of our army?”
“Not a thing,” answered Robak with indifference; it was evident that he
had not enjoyed listening to the talk. “Politics bore me; if I have a
letter from Warsaw, it is on business of our Order. That is the affair of
us Bernardines; why should we talk of that at supper? Here there are
laymen, whom such things do not concern.”
So speaking, he looked askance at a Muscovite guest who was sitting among
the banqueters; this was Captain Rykov, an old soldier who was quartered
in a village hard by, and whom the Judge for courtesy’s sake had invited
to the supper. Rykov ate with a relish, and had been mixing little in the
conversation, but at the mention of Warsaw he raised his head and said,
with a Russian accent, and with a few slips of expression:—
“Chamberlain! Ah, sir, you are always curious about Bonaparte, and are
always eager to hear from Warsaw. Ah, Fatherland! I am no spy, but I
understand Polish.—Fatherland! I feel it all, I understand! You are Poles,
I am Russian; just now we are not fighting—there is an armistice, so we
are eating and drinking together. Often at the outposts our fellows will
be chatting with the French and drinking brandy; when they cry ‘Hurrah,’
then comes the cannonading. There’s a Russian proverb: ‘I love the man I
fight with; clasp your sweetheart to your heart, but beat her like a fur
cloak.’ I say we shall have war. An adjutant of the staff came to Major
Plut21 the day before yesterday: ‘Get ready for the march!’ We shall move
either against the Turks or the French. O, that Bonaparte is a rare bird!
Now that Suvorov is gone maybe he will give us a drubbing. In our regiment
we used to say, when we were marching against the French, that Bonaparte
was a wizard22—well, so was Suvorov a wizard too, so there were tricks
against tricks. Once in battle, where did he disappear? To look for
Bonaparte! But he changed himself into a fox, so Suvorov became a hound;
so Bonaparte changed again into a cat; they started to claw each other,
but Suvorov became a pony. Now notice what happened with Bonaparte
finally——”
Here Rykov broke off and began to eat. At that moment the servant came in
with the fourth course, and suddenly the side doors were opened.
A new guest, young and fair, came in; her sudden appearance, her beauty
and her carriage, her toilet, all attracted the eye. Everybody greeted
her; evidently all except Thaddeus were acquainted with her. Her figure
was fine and elegant, her bosom charming; her gown was of pink silk, low
cut, and with short sleeves, the collar of lace. In her hands she twirled
a fan for mere pastime, for it was not hot; the gilded fan as it waved
spread around it a dense shower of sparks. Her head was like a milliner’s
model; the hair was frizzled and curled and intertwined with pink ribbons;
amid them a diamond, half hidden from sight, shone like a star in the tail
of a comet. In a word it was a holiday toilet; several whispered that it
was too elaborate for the country and for every day. Though her skirt was
short, the eye could not see her feet, for she ran very swiftly, or rather
she glided, like the puppets that on the Festival of the Three Kings boys
hidden in booths slide to and fro. She ran in and, greeting all with a
slight bow, was about to seat herself in the place reserved for her. That
was difficult, for there were no chairs for the guests, who were sitting
in four rows on four benches; either a whole row must move or she must
climb over the bench. Skilfully she managed to squeeze in between two
benches, and then between the table and the line of those seated at it she
rolled on like a billiard ball. In her course she brushed past our young
man, and, catching a flounce on some one’s knee, slipped a little, and in
her distraction supported herself on the shoulder of Thaddeus. Politely
begging his pardon, she took her seat between him and his uncle, but she
ate nothing; she only fanned herself, or twirled the handle of her fan, or
adjusted her lace collar, or with a light touch of her hand smoothed her
ringlets and the knots of bright ribbon among them.
This interruption of the conversation had lasted some four minutes.
Meanwhile there had begun at the end of the table first gentle murmurs and
then conversation in a subdued voice; the men were discussing their day’s
hunting. Between the Assessor23 and the Notary24 there had arisen a
stubborn and more and more noisy dispute over a bobtailed hound, in the
ownership of which the Notary took pride, maintaining that this dog had
caught the hare; while the Assessor was demonstrating, despite the
arguments of the Notary, that that honour belonged to his own hound
Falcon. They asked the opinion of the others; so all in turn took sides
either for Bobtail or for Falcon, some as experts, others as eyewitnesses.
At the opposite end of the table the Judge was saying in a low voice to
his new neighbour: “I beg your pardon, we had to sit down, it was
impossible to put off supper till later; the guests were hungry, for they
had had a long walk over the fields; and I thought that to-day you would
not join us at table.” After these words he talked quietly with the
Chamberlain over a full winecup about political affairs.
Since both ends of the table were thus occupied, Thaddeus gazed intently
at the unknown lady. He remembered that when he had first glanced at the
place he had at once guessed for whom it was destined. He blushed, and his
heart beat faster than its wont. So he now beheld, the solution of the
mystery upon which he had pondered. So it had been ordained that by his
side should sit that beauty whom he had seen in the twilight; to be sure
she now seemed of taller stature, for she was in full dress, and costume
may make one seem larger or smaller. But the hair of the first had seemed
short and of a bright golden colour, while this lady had long, curling,
raven tresses. The colour must have come from the sun’s rays, which at
evenfall shed a glow over everything. At that time he had not noticed the
girl’s face—she had vanished too quickly. But thought is wont to guess a
lovely face; he had imagined that surely she must have black eyes, a fair
complexion, and lips as red as twin cherries; in his neighbour he found
such a face, such eyes, and such lips. In age perhaps there was the
greatest difference; the little gardener had seemed to him a young girl,
this lady was already of ripe years. But youth never asks beauty for its
baptismal certificate; to a young man every woman is young, to a lad every
beauty seems of his own age, and to an innocent boy every sweetheart seems
a maiden.
Thaddeus, though he was now almost twenty years of age, and from childhood
had dwelt in Wilno, a large city, had been under the charge of a priest,
who looked after him and brought him up in the rules of strict
old-fashioned virtue. Therefore Thaddeus brought home to his native heath
a pure soul, a lively imagination, and an innocent heart, but at the same
time no small desire to sow his wild oats. He had some time ago resolved
that he would permit himself to enjoy in the country his long forbidden
liberty; he knew that he was handsome, he felt himself young and vigorous;
and as an inheritance from his parents he had received health and good
spirits. His name was Soplica; all the Soplicas, as is well known, are
large, strong, powerful men, apt at the soldier’s trade, but less diligent
over their books.
Thaddeus had not degenerated from his forebears; he rode well on horseback
and walked well; he was not dull, but he had made little progress in his
studies, though his uncle had spared nothing on his education. He liked
better to shoot, or to practise with a sabre; he knew that they had
intended to fit him for the army, that his father in his will had
expressed this desire; while sitting in school he yearned constantly for
the sound of the drum. But his uncle had suddenly changed his first
intentions, and had sent him word to come home and to marry and take over
the farming; he had promised to give him at first a little village, and
later the whole estate.
All these virtues and good qualities of Thaddeus had attracted the gaze of
his neighbour, an observant woman. She had measured his tall and shapely
form, his strong shoulders, his broad chest, and she looked into his face,
on which a blush rose as often as the young man met her eyes. For he had
already entirely recovered from his first timidity, and looked on her with
a bold glance, in which fire blazed; even so did she gaze on him, and
their four pupils glowed opposite one another as do candles at the Advent
mass.
She started a conversation with him in French. Thaddeus had returned from
town, from school: so she asked his opinions about new books and authors,
and from his answers derived new questions; she went so far as to speak of
painting, of music, of dancing—even of sculpture! She proved herself
equally familiar with the pencil, with tunes, and with books, until
Thaddeus was petrified by so much learning, and feared that he might
become the butt of ridicule, and stammered like a little lad before his
teacher. Luckily the teacher was beautiful and lenient; his neighbour
guessed the cause of his perturbation, and shifted the talk to less deep
and difficult subjects, to the cares and troubles of existence in the
country, and how one must amuse oneself, and how divide the time in order
to make village life gay and pleasant. Thaddeus answered more boldly, and
things went better; in a half-hour they were already fast friends, they
even started jests and small quarrels. Finally she placed before him three
little balls of bread, three persons to select from; he chose the nearest.
The two daughters of the Chamberlain frowned at this; his neighbour
laughed, but she did not tell him whom that happy ball was meant to
signify.
At the other end of the table they were amusing themselves quite
differently, for there the adherents of Falcon, suddenly gathering
strength, descended pitilessly on the party of Bobtail. Mighty was the
strife; they had not yet eaten the last courses; standing up and drinking,
the two factions wrangled. But most terribly was the Notary ruffled—just
like a blackcock; when he had once begun, he poured forth his speech
without a pause, and adorned it most effectively by his gestures. (The
Notary, Pan Bolesta, had once been a lawyer; they called him the preacher,
because he was over fond of gestures.) Now he had placed his hands on his
sides, extending his elbows backward, and from under his armpits he was
thrusting forward his fingers and long nails, thereby representing two
leashes of hounds. He was just concluding his speech:—
“Hurrah! The Assessor and I let them go at once, at the very same time, as
if the two triggers on a double-barrelled gun had been pressed by one
finger. Hurrah! They started, and the hare like an arrow shot into the
field; the dogs after him——” (Here as he spoke he ran his hands over the
table and with his fingers marvellously imitated the movement of the dogs)
“the dogs after him, and they headed him off a bit from the wood. Falcon
rushed forward, a fleet dog, but with a poor head; he got the start of
Bobtail by so much, a finger’s breadth; I knew that he would miss. The
hare was no common rogue; he made as if straight for the field, and after
him the pack of hounds. The rogue of a hare I Once he knew that the dogs
were in a bunch, pst! he went to the right, with a somersault, and after
him the stupid hounds; but again, zip! to the left, in just two jumps. The
dogs after him, zip! to the left, and my Bobtail, whack!”
Shouting thus the Notary leaned over the table and ran his fingers clear
to the other side, and screamed “whack” just over the ear of Thaddeus.
Thaddeus and his neighbour, suddenly startled right in the middle of a
conversation by this outburst, involuntarily withdrew their heads from
each other, like treetops tied together, when the storm parts them; their
hands, which had been lying close together under the table, quickly drew
apart, and their two faces were clothed with a single blush.
“It is true, my dear Notary,” said Thaddeus, in order not to betray his
embarrassment, “it is true, without doubt; Bobtail is a finely built
hound—if he is equally good at seizing the game.”
“Good at seizing!” cried the Notary, “my favourite dog; the idea of his
not being good at seizing!”
So Thaddeus once more expressed his pleasure that so handsome a dog had no
fault; regretted that he had seen him only as he was returning from the
wood, and that he had not had time to appreciate all his good points.
At this the Assessor trembled, dropped his wine-glass from his hand, and
levelled at Thaddeus the glance of a basilisk. The Assessor was less noisy
and less given to gestures than the Notary, thinner and shorter; but he
was terrible at masquerade, ball, or village diet, for they said of him
that he had a sting in his tongue. He could make up such witty jests that
you might have had them printed in the almanac; they were all so malicious
and pointed. He had formerly been a man of property, but he had entirely
squandered his inheritance from his father, and his brother’s estate as
well, through cutting a figure in high society; now he had entered the
service of the government, in order to be of some importance in the
district. He was very fond of hunting, both for the sport of it and
because the peal of the horn and the sight of the circle of beaters
recalled to him the days of his youth, when he had kept many hunters and
many famous hounds. Of his whole kennel but two dogs remained, and now
they wanted to belittle the glory of one of these! So he approached, and,
slowly stroking his side whiskers, said with a laugh—but it was a laugh
full of poison:—
“A hound without a tail is like a gentleman without an office. A tail is
likewise a great help to a hound in running. And do you, sir, regard the
lack of one as a proof of excellence? However, we may refer the matter to
the judgment of your aunt. Though Pani Telimena has been living in the
capital, and has only recently been visiting our neighbourhood, yet she
knows more about hunting than do young sportsmen: for knowledge comes of
itself with years.”
Thaddeus, upon whom this thunderstorm had unexpectedly descended, arose in
confusion, and for some moments said nothing, but looked upon his rival
more and more terribly and sternly; at that moment by great good luck the
Chamberlain sneezed twice. “Vivat!” cried everybody; he bowed to the
company, and slowly tapped his snuffbox with his fingers. The snuffbox was
of gold, set with diamonds, and in the middle of it was a portrait of King
Stanislaw.25 The king himself had given it to the father of the
Chamberlain; after his father the Chamberlain bore it worthily; whenever
he tapped upon it, it was a sign that he wished to have the floor for a
speech. All became silent, no one dared open his lips. He spoke:—
“Honoured gentlemen, my beloved brothers, the woods and meadows alone are
the hunter’s forum, therefore such matters I will not pass upon within
doors, but I will dissolve our sitting until to-morrow, and will not
permit further argument from either faction to-day. Apparitor, call the
case for to-morrow in the field! To-morrow the Count too will be here with
all his hunting train, and you, my neighbour Judge, will ride out with us,
and Pani Telimena, and the young ladies and gentlemen; in a word we will
form a great official hunting party, and the Seneschal, too, will not deny
us his companionship.”
So saying he offered his snuffbox to the old man.
The Seneschal had been sitting at the corner among the hunters; he had
been listening with closed eyes, but had said not a word, although the
young men had often inquired his opinion, for no one understood hunting
better than he. He kept silent, weighed in his fingers the pinch of snuff
that he had taken from the box, and meditated long before he finally used
it; he sneezed until the whole room echoed, and shaking his head, he said
with a bitter smile:—
“O how this saddens and amazes me in my old age! What would the hunters of
old times say of this, if they should see that amid so many gentlemen, in
so large a gathering, disputes over a hound’s tail had to be debated? What
would old Rejtan say of this were he to come to life again? He would go
back to Lachowicze and lay himself in his grave. What would the old
wojewoda Niesiolowski26 say, a man who still has the finest kennel in the
world, and maintains in lordly wise two hundred hunters, and who has a
hundred waggon-loads of nets in his castle of Woroncza, and yet for so
many years has been abiding like a monk within his house? No one can
persuade him to accept an invitation to hunt; he refused even
Bialopiotrowicz27 himself! For what would he capture at your hunts? It
would be fine glory, if such a gentleman, in accordance with the present
fashion, should ride out against rabbits! In my time, sir, in hunter’s
language, the boar, the bear, the elk, the wolf were known as noble
beasts, but beasts without tusks, horns, or claws were left for hired
servants or farm labourers. No gentleman would ever consent to take in
hand a musket that had been put to shame by having small shot sprinkled in
it! To be sure they kept hounds, for when they were returning from a hunt
it might happen that some wretched hare would start up from beneath a
steed; then they let loose the pack at it for sport, and the little lads
chased it on ponies before the eyes of their parents, who hardly deigned
to look on such a chase, much less to quarrel over it! So I beg that Your
Honour the Chamberlain will deign to recall your commands, and will
forgive me that I cannot ride to such a hunting party, and never will set
foot in one! My name is Hreczecha, and since the days of King Lech28 no
Hreczecha has ever ridden out after hares.”
Here the laughter of the young men drowned the speech of the Seneschal.
They rose from the table; the Chamberlain moved first; this honour
befitted him from his age and his office; as he advanced he bowed to the
ladies, the old men, and the young men. After him went the Collector of
Alms, and the Judge alongside the Bernardine; at the threshold the Judge
offered his arm to the Chamberlain’s wife, Thaddeus to Telimena, the
Assessor to the Carver’s daughter, and finally the Notary to Panna
Hreczecha, the daughter of the Seneschal.
Thaddeus went to the stable with several of the guests, and felt
disturbed, glum, and morose; he thought over all the events of the day,
the meeting and the supper by the side of his fair neighbour—and in
particular the word “aunt” buzzed continually in his ear like an
importunate fly. He would have liked to learn more about Pani Telimena
from the Apparitor, but he could not catch him; nor did he see the
Seneschal, for immediately after supper all had followed the guests out,
as befits serving men, and had gone to prepare the rooms for rest. The
older people and the ladies slept in the mansion; the young men Thaddeus,
as the host’s representative, had been directed to take to the stable,
where they were to sleep on the hay.
Within a half-hour it was as quiet on the whole estate as in a cloister
after the bell for prayer; the silence was interrupted only by the voice
of the night watchman. All were asleep. The Judge alone did not close his
eyes; as the head of the estate, he was thinking over a walking party, and
the coming entertainment within the house. He gave orders to the stewards,
the overseers, and the grain-wardens; to the scribes, the housekeeper, the
huntsmen, and the grooms; and he had to look through all the day’s
accounts; finally he told the Apparitor that he wished to undress. The
Apparitor undid his belt, a belt from Sluck,29 a massive belt, on which
glittered tassels thick as helmet-plumes; on one side it was gold brocade
with purple flowers, on the reverse black silk with silver cross-stripes.
Such a belt may be worn equally well on either side, golden for a holiday,
and black for mourning. The Apparitor alone knew how to undo and fold up
this belt; he took this trouble upon himself and ended with the following
speech:—
“Where was the harm that I moved the tables to the old castle? No one has
lost thereby, and you, sir, will perhaps gain, for the suit now before the
court concerns the ownership of that castle. From this day we have
acquired a right to the castle, and notwithstanding all the fury of the
opposite side I will prove that we have taken the castle into our
possession. For whoever invites guests to supper in a castle proves that
he holds possession there—or takes it; we will even summon the opposite
side as witnesses: I remember such happenings in my time.”
The Judge was already asleep. So the Apparitor quietly went out into the
hall, seated himself by a candle, and took from his pocket a little book
that always served him as a Prayer Book,30 and from which he never was
parted, either at home or on a journey. It was the Court Calendar;31 there
in order were written down cases which years ago the Apparitor had
proclaimed with his own voice, before the authorities, or of which he had
managed to learn later. To common men the Calendar seems a mere list of
names, but to the Apparitor it was a succession of magnificent pictures.
So he read and mused: Oginski and Wizgird, the Dominicans and Rymsza,
Rymsza and Wysogierd, Radziwill and Wereszczaka, Giedrojc and Rodultowski,
Obuchowicz and the Jewish commune, Juraha and Piotrowski, Maleski and
Mickiewicz, and finally Count Horeszko and Soplica; and, as he read, he
called forth from these names the memory of mighty cases, and all the
events of the trial; and before his eyes stand the court, plaintiff,
defendant, and witnesses; and he beholds himself, how in a white smock and
dark blue kontusz he stands before the tribunal, with one hand on his
sabre and the other on the table, summoning the two parties. “Silence!” he
calls. Thus dreaming and finishing his evening prayer, gradually the last
court apparitor in Lithuania fell asleep.
Such were the amusements and disputes of those days in the quiet
Lithuanian village, while the rest of the world was swimming in tears and
blood, and while that man, the god of war, surrounded by a cloud of
regiments, armed with a thousand cannon, harnessing to his chariot golden
eagles beside those of silver,32 was flying from the deserts of Libya to
the lofty Alps, casting thunderbolt on thunderbolt, at the Pyramids, at
Tabor, Marengo, Ulm, and Austerlitz. Victory and Conquest ran before and
after him. The glory of so many exploits, heavy with the names of heroes,
went roaring from the Nile to the North, until at the shores of the Niemen
it was beaten back as from crags by the Muscovite lines that defended
Lithuania as with walls of iron against tidings terrible for Russia as the
plague.
And yet now and then, like a stone from the sky, news came even to
Lithuania; now and then an old man, lacking a hand or a foot, who was
begging his bread, would stand and cast cautious eyes around, when he had
received alms. If he saw no Russian soldiers in the yard, or Jewish caps,
or red collars, then he would confess who he was: he was a member of the
Polish legions, and was bringing back his old bones to that fatherland
which he could no longer defend. Then how all the family—how even the
servants embraced him, choking with tears! He would seat himself at the
board and tell of history more strange than fable; he would relate how
General Dombrowski33 was making efforts to penetrate from the Italian land
into Poland, how he was gathering his countrymen on the plains of
Lombardy; how Kniaziewicz34 was issuing commands from the Roman Capitol,
and how, as a victor, he had cast in the eyes of the French an hundred
bloody standards torn from the descendants of the Cæsars; how
Jablonowski35 had reached the land where the pepper grows and where sugar
is produced, and where in eternal spring bloom fragrant woods: with the
legion of the Danube there the Polish general smites the negroes, but
sighs for his native soil.
The words of the old man would spread secretly through the village; the
lad who heard them would vanish suddenly from home, would steal
mysteriously through the forests and swamps, pursued by the Muscovites,
would leap to hiding in the Niemen, and beneath its flood swim to the
shore of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, where he would hear sweet words of
greeting, “Welcome, comrade!” But before he departed, he would climb a
stony hill and call to the Muscovites across the Niemen: “Until we meet
again!” Thus there had stolen away Gorecki, Pac, and Obuchowicz;
Piotrowski, Obolewski, Rozycki, Janowicz, the Mirzejewskis, Brochocki and
the brothers Bernatowicz, Kupsc, Gedymin, and others whom I will not
enumerate; they had abandoned their kinsmen and their beloved land, and
their estates, which were seized for the Tsar’s treasury.
Sometimes there came to Lithuania a collector of alms from a foreign
convent, and after he became more closely acquainted with the lords of an
estate, he would show them a gazette, which he cut out from his scapulary.
In it would be set forth the number of soldiers and the names of all the
leaders in every legion; with an account of the victory of each or of his
doom. After many years, a family would have news for the first time of the
life, the glory, or the death of a son; the house would put on mourning,
but dared not tell for whom they mourned. The neighbours merely guessed
the news, and only the quiet grief of the gentry, or their quiet joy, was
the gazette of the peasants.
Robak was probably just such a mysterious collector of alms; he often
conversed apart with the Judge, and always after these talks tidings of
some sort spread abroad in the neighbourhood. The bearing of the
Bernardine betrayed the fact that this monk had not always worn a cowl,
and had not grown old within cloister walls. Over his right ear, somewhat
above his temple, he had a scar as broad as one’s palm, where the skin had
been sheared off; and on his chin was the recent trace of a lance or
bullet; these wounds he had surely not received while reading the missal.
But not merely his grim glance and his scars, even his movements and his
voice had something soldierlike about them.
At the Mass, when with uplifted arms he turned from the altar to the
people, in order to pronounce, “The Lord be with you,” he often turned as
skilfully—with a single movement—as if he were executing a
right-about-face at the command of his captain; and he pronounced the
words of the liturgy to the people in the same tone as an officer standing
before a squadron: the boys who served him at the mass remarked this.
Robak was also better versed in political affairs than in the lives of the
saints; and when he was riding about gathering alms he often tarried in
the district town. He had a multitude of interests: now he received
letters, which he never opened in the presence of strangers; now he sent
off messengers, but whither and for what he did not say; often he stole
out by night to the squires’ mansions, and continually whispered with the
gentry; he trudged through all the neighbouring villages, and in the
taverns talked not a little with the village boors, and always of what was
going on in foreign lands. Now he came to arouse the Judge, who had
already been an hour asleep; surely he had some tidings.
BOOK II.—THE CASTLE
ARGUMENT
Hunting the hare with hounds—A guest in the castle—The last of the
retainers tells the story of the last of the Horeszkos—A glance
into the garden—The girl among the cucumbers—Breakfast—Pani
Telimena’s St. Petersburg story—New outbreak of the quarrel over
Bobtail and Falcon—The intervention of Robak—The Seneschal’s
speech—The wager—Off for mushrooms.
Who among us does not remember the years when, as a young lad, with his
gun on his shoulder, he went whistling into the fields, where no rampart,
no fence blocked his path; where, when you overstepped a boundary strip,
you did not recognise it as belonging to another! For in Lithuania a
hunter is like a ship upon the sea; wherever he will, and by whatever path
he will, he roams far and wide! Like a prophet he gazes on the sky, where
in the clouds there are many signs that the hunter’s eye can see; or like
an enchanter he talks with the earth, which, though deaf to city-dwellers,
whispers into his ear with a multitude of voices.
There a land rail calls from the meadow—it is vain to seek it, for it
flees away through the grass like a pike in the Niemen; there above your
head sounds the bell of early spring, the lark, hidden as deeply in the
sky; there an eagle rustles with its broad wings through the airy heights,
spreading terror among sparrows as a comet among stars; or a hawk, hanging
beneath the clear blue vault, flutters its wings like a butterfly impaled
on a pin, until, catching sight in the meadow of a bird or a hare, it
swoops upon it from on high like a falling star.
When will the Lord God permit us to return from our wanderings, and again
to dwell upon our ancestral fields, and to serve in the cavalry that makes
war on rabbits, or in the infantry that bears arms against birds; to know
no other weapons than the scythe and the sickle, and no other gazettes
than the household accounts!
Over Soplicowo arose the sun, and it already fell on the thatched roofs,
and through the chinks stole into the stable; and over the fresh,
dark-green, fragrant hay of which the young men had made them a bed there
streamed twinkling, golden bands from the openings of the black thatch,
like ribbons from a braid of hair; and the sun teased the faces of the
sleepers with its morning beams, like a village girl awakening her
sweetheart with an ear of wheat. Already the sparrows had begun to hop and
twitter beneath the thatch, already the gander had cackled thrice, and
after it, as an echo, the ducks and turkeys resounded in chorus, and one
could hear the bellowing of the kine on their way to the fields.
The young men had arisen; Thaddeus still lay dozing, for he had gone to
sleep last of all. From the supper of the day before he had come back so
disquieted that at cockcrow he had not yet closed his eyes, and on his
couch he tossed about so violently that he sank into the hay as into
water; at last he fell sound asleep. Finally a cool breeze blew in his
eyes, when the creaking doors of the stable were opened with a crash; and
the Bernardine, Father Robak, came in with his belt of knotted cord,
calling out, “Surge, puer!” and plying jocosely over his shoulders his
knotted belt.
Already in the yard could be heard the cries of the hunters; horses were
being led forth, waggons were coming up; hardly could the yard contain
such a throng. The horns sounded, they opened the kennels. The pack of
hounds rushing out whined joyfully; seeing the chargers of the huntsmen
and the leashes of their keepers, the dogs as if mad scampered about the
enclosure, then ran and put their necks in the collars. All this foreboded
a very fine hunt; at last the Chamberlain gave the order to proceed.
The hunters started slowly, one after another, but beyond the gate they
spread out in a long line; in the middle of it rode side by side the
Assessor and the Notary, and though they occasionally cast a malicious
glance at each other, they conversed in friendly fashion, like men of
honour, who were on their way to settle a mortal quarrel; no one from
their words could have remarked their mutual hatred: the Notary led
Bobtail, the Assessor Falcon. The ladies in carriages brought up the rear;
the young men, galloping alongside near the wheels, talked with the
ladies.
Father Robak walked with slow steps about the yard, finishing his morning
prayers, but he glanced at Thaddeus, frowned, smiled, and finally motioned
to him with his finger. When Thaddeus rode up, Robak with his finger on
his nose made him a threatening sign; but despite the requests and
entreaties of Thaddeus that he would explain to him clearly what he meant,
the Bernardine did not deign to answer or even to look at him again; he
merely pulled his cowl over his face and finished his prayer: so Thaddeus
rode off and joined the guests.
Just at that instant the hunters were holding their leashes and all were
standing motionless in their places; each gave a sign to the other to be
silent, and all had turned their eyes to a stone near which the Judge had
halted: he had caught sight of the game, and was waving his arms in order
to make his orders known. All understood him and stopped, and slowly
across the field trotted the Assessor and the Notary; Thaddeus, being
nearer, arrived before them, paused beside the Judge, and gazed at the
spot to which he was pointing. It was long since he, had been in the
field; on the grey expanse it was hard to distinguish the grey rabbit,
especially amid the stones. The Judge pointed him out; the poor hare was
crouched cowering beneath a stone, pricking up its ears; with a crimson
eye it met the gaze of the hunters; as if bewitched, and conscious of its
destiny, for very terror it could not turn its eye away from theirs, but
beneath the rock crouched dead as a rock. Meanwhile the dust in the field
came nearer and nearer, Bobtail was running in his leash and after him the
fleet Falcon; then the Assessor and the Notary shouted at once behind
them, “At him,” and vanished with the dogs in clouds of dust.
While they were thus pursuing the hare, the Count made his appearance near
the castle wood. All the neighbours knew that this gentleman could never
present himself at the appointed time; to-day also he had overslept, and
was therefore in a scolding humour with his servants. Seeing the hunters
in the field, he galloped towards them, with the skirts of his long white
coat, of English cut, trailing in the wind. Behind him were mounted
servants, wearing little black shiny caps like mushrooms, short jackets,
striped boots, and white pantaloons; the servants whom the Count thus
costumed, in his mansion were called _jockeys_.
The galloping train was rushing towards the meadows, when the Count caught
sight of the castle and checked his horse. It was the first time that he
had seen the castle so early, and he could not believe that these were the
same walls, so wonderful a freshness and beauty had the early morning
imparted to the outlines of the building. The Count marvelled at so new a
sight. The tower seemed to him twice as high, for it rose up above the
early mist; the tin roof was gilded by the sun, and beneath it shone in
the sashes fragments of the broken panes, breaking the eastern beams into
many-coloured rainbows; the lower stories were wrapped in a mantle of mist
that hid from the eye the cracks and huge nicks. The cries of the distant
hunters, borne on the winds, echoed several times against the castle
walls; you would have sworn that the cry came from the castle, that under
the curtain of fog the walls had been restored and were again inhabited.
The Count liked new and unwonted sights, and called them romantic; he used
to say that he had a romantic head, but truth to say he was an out-and-out
crank. Sometimes when chasing a fox or a hare he would suddenly stop and
gaze mournfully at the sky, like a cat when it sees a sparrow on a tall
pine; often he wandered through the wood without dog or gun, like a
run-away recruit; often he sat by a brook motionless, inclining his head
over a stream, like a heron that wants to consume all the fish with its
eye. Such were the queer habits of the Count; everybody said that there
was some screw loose in him. Yet they respected him, for he was a
gentleman of ancient lineage, rich, kind to his peasants, and affable and
friendly with his neighbours, even with the Jews.
The Count’s horse, which he had turned off the road, trotted straight
across the field to the threshold of the castle. The Count, left solitary,
sighed, looked at the walls, took out paper and pencil, and began to draw.
Thereupon, looking to one side, he saw a dozen steps away a man who seemed
likewise a lover of the picturesque; with his head thrown back and his
hands in his pockets he seemed to be counting the stones with his eyes.
The Count recognised him at once, but he had to call several times before
Gerwazy heard his voice. He was a man of gentle birth, a servitor of the
ancient lords of the castle, the last that remained of the Horeszkos’
retainers; a tall grey-haired old man with a hale and rugged countenance,
ploughed by wrinkles, gloomy and stem. Of old he had been famous among the
gentry for his jollity; but since the battle in which the owner of the
castle had perished, Gerwazy had changed, and now for many years he had
not gone to any fair or merry-making; since then no one had heard his
witty jests or seen a smile upon his face. He always wore the ancient
livery of the Horeszkos, a long yellow coat with skirts, trimmed with lace
that now was yellow, but once had doubtless been gilt; around its edge was
embroidered in silk their coat of arms, the Half-Goat, and thence all the
neighbours had given the title of Half-Goat to the old gentleman.
Sometimes also, from a phrase that he incessantly repeated, they called
him My-boy, sometimes Notchy, for his whole bald head was notched with
scars. His real name was Rembajlo, but no one knew his coat of arms; he
called himself the Warden, because years ago he had held that office in
the castle. And he still wore a great bunch of keys at his girdle, on a
band with a silver tassel, though he had nothing to open with them, for
the gates of the castle stood gaping wide. However he had found two
folding doors, which he had repaired and set up at his own expense, and he
amused himself daily with unlocking these doors. In one of the empty rooms
he had chosen a habitation for himself; though he might have lived at the
Count’s mansion on alms, he refused, for he pined away everywhere else,
and felt out of sorts unless he was breathing the air of the castle.
As soon as he caught sight of the Count, he snatched the cap from his
head, and honoured with a bow the kinsman of his lords, inclining a great
bald pate that shone from afar and was slashed with many a sabre, like a
chopping-block. He stroked it with his hand, came up, and, once more
bending low, said mournfully:—
“My boy, young master—pardon me, that I speak thus to Your Excellency the
Count; such is merely my custom, and it betokens no lack of respect. All
the Horeszkos used to say ‘My boy’; the last Pantler, my lord, was fond of
the phrase. Is it true, my boy, that you grudge a penny for a lawsuit, and
are yielding this castle to the Soplicas? I would not believe it, yet so
they say all through the district.”
Here he gazed at the castle and sighed incessantly.
“What is there strange in that?” said the Count. “The cost is great and
the bother greater yet; I want to finish up, but the stupid old gentleman
is obstinate; he foresaw that he could tire me out. Indeed I cannot hold
out longer, and to-day I shall lay down arms and accept such conditions of
agreement as the court may offer me.”
“Of agreement?” cried Gerwazy, “of agreement with the Soplicas? with the
Soplicas, my boy?” (So speaking he contorted his lips as though he were
amazed at his own words.) “Agreement with the Soplicas! My boy, young
master, you are jesting, aren’t you? The castle, the abode of the
Horeszkos, pass into the hands of the Soplicas! Only deign to dismount
from the steed; let us go into the castle; just look it over a bit! You do
not know yourself what you are doing; do not refuse; dismount!” And he
held the stirrup for him to dismount.
They entered the castle; Gerwazy stopped at the threshold of the hall:—
“Here,” he said, “the ancient lords, surrounded by their retinue, used
often to sit in their chairs, after they had dined. The lord settled the
disputes of the peasants, or good humouredly told various curious stories
to his guests, or found amusement in their tales and jests. But in the
courtyard the young men fought with staves or broke in the master’s
Turkish ponies.”
They entered the hall.—“In this immense paved hall,” said Gerwazy, “you
cannot find as many stones as tuns of wine have been broached here in the
good old times. The gentry, when invited to a diet, a district assembly, a
family holiday, or a hunting party, would pull the casks from the wine
cellar on their girdles. During the banquet an orchestra was stationed in
that gallery and played the organ36 and various other instruments; and
when they proposed a health the trumpets thundered in chorus; the vivats
followed in orderly succession, the first to the health of His Majesty the
King, then to the Primate,37 then to Her Majesty the Queen, then to the
Gentry and the whole Republic. But finally, after the fifth glass had been
drunk, they always proposed, ‘Let us love one another!’ a toast unceasing,
which, proclaimed while daylight still lingered, thundered on till dawn,
when horses and waggons stood ready to carry each guest to his lodging.”
They passed through several rooms; Gerwazy in silence now fixed his gaze
on the wall and now on the vaulted ceiling, recalling now a sad and now a
pleasant memory; sometimes, as though he would say, “All is over,” he
bowed his head in sorrow; sometimes he waved his hand—evidently even
recollection was a torture to him and he wished to drive it off. Finally
they paused, in a large room on the upper story, once set with mirrors;
to-day the mirrors had been removed and the frames stood empty; the sashes
lacked their panes; directly opposite the door was a balcony. Going out on
it, the old man bowed his head in thought, and buried his face in his
hands; when he uncovered it it wore an expression of great sadness and
despair. The Count, though he did not know what all this meant, when he
looked at the face of the old man felt a certain emotion, and pressed his
hand. The silence lasted for a moment; then the old man broke it, shaking
his uplifted right hand:—
“There can be no agreement, my boy, between the Soplica and the blood of
the Horeszkos; in you flows the blood of the Horeszkos; you are a kinsman
of the Pantler by your mother the Mistress of the Hunt, whose mother was
the child of the second daughter of the Castellan,38 who was, as is well
known, the maternal uncle of my lord. Now listen to a story of your own
family, which took place in this very room and no other.
“My late lord the Pantler, the first gentleman of the district, a rich man
and of noted family, had but one child, a daughter beautiful as an angel;
so not a few of the gentry and the young notables paid their court to the
Pantler’s daughter. Among the gentry there was one great roistering blade,
a fighting bully, Jacek Soplica, who was called in jest the Wojewoda; in
truth he was of great influence in the wojewodeship, for he had absolute
authority over the whole family of the Soplicas and controlled their three
hundred votes according to his will, although he himself possessed nothing
except a little plot of ground, a sabre, and great mustaches that
stretched from ear to ear. So the Pantler often invited this ruffian to
his place and entertained him there, especially at the time of the
district diets, in order to make himself popular among the fellow’s
kinsmen and partisans. The mustachioed champion was so much elated by his
courteous reception that he took it into his head that he might become his
host’s son-in-law. He came to the castle more and more frequently, even
when uninvited, and finally settled down among us as if in his own home,
and it seemed that he was on the point of declaring himself; but they
remarked this, and served him at the table with black soup.39 It may very
well be that the Pantler’s daughter had taken a fancy to the Soplica, but
that she kept it a deep secret from her parents.
“Those were the times of Kosciuszko; my lord supported the Constitution of
the Third of May,40 and was already gathering the gentry in order to go to
the aid of the Confederates, when suddenly the Muscovites encircled the
castle by night; there was barely time to fire an alarm signal from the
mortar, and to close the gates below and fasten them with a bar. There was
no one in the whole castle except the Pantler, myself, and the lady; the
cook and two turnspits, all three drunk; the parish priest, a servingman,
and four footmen, all bold fellows. So to arms and to the windows! Here a
throng of Muscovites came streaming across the terrace to the door,
shouting ‘Hurrah!’ But we met them with bullets from ten guns, ‘Back with
you!’ Nothing could be seen; the servants shot without cessation from the
lower stories, and my lord and I from the balcony. All went finely,
although amid such great alarm. Twenty guns lay here on this floor; we
shot one and they handed us another; the parish priest attended diligently
to this task, and the lady and her daughter, and the serving maids: there
were but three marksmen, yet the fire was unceasing. The Muscovite boors
showered on us a hail of bullets from below; we replied from above
sparsely, but with better aim. Three times that rabble pressed up to the
door, but each time three of them bit the dust: so they fled behind the
storehouse. It was already early dawn; with a cheerful face the Pantler
came out on the balcony with his gun, and whenever a Muscovite thrust
forth his brow from behind the storehouse he at once fired—and he never
missed; each time a black helmet fell on the grass; so that at length
scarcely a man crept out from behind the wall. The Pantler, seeing his
enemies in confusion, thought of making a sally; he seized his sabre, and,
shouting from the balcony, gave orders to the servants; turning to me he
said: ‘Follow me, Gerwazy!’ At that instant there was a shot from behind
the gate; the Pantler’s speech faltered, he turned red, turned pale, tried
to speak, spat blood. Then I perceived that he had received the bullet
full in the breast; my lord, tottering, pointed towards the gate. I
recognised that villain Soplica, I recognised him! by his stature and by
his mustaches I By his shot the Pantler had perished; I saw it! The
villain still held his gun raised aloft; smoke still came from the barrel!
I sighted at him; the brigand stood as if petrified! Twice I fired, and
both shots missed; whether from hatred or from grief, I aimed ill. I heard
the shrieks of women; I looked around—my lord was no longer living.”
Here Gerwazy paused and burst into a flood of tears; then he concluded:—
“The Muscovites had already broken down the door, for after the death of
the Pantler I stood helpless and did not know what was going on around me.
Luckily to our help came Parafianowicz, bringing from Horbatowicze two
hundred of the Mickiewiczes, who are a numerous and a valiant family of
gentry, every man of them, and nourish an immemorial hatred of the
Soplicas.
“Thus perished a powerful, pious, and just lord, whose ancestors had held
seats in the Senate, worn badges of honour, and carried the hetman’s staff
of office; a father to his peasants, a brother to the gentry—and he had no
son left after him to vow vengeance on his grave! But he had faithful
servants; with the blood of his wound I wet my broadsword, called the
penknife—you have surely heard of my penknife, famous at every diet,
market, and village assembly—and swore to notch it on the shoulders of the
Soplicas. I pursued them at diets, forays, and fairs; two I hewed down in
a brawl, two others in a duel; one I burnt in a wooden building, when with
Rymsza we sacked Korelicze—he was baked like a mudfish; but those whose
ears I have cut off I cannot count. One only is left who has not yet
received a reminder from me! He is the own dear brother of that
mustachioed bully; he still lives, and boasts of his wealth; the edge of
his field borders on the Horeszkos’ castle; he is respected in the
district, he has an office, he is a judge! And you will yield the castle
to him? Shall his base feet wipe the blood of my lord from this floor? No!
While Gerwazy has but a pennyworth of spirit, and enough strength to move
even with one little finger his penknife, which still hangs on the wall,
never shall a Soplica get this castle!”
“O!” cried the Count, raising his hands on high, “I had a fair foreboding
that I loved these walls, though I knew not that they contained such
treasures, so many dramatic memories, and so many tales! When once I seize
from the Soplicas the castle of my ancestors, I will establish you within
its walls as my burgrave: your tale, Gerwazy, has mightily affected me. I
regret that you did not lead me here at the hour of midnight; draped in my
cloak I should have sat upon the ruins and you would have told me of
bloody deeds. I regret that you have no great gift of narration! Often
have I heard and often do I read such traditions; in England and Scotland
every lord’s castle, in Germany every count’s mansion was the theatre of
murders! In every ancient, noble, powerful family there is a report of
some bloody or treacherous deed, after which vengeance descends as an
inheritance to the heirs: in Poland for the first time do I hear of such
an incident. I feel that in me flows the blood of the manly Horeszkos, I
know what I owe to glory and to my family. So be it I I must break off all
negotiations with the Soplica, even though it should come to pistols or to
the sword! Honour bids me!”
He spoke, and moved on with solemn steps, and Gerwazy followed in deep
silence. Before the gate the Count stopped, mumbling to himself; gazing at
the castle he quickly mounted his horse, and thus in distraction he
concluded his monologue:—
“I regret that this old Soplica has no wife, or fair daughter whose charms
I might adore! If I loved her and could not obtain her hand a new
complication would arise in the tale; here the heart, there duty! here
vengeance, there love!”
So whispering he applied the spurs, and the horse flew towards the Judge’s
mansion, just as the hunters came riding out of the wood from the other
direction. The Count was fond of hunting: hardly had he perceived the
riders, when, forgetting everything, he galloped straight towards them,
passing by the yard gate, the orchard, and the fences; but at a turn of
the path he looked around and checked his horse near the fence—it was the
kitchen garden. Fruit trees planted in rows shaded a broad field; beneath
them were the vegetable beds. Here sat a cabbage, which bowed its
venerable bald head, and seemed to meditate on the fate of vegetables;
there, intertwining its pods with the green tresses of a carrot, a slender
bean turned upon it a thousand eyes; here the maize lifted its golden
tassels; here and there could be seen the belly of a fat watermelon that
had rolled far from its parent stalk into a distant land, as a guest among
the crimson beets.
The beds were intersected by furrows; in each trench there stood, as if on
guard, ranks of hemp stalks, the cypresses of the vegetable garden, calm,
straight, and green; their leaves and their scent served to defend the
beds, for through their leaves no serpent dares to press, and their scent
kills insects and caterpillars. Farther away towered up the whitish stalks
of poppies; on them you might think a flock of butterflies had perched,
fluttering their wings, on which flashed, with all the colours of the
rainbow, the gleam of precious stones; with so many different, living
tints did the poppies allure the eye. Amid the flowers, like the full moon
amid the stars, a round sunflower, with a great, glowing face, turned
after the sun from the east to the west.
Beside the fence stretched long, narrow, rounded hillocks, free from
trees, bushes, and flowers: this was the cucumber patch. They had grown
finely; with their great, spreading leaves they covered the beds as with a
wrinkled carpet. Amid them walked a girl, dressed in white, sinking up to
her knees in the May greenery; stepping down from the beds into the
furrows, she seemed not to walk but to swim over the leaves and to bathe
in their bright colour. Her head was shaded with a straw hat, from her
brow there waved two pink ribbons and some tresses of bright, loose hair;
in her hands she held a basket, and her eyes were lowered; her right hand
was raised as if to pluck something: as a little girl when bathing tries
to catch the fishes that sport with her tiny feet, so she at every instant
bent down with her hands and her basket to gather the cucumbers against
which she brushed with her foot, or of which her eye caught sight.
The Count, struck with so marvellous a sight, stood still. Hearing from
afar the trampling of his comrades, he motioned to them with his hand to
stop their horses: they halted. He gazed with outstretched neck, like a
long-billed crane that stands apart from the flock, on one leg, keeping
guard with watchful eyes, and holding a stone in the other foot, in order
not to fall asleep.
The Count was awakened by a pattering on his shoulders and brow; it was
the Bernardine, Father Robak, who held aloft in his hand the knotted cords
of his belt.
“Will you have cucumbers?” he cried; “Here they are!” [So saying he showed
him the knots on his belt, which were shaped like cucumbers.41] “Look out
for danger, in this garden patch there is no fruit for you; nothing will
come of it!”
Then he threatened him with his finger, adjusted his cowl, and departed;
the Count tarried on the spot a moment more, cursing and yet laughing at
this sudden hindrance. He glanced at die garden, but she was no longer in
the garden; only her pink ribbon and her white gown flashed through the
window. On the garden bed one could see the path by which she had flown,
for the green leaves, spurned by her foot in her flight, raised themselves
and trembled an instant before they became quiet, like water cut by the
wings of a bird. Only on the place where she had been standing, her
abandoned willow basket, empty and overturned, was still poised upon the
leaves and tossing amid the green waves.
An instant later all was silent and deserted; the Count fixed his eyes on
the house and strained his ears; still he mused, and still the huntsmen
stood motionless behind him.—Then in the quiet deserted house arose first
a murmur, then an uproar and merry cries, as in an empty hive when bees
fly back into it: that was a sign that the guests had returned from
hunting, and that the servants were busying themselves with breakfast.
Through all the rooms there reigned a mighty bustle; they were carrying
about platters, plates of food and bottles; the men, just as they had come
in, in their green suits, walked about the rooms with plates and glasses,
and ate and drank; or, leaning against the window casements, they talked
of guns, hounds, and hares. The Chamberlain and his family and the Judge
were seated at the table; in a corner the young ladies whispered together;
there was no such order as is observed at dinners and suppers. In this
old-fashioned Polish household this was a new custom; at breakfasts the
Judge, though loth, permitted such disorder, but he did not commend it.
There were likewise different dishes for the ladies and for the gentlemen.
Here they carried around trays with an entire coffee service, immense
trays, charmingly painted with flowers, and on them fragrant, smoking tin
pots, and golden cups of Dresden china, and with each cup a tiny little
jug of cream. In no other country is there such coffee as in Poland. In
Poland, in a respectable household, a special woman is, by ancient custom,
charged with the preparation of coffee. She is called the coffee-maker;
she brings from the city, or gets from the river barges,42 berries of the
finest sort, and she knows secret ways of preparing the drink, which is
black as coal, transparent as amber, fragrant as mocha, and thick as
honey. Everybody knows how necessary for coffee is good cream: in the
country this is not hard to get; for the coffee-maker, early in the day,
after setting her pots on the fire, visits the dairy, and with her own
hands lightly skims the fresh flower of the milk into a separate little
jug for each cup, that each of them may be dressed in its separate little
cap.
The older ladies had risen earlier and had already drunk their coffee; now
they had had made for them a second dish, of warm beer, whitened with
cream, in which swam curds cut into little bits.
The gentlemen had their choice of smoked meats; fat half-geese, hams, and
slices of tongue—all choice, all cured in home fashion in the chimney with
juniper smoke. Finally they brought in stewed beef with gravy43 as the
last course: such was breakfast in the Judge’s house.
In adjoining rooms two separate companies had gathered. The older people,
grouped about a small table, talked of new ways of farming, and of the new
imperial edicts, which were growing more and more severe. The Chamberlain
discussed the current rumours of war and based on them conclusions as to
politics. The Seneschal’s daughter, putting on blue spectacles, amused the
Chamberlain’s wife by telling fortunes with cards. In the other room the
younger men talked over the hunt in a more calm and quiet fashion than was
usually the case; for the Assessor and the Notary, both mighty orators,
the foremost experts on the chase and the best huntsmen, sat opposite each
other glum and angry. Both had set on their hounds well, both had felt
certain of victory, when in the middle of the field there turned up a
patch of unreaped spring corn belonging to a peasant. Into this the hare
fled; Bobtail and Falcon were each about to seize it, when the Judge
checked the horsemen at the border of the field; they had to obey,
although in great wrath. The dogs returned without their prey, and no one
knew for sure whether the beast had escaped or had been caught; no one
could guess whether it had fallen into the clutches of Bobtail, or of
Falcon, or of both at once. The two sides held different opinions, and the
settlement of the quarrel was postponed to the future.
The old Seneschal passed from room to room, glancing absentmindedly about
him; he mixed neither in the talk of the hunters nor in that of the old
men, and evidently had something else on his mind. He carried a leather
flapper; sometimes he would stop, meditate long, and—kill a fly on the
wall.
Thaddeus and Telimena, standing on the threshold in the doorway between
the rooms, were talking together; no great distance divided them from
hearers, so they whispered. Thaddeus now learned that Aunt Telimena was a
rich lady, that they were not so near of kin as to be separated by the
canons of the Church; that it was not even certain that Aunt Telimena was
any blood relation of her nephew, although his uncle called her sister,
because their common kindred had once so styled them despite the
difference of their years; that later, during her long residence in the
capital, she had rendered inestimable services to the Judge; for which
reason the Judge greatly respected her, and in society liked, perhaps as a
mere whim, to call himself her brother, which Telimena, for friendship’s
sake, did not forbid him. These confessions lightened the heart of
Thaddeus. They also informed each other of other things; and all this
happened in one short, brief moment.
But in the room to the right, tempting the Assessor, the Notary casually
remarked:—
“I said yesterday that our hunting party could not succeed; it is still
too early, the grain is still in the ear, and there are many strips of
unreaped spring corn, belonging to the peasants. For this reason the Count
did not come, despite our invitation. The Count has an excellent knowledge
of the chase; he has often discoursed of the proper time and places for
hunting. The Count from childhood up has dwelt in foreign parts, and he
says that it is a mark of barbarism to hunt, as we do, with no regard to
laws, ordinances, and government regulations; to ride over another man’s
estate without the knowledge of the owner, without respecting any man’s
landmarks or boundaries; to course the fields and woods in spring as well
as in summer; sometimes to kill a fox just when it is moulting, or to
allow the hounds to run down a pregnant hare in the winter corn, or rather
to torture it, with great damage to the game. Hence the Count admits with
regret that civilisation is on a higher plane among the Muscovites, for
there they have ukases of the Tsar on hunting, and police supervision, and
punishment for offenders.”
“As I love my mother,” said Telimena, turning to the left-hand room and
fanning her shoulders with a small batiste handkerchief; “the Count is not
mistaken; I know Russia well. You people would not believe me when I used
to tell you in how many respects the watchfulness and strictness of that
government are worthy of praise, I have been in St. Petersburg more than
once or twice! Tender memories I charming images of the past! What a city!
Have none of you been in St. Petersburg? Perhaps you would like to see a
map of it; I have a map of the city in my desk. In summer St. Petersburg
society usually lives in _dachas_, that is, in rural palaces (_dacha_
means cottage). I lived in a little palace, just above the river Neva, not
too near the city, and not too far from it, on a small artificial hill.
Ah, what a cottage that was! I still have the plan in my desk. Now to my
misfortune a certain petty official, who was serving on an inquest, hired
a house near by. He kept several hounds; what torture, when a petty
official and a kennel live close by! Whenever I went out into the garden
with a book to enjoy the light of the moon and the coolness of the
evening, immediately a dog would rush up and wag its tail and prick up its
ears as if it were mad. I was often terrified. My heart foreboded some
misfortune from those dogs, and so it came to pass: for when I went into
the garden on a certain morning, a hound throttled at my feet my beloved
little King Charles spaniel! Ah, he was a lovely little dog; Prince
Sukin44 gave him to me as a present to remember him by—clever, and lively
as a squirrel; I have his portrait, only I don’t want to go to my desk
now. Seeing it strangled, owing to my great distress I had a fainting
spell, spasms, palpitation of the heart; perhaps my health might have
suffered even more severely. Luckily, just then there rode up on a visit
Kirilo Gavrilich Kozodusin,45 the Master of the Hunt of the Court, who
inquired the cause of so serious an attack. He had the police sergeant
pulled in by the ears; the man stood there pale, trembling, and scarcely
alive. ‘How dare you,’ shouted Kirilo with a voice of thunder, ‘course in
spring a pregnant doe, here under the nose of the Tsar?’ The amazed
sergeant in vain swore that he had not yet begun his hunting, and that
with the august permission of the Master of the Hunt, the beast coursed
seemed to him to be a dog and not a doe. ‘What!’ shouted Kirilo, ‘do you
dare, you scoundrel, to say that you have more knowledge of hunting and
the varieties of beasts than I, Kozodusin, the Tsar’s Jagermeister? The
Chief of Police shall at once pass judgment between us,’ They summoned the
Chief of Police and told him to take down the evidence. ‘I,’ said
Kozodusin, ‘hereby testify that this is a doe; he impudently alleges that
it is a domestic dog. Judge between us, which of us better understands
beasts and hunting.’ The Chief of Police understood the duties of his
office, and was greatly amazed at the insolence of the sergeant; taking
him aside he gave him brotherly advice to plead guilty and thereby atone
for his offence. The Master of the Hunt was mollified and promised that he
would intercede with the Emperor and somewhat mitigate the sentence. The
matter ended by the dogs being sent to be strangled, and the sergeant to
prison for four weeks. This trifle amused us the whole evening; the next
day the story spread abroad that the Master of the Hunt had taken up the
case of my little dog, and I even know for a fact that the Emperor himself
laughed over it.”
Laughter arose in both rooms. The Judge and the Bernardine were playing at
marriage; spades were trumps, and the Judge was just about to make an
important play. The Monk could hardly breathe for excitement, when the
Judge caught the beginning of the story, and was so interested in it that
with head thrown back and card uplifted, ready to take the trick, he sat
quiet and only alarmed the Bernardine, until, when the story was ended, he
played his knave, and said with a laugh:—
“Let whoever will praise the civilisation of the Germans, or the strict
discipline of the Muscovites; let the men of Great Poland46 learn from the
Suabians to go to law over a fox, and summon constables to arrest a hound
that has ventured into another man’s grove; in Lithuania, thank the Lord,
we keep up the old ways: we have enough game for ourselves and for our
neighbours, and shall never complain to the police about it; and we have
enough grain, so that the dogs will not famish us by running through the
spring wheat or the rye; on the peasants’ fields alone do I forbid
hunting.”
“It is no wonder, sir,” called the Steward from the room at the left,
“since you pay dear for such game. The peasants are glad of the chance;
when a dog runs into their wheat, if he shakes out ten ears, then you
repay three score and are not content even with that; often the boors get
a thaler into the bargain. Believe me, sir, that the peasants will grow
very insolent, if——”
The rest of the Steward’s argument the Judge could not hear, for between
the two discourses there had begun a dozen conversations, jests, stories,
and even disputes.
Thaddeus and Telimena had been forgotten by all the rest of the company,
and were absorbed in each other.—The lady was glad that her wit had amused
Thaddeus so greatly; in return, the young man showered compliments on her.
Telimena spoke more and more slowly and softly, and Thaddeus pretended
that he could not hear her in the buzz of voices; so, whispering, he drew
so near her that he felt on his face the pleasant warmth of her brow;
holding his breath, he caught her sighs with his lips, and with his eye he
followed every sparkle of her glance.
Then between them there suddenly darted first a fly and after it the
Seneschal’s flapper.
In Lithuania there are swarms of flies. Among them there is a special
variety, called “gentry flies”; in colour and form they are quite like
others, but they have a broader breast, a larger belly than the common
sort; as they fly they hum loudly and buzz beyond all endurance, and they
are so strong that they will break right through a spider’s web; or if one
is caught, it will buzz there for three days, for it can contend with the
spider in single combat. All this the Seneschal had carefully observed,
and he argued further that these gentry flies produce the smaller folk,
corresponding among flies to the queen bee in a swarm, and that with their
destruction the remnant of those insects would perish. To be sure, neither
the housekeeper nor the parish priest had ever believed these deductions
of the Seneschal, but held quite different views as to the nature of
flies; the Seneschal, however, did not waver from his ancient habit;
whenever he caught sight of such a fly he immediately pursued it. Just at
that moment a “gentleman” trumpeted above his ear; twice the Seneschal
swung at it, and to his amazement missed; a third time he swung at it, and
almost knocked out a window. At last the fly, bewildered by such an
uproar, seeing on the threshold two people that barred his retreat, threw
itself in desperation between their faces. Even there the right hand of
the Seneschal darted in pursuit of it; the blow was so violent that the
two heads sprang apart like the two halves of a tree torn asunder by a
thunderbolt; both bumped against the doorposts so violently that they got
black and blue spots.
Luckily no one noticed this, for the conversation, which hitherto had been
lively and animated, but fairly orderly, ended in a sudden clamorous
outburst. As, when foxhunters are entering a wood, one hears from time to
time the crackling of trees, scattered shots, and the baying of the pack;
but then the master of the hounds unexpectedly starts the game; he gives
the signal, and a hubbub arises in the throng of huntsmen and dogs, as if
every tree of the thicket had found a voice: such is the case with
conversation—it moves on slowly, until it happens on a weighty topic, as
dogs on the game. The game of the hunters’ talk was that furious dispute
of the Notary and the Assessor over their famous hounds. It lasted only a
short time, but they accomplished much in a single instant, for in one
breath they hurled so many words and insults that they exhausted the usual
three-fourths of a dispute—taunts, anger, and challenge—and were already
getting ready to use their fists.
So all rushed towards them from the other room, and, pouring through the
doorway like a swift wave, carried away the young couple who were standing
on the threshold like Janus, the two-headed god.
Before Thaddeus and Telimena could smooth the hair on their heads, the
threatening shouts had died away; a murmur mixed with laughter was
spreading through the throng, a truce had come to the brawl; the Monk had
appeased it—an old man, but strong and with very broad shoulders. Just as
the Assessor had run up to the Jurist, and when the combatants were
already making threatening gestures at each other, he suddenly seized them
both by the collar from behind, and twice knocking their two heads
violently together like Easter eggs, he spread out his arms like a
signpost, and tossed them at the same moment into opposite corners of the
room; for a moment he stood still with outstretched arms, and cried,
“_Pax, pax, pax vobiscum_; peace be with you!”
Both factions were amazed and even began to laugh. Because of the respect
due to a cleric they did not dare to revile the Monk, and after such a
test no one had any desire to start a quarrel with him. And Father Robak
soon calmed the assembly; it was evident that he had not sought any
triumph; he did not further threaten the two brawlers or scold them; he
only adjusted his cowl, and, tucking his hands into his belt, quietly left
the room.
Meanwhile the Chamberlain and the Judge had taken a stand between the two
factions. The Seneschal, as if aroused from deep thought, stepped into
their midst and ran his fiery eye over the assembly; wherever he still
heard a murmur, there he waved soothingly his leather flapper, as a priest
his sprinkler; finally, raising impressively the handle of it on high,
like a marshal’s staff, he imposed silence.
“Hold your peace!” he repeated, “and bear in mind, you who are the
foremost hunters in the district, what will come of a scandalous brawl.
Are you aware? These young men, in whom is the hope of our country, who
are to bring fame to our groves and forests, who, alas! even now neglect
the chase, may receive thereby a new impulse to despise it, if they see
that those who should give examples to others, bring back from the chase
only wrangling and quarrels. Have also due regard for my grey hairs, for I
have known greater sportsmen than you, and I have often judged between
them as an arbitrator. In the Lithuanian forests who has been equal to
Rejtan, either in stationing a line of beaters, or in himself encountering
the beast? Who can compare himself with Jerzy Bialopiotrowicz? Where is
there such a marksman to-day as Zegota, who with a pistol shot could hit a
rabbit on the run? I knew Terajewicz, who, when he went out for wild
boars, took no other arms than a pike, and Budrewicz, who used to fight
singly against a bear! Such men did our forests once behold! If it came to
a dispute, how did they settle the dispute. Why, they chose judges and set
up stakes. Oginski lost three thousand acres of woodland over a wolf, and
a badger cost Niesiolowski several villages! Now do you gentlemen follow
the example of your elders, and settle your dispute in this way, even
though you may set up a smaller stake. Words are wind; to wordy disputes
there is no end; it is a shame to tire our ears longer with a brawl over a
rabbit: so do you first choose arbitrators; and, whatever their verdict
may be, conscientiously abide by it. I will beg the Judge not to forbid
the master of the hounds to lead the chase even across the wheat, and I
hope that I shall obtain this favour from my lord.”
So saying, he embraced the knees of the Judge.
“A horse!” shouted the Notary, “I will stake a horse with his caparison;
and I will further covenant before the local court, that I deposit this
ring as a reward for our arbitrator, the Judge.”
“I,” said the Assessor, “will stake my golden dog-collars, covered with
lizard-skin, with rings of gold, and my leash of woven silk, the
workmanship of which is as marvellous as the jewel that glitters upon it.
That outfit I wished to leave as an inheritance to my children, if I
should marry; that outfit was given me by Prince Dominik Radziwill,47 when
once I hunted with him and with Prince Marshal Sanguszko and General
Mejen,48 and when I challenged them all to course their hounds with me.
There—something unexampled in the history of the chase—I captured six
hares with a single bitch. We were then hunting on the meadow of Kupisko;
Prince Radziwill could not keep his seat upon his horse, but, dismounting,
embraced my famous hound Kania,49 and thrice kissed her on the head. And
then, thrice patting her on the muzzle, he said, ‘I dub thee hence-forward
Princess of Kupisko.’ Thus does Napoleon give principalities to his
generals, from the places at which they have gained great victories.”
Telimena, wearied with the prolonged wrangling, wanted to go out into the
fresh air, but sought a partner. She took a little basket from the peg.
“Gentlemen, I see that you wish to remain within doors,” she said,
wrapping around her head a red cashmere shawl, “but I am going for
mushrooms: follow me who will!” Under one arm she took the little daughter
of the Chamberlain, with the other she raised her skirt up to her ankles.
Thaddeus silently hastened after her—to seek mushrooms!
The plan of a walking party was very welcome to the Judge, who saw in it a
means of settling a noisy dispute; so he called out:—
“Gentlemen, to the woods for mushrooms! The one who brings the finest to
the table I will seat beside the prettiest girl; I will pick her out
myself. If a lady finds it, she shall choose for herself the handsomest
young man.”
BOOK III.—FLIRTATION
ARGUMENT
The Count’s expedition to the garden—A mysterious nymph feeding
geese—The resemblance of mushroom-gathering to the wanderings of
the shades in the Elysian Fields—Varieties of mushrooms—Telimena
in the Temple of Meditation—Consultation in regard to the
settlement of Thaddeus—The Count as a landscape painter—Thaddeus’s
artistic observations on trees and clouds—The Count’s thoughts on
art—The bell—The love note—A bear, sir!
The Count returned home, but he kept checking his horse, turning back his
head, and gazing at the garden; and once it seemed to him that a
mysterious, snow-white gown again flashed from the window; and that again
something light fell from on high, and flitting across the garden in the
twinkling of an eye, glittered among the green cucumbers, like a sunbeam
that steals out from a cloud and falls on a slab of flint in a ploughed
field, or on a small sheet of water in a green meadow.
The Count dismounted and sent his servants to the house, but himself set
out secretly for the garden; soon he reached the fence, found an opening
in it, and slunk in quietly, as a wolf into a sheepfold; unluckily he
jostled some dry gooseberry bushes. The little gardener glanced around as
though frightened by the rustling, but perceived nothing; however, she ran
to the other side of the garden. But along the edge, among the great
sorrel plants and amid the leaves of burdock, the Count, leaping like a
frog over the grass, quietly crawled near on his hands and knees; he put
out his head, and beheld a marvellous sight.
In that part of the garden grew scattered cherry trees; among them grain
and vegetables, purposely of mixed varieties: wheat, maize, beans, bearded
barley, millet, peas, and even bushes and flowers. The housekeeper had
devised such a garden for the poultry; she was famous for her skill—her
name was Mrs. Hennibiddy, born Miss Turkee. Her invention made an epoch in
poultry-raising: to-day it is universally known, but in those times it was
still passed about as a novelty and received under the seal of secrecy by
only a few persons, until at last the almanac published it under the
heading, _A cure for hawks and kites, or a new method of raising
poultry_—that meant this garden patch.
As soon as the cock that keeps watch stands still, and, throwing back and
holding motionless his bill, and inclining to one side his head with its
red comb, that he may the more easily aim at the heavens with his eye,
perceives a hawk hanging beneath the clouds, he calls the alarm: at once
the hens take refuge in this garden—even the geese and peacocks, and the
doves in their sudden fright, if they have not time to hide beneath the
roof.
Now no enemy was to be seen in the sky, but the summer sun was burning
fiercely; from it the birds had taken refuge in the grove of grain: some
were lying on the turf, others bathing in the sand.
Amid the birds’ heads rose little human heads, uncovered, with short hair,
white as flax, their necks bare to the shoulders; in their midst was a
girl, a head higher than they, with longer hair. Just behind the children
sat a peacock, and spread out wide the circle of its tail into a
many-coloured rainbow, against the deep blue of which the little white
heads were relieved as on the background of a picture; they gathered
radiance, being surrounded by the gleaming eyes of the tail as by a wreath
of stars, and they shone amid the grain as in the transparent ether,
between the golden stalks of the maize, the English grass with its silvery
stripes, the coral mercury, and the green mallow, the forms and colours of
which were mingled together like a lattice plaited of silver and gold, and
waving in the air like a light veil.
Above the mass of many-coloured ears and stalks hung like a canopy a
bright cloud of butterflies,50 whose four-parted wings were light as a
spider’s web and transparent as glass; when they hover in the air they are
hardly visible, and, though they hum, you fancy that they are motionless.
The girl waved in her uplifted hand a grey tassel, like a bunch of ostrich
plumes, and seemed to be protecting with it the heads of the children from
the golden rain of the butterflies—in her other hand shone something
horn-like and gilded, apparently an instrument for feeding children, for
she approached it to each child in turn; it was formed like the golden
horn of Amalthea.
Even though thus engaged she turned her head towards the gooseberry
bushes, mindful of the rustling she had heard among them, and not knowing
that her assailant had already drawn near from the opposite direction,
crawling like a serpent over the borders. Suddenly he jumped out from the
burdock; she looked—he was standing near at hand, four beds away from her,
and was bowing low. She had already turned away her head and lifted her
arms, and was hurrying to fly away like a frightened lark, and already her
light steps were brushing over the leaves, when the children, frightened
by the entrance of the stranger, and the flight of the girl, began to wail
piteously. She heard them, and felt that it was unseemly to desert little
children in their fright; she went back, hesitating, but she must needs go
back, like an unwilling spirit, summoned by the incantations of a diviner.
She ran up to divert the child that was shrieking the loudest, sat down by
him on the ground, and clasped him to her bosom; the others she soothed
with her hand and with tender words until they became calm, hugging her
knees with their little arms and snuggling their heads, like chickens
beneath their mother’s wing. “Is it nice to cry so?” she said, “is it
polite? This gentleman will be afraid of you; he did not come to frighten
you, he is not an ugly old beggar; he is a guest, a kind gentleman, just
see how pretty he is.”
She looked herself; the Count smiled pleasantly, and was evidently
grateful to her for so many praises. She noticed this, and stopped,
lowered her eyes, and blushed all over like a rosebud.
He was really a handsome gentleman; of tall stature, with an oval face,
fair and with rosy cheeks; he had mild blue eyes and long blonde hair. The
leaves and tufts of grass in the Count’s hair, which he had torn off in
crawling over the borders, showed green like a disordered wreath.
“O thou!” he said, “by whatever name I must honour thee, whether thou art
a goddess or a nymph, a spirit or a phantom, speak! Doth thine own will
call thee to earth, or doth another’s power bind thee in this vale? Ah! I
comprehend—surely some disdained lover, some powerful lord or envious
guardian imprisons thee in this castle park as if under enchantment! Thou
art worthy that knights should fight for thee in arms, and that thou
shouldst be the heroine of mournful ballads! Unfold to me, fair one, the
secret of thy dreadful fate! Thou shalt find a deliverer—henceforth, as
thou rulest my heart by thy nod, so rule my arm.”
He stretched forth his arms.—She listened to him with a maiden’s blush,
but with a face once more cheerful. As a child likes to look at gay
pictures and finds amusement in glittering counters before he learns their
true worth, so her ears were soothed by the sounding words of which she
did not understand the meaning. Finally she asked: “Where do you come
from, sir, and what are you looking for here in the garden?”
The Count opened his eyes, confused and amazed, and did not reply.
Finally, lowering the tone of his discourse, he said:—
“Pardon me, my little lady; I see that I have spoiled your fun! O pardon
me, I was just hurrying to breakfast; it is late and I wanted to get there
on time. You know that by the road one has to make a circuit; through the
garden it seems to me there is a short cut to the house.”
“There is your way, sir,” said the girl; “only you must not spoil the
vegetable beds; there is the path between the strips of grass.”
“To the left?” asked the Count, “or to the right?”
The little gardener, filled with curiosity, raised her blue eyes and
seemed to scrutinise him, for a thousand steps away the house was in plain
sight, and the Count was asking the way! But the Count needs must say
something to her, and was seeking an excuse for conversation.
“Do you live here? near the garden? or in the village? How happens it that
I have not seen you at the mansion? Have you come recently? Perhaps you
are a visitor?”
The girl shook her head.
“Pardon me, my little lady, but is not that your room, where we see the
window?”
“If she is not a heroine of romance,” he was thinking to himself, “she is
a young and fresh and very pretty girl. Very often a great soul, a great
thought, hidden in solitude, blooms like the rose in the midst of the
forest; it will be sufficient to bring it forth to the light, and put it
before the sun, to have it amaze by a thousand bright colours those who
gaze upon it!”
The little gardener meanwhile remained silent. She merely lifted up one
child, who was hanging on her arm, took another by the hand, and, driving
several of them before her like geese, moved on through the garden.
“Can you not,” she said turning around, “drive my stray birds back into
the grain?”
“I drive birds!” cried the Count in amazement.
Meanwhile she had vanished behind the shade of the trees. Only for a
moment there shone from behind the hedgerow, through the dense greenery,
something like two blue eyes.
The deserted Count long remained standing in the garden; his soul, like
the earth after sunset, gradually grew cool, and took on dark colours. He
began to muse, but he had very unpleasant dreams; he awoke, not knowing
himself with whom he was angry. Alas, he had found little, and had had too
great expectations! For, when he was crawling over the field towards that
shepherdess, his head had burned and his heart leapt high; so many charms
had he seen in the mysterious nymph, so wondrously had he decked her out,
so many conjectures had he made! He had found everything quite different;
to be sure, she had a pretty face, and a slender figure—but how lacking in
elegance! And that tender face and lively blush, which painted excessive,
vulgar happiness! Evidently her mind was still slumbering and her heart
inactive. And those replies, so village-like, so common!
“Why should I deceive myself?” he exclaimed; “I guess the secret, too
late! My mysterious nymph is simply feeding geese!”
With the disappearance of the nymph, all the magic glory had suffered a
change; those bright bands, that charming network of gold and silver,
alas! was that all merely straw?
The Count, wringing his hands, gazed on a bunch of cornflowers tied round
with grasses, which he had taken for a tuft of ostrich plumes in the
maiden’s hand. He did not forget the instrument: that gilded vessel, that
horn of Amalthea, was a carrot! He had seen it being greedily consumed in
the mouth of one of the children. So good-bye to the spell, the
enchantment, the marvel!
So a boy, when he sees chickory flowers enticing the hand with soft,
light, blue petals, wishes to stroke them and draws near—he blows—and with
the puff the whole flower flies away like down on the wind, and in his
hands the too curious inquirer sees only a naked stalk of grey-green
grass.
The Count pulled his hat over his eyes and returned whence he came, but
shortened the way by striding over the vegetables, the flowers, and the
gooseberry bushes, until, vaulting the fence, he at last breathed freely!
He remembered that he had spoken to the girl of breakfast: so perhaps
everybody was already informed of his meeting with her in the garden, near
the house; perhaps they would send to look for him. Had they noticed his
flight? Who knows what they would think? So he had to go back. Bending
down near the fence, along the boundary strip, and through the weeds,
after a thousand turns he was glad to come out finally on the highway,
which led straight to the yard of the mansion. He walked along the fence
and turned away his head from the garden as a thief from a corn house, in
order to give no sign that he thought of visiting it, or had already done
so. Thus careful was the Count, though no one was following him; he looked
in the opposite direction from the garden, to the right.
Here was an open grove, with a floor of turf; over this green carpet,
among the white trunks of the birches, under the canopy of luxuriant
drooping boughs, roamed a multitude of forms, whose strange dance-like
motions and strange costumes made one think them ghosts, wandering by the
light of the moon. Some were in tight black garments, others in long,
flowing robes, bright as snow; one wore a hat broad as a hoop, another was
bare-headed; some, as if they had been wrapt in a cloud, in walking spread
out on the breeze veils that trailed behind their heads as the tail behind
a comet. Each had a different posture: one had grown into the earth, and
only turned about his downcast eyes; another, looking straight before him,
as if in a dream, seemed to be walking along a line, turning neither to
the right nor to the left. But all continually bent down to the ground in
various directions, as if making deep bows. If they approached one
another, or met, they did not speak or exchange greetings, being in deep
meditation, absorbed in themselves. In them the Count saw an image of the
shades in the Elysian Fields, who, not subject to disease or care, wander
calm and quiet, but gloomy.
Who would have guessed that these people, so far from lively and so
silent, were our friends, the Judge’s comrades? From the noisy breakfast
they had gone out to the solemn ceremony of mushroom-gathering; being
discreet people, they knew how to moderate their speech and their
movements, in order under all circumstances to adapt them to the place and
time. Therefore, before they followed the Judge to the wood, they had
assumed a different bearing, and put on different attire, linen dusters
suitable for a stroll, with which they covered and protected their
kontuszes; and on their heads they wore straw hats, so that they looked
white as spirits in Purgatory. The young people had also changed their
clothes, except Telimena and a few who wore French attire.—This scene the
Count had not understood, being unfamiliar with village customs; hence,
amazed beyond measure, he ran full speed to the wood.
Of mushrooms51 there were plenty: the lads gathered the fair-cheeked
_fox-mushrooms_, so famous in the Lithuanian songs as the emblem of
maidenhood, for the worms do not eat them, and, marvellous to say, no
insect alights on them; the young ladies hunted for the slender
_pine-lover_, which the song calls the colonel of the mushrooms.52 All
were eager for the _orange-agaric;_ this, though of more modest stature
and less famous in song, is still the most delicious, whether fresh or
salted, whether in autumn or in winter. But the Seneschal gathered the
toadstool _fly-bane_.
The remainder of the mushroom family are despised because they are
injurious or of poor flavour, but they are not useless; they give food to
beasts and shelter to insects, and are an ornament to the groves. On the
green cloth of the meadows they rise up like lines of table dishes: here
are the _leaf-mushrooms_ with their rounded borders, silver, yellow, and
red, like little glasses filled with various sorts of wine; the _kozlak_,
like the bulging bottom of an upturned cup; the _funnels_, like slender
champagne glasses; the round, white, broad, flat _whities_, like china
coffee-cups filled with milk; and the round _puff-ball_, filled with a
blackish dust, like a pepper-shaker. The names of the others are known
only in the language of hares or wolves; by men they have not been
christened, but they are innumerable. No one deigns to touch the wolf or
hare varieties; but whenever a person bends down to them, he straightway
perceives his mistake, grows angry and breaks the mushroom or kicks it
with his foot: in thus defiling the grass he acts with great indiscretion.
Telimena gathered neither the mushrooms of wolves nor those of humankind;
distracted and bored, she gazed around with her head high in air. So the
Notary angrily said of her that she was looking for mushrooms on the
trees; the Assessor more maliciously compared her to a female looking
about for a nesting-place.
She seemed in search of quiet and solitude; slowly she withdrew from her
companions and went through the wood to a gently sloping hillock, well
shaded by the trees that grew thickly upon it. In the midst of it was a
grey rock; from under the rock a stream gurgled and spouted, and at once,
as if it sought the shade, took refuge amid the tall, thick greenery,
which, watered by it, grew luxuriantly on all sides. There that swift
rogue, swaddled in grasses and bedded upon leaves, motionless and
noiseless, whispered unseen and almost inaudibly, like a tired child laid
in a cradle, when its mother ties above it the bright green curtains, and
sprinkles poppy leaves beneath its head. It was a lovely and quiet spot;
here Telimena often took refuge, calling it the Temple of Meditation.
Standing above the stream, she threw on the greensward, from her
shoulders, her waving shawl, red as carnelian; and, like a swimmer who
bends down to the wintry bath before she ventures to plunge in, she knelt
and slowly inclined on her side; finally, as if drawn down by the stream
of coral, she fell upon it and stretched out at full length: she rested
her elbow on the grass, her temple on her palm, with her head bent down;
beneath her head glittered the vellum paper of a French book; over the
alabaster pages of the book there wound her black ringlets and pink
ribbons.
Amid the emerald of the luxuriant grass, on the carnelian shawl, in her
long gown, as though in a wrapper of coral, against which her hair was
relieved at one end and her black shoes at the other, while along the
sides glittered her snowy stockings, her handkerchief, and the whiteness
of her hands and face, she showed from afar like a many-coloured
caterpillar, crawling upon a green maple leaf.
Alas! all the charms and graces of this picture vainly awaited experts to
appreciate them; no one heeded them, so deeply were all engrossed in the
gathering of mushrooms. But Thaddeus heeded them and kept glancing
sideways; and, not daring to go straight on, edged along obliquely. As a
huntsman, when, seated between two wheels beneath a moving canopy of
boughs, he advances on bustards; or, when approaching plover, he hides
himself behind his horse, putting his gun on the saddle or beneath the
horse’s neck, as if he were dragging a harrow or riding along a boundary
strip, but continually draws near to the place where the birds are
standing: even so did Thaddeus steal forward.
The Judge foiled his plan; and, cutting him off, hurried to the spring. In
the wind fluttered the white skirts of his dressing-gown and a large
handkerchief, of which the end was fastened in his girdle; his straw hat,
tied beneath his chin, flapped in the wind from his swift motion like a
burdock leaf, falling now on his shoulders and now again over his eyes; in
his hand was an immense staff: thus strode on the Judge. Bending down and
washing his hands in the stream, he sat down on the great rock in front of
Telimena, and, leaning with both hands on the ivory knob of his enormous
cane, he thus began his discourse:—
“You see, my dear, that ever since our Thaddeus has been our guest, I have
been not a little disquieted. I am childless and old; this good lad, who
is really my only comfort in the world, is the future heir of my fortune.
By the grace of heaven I shall leave him no bad portion of gentleman’s
bread; it is time too that we think over his future and his settlement.
But now, my dear, pray observe my distress! You know that Jacek, my
brother, Thaddeus’s father, is a strange man, whose intentions are hard to
penetrate. He refuses to return home; God knows where he is hiding; he
will not even let us inform his son that he is alive, and yet he
continually gives us directions in regard to him. At first he wanted to
send him to the legions; I was fearfully distressed. Later, however, he
agreed that he might remain at home and marry. He would easily find a
wife; I have a match in mind for him. None of our citizens compares in
name or connections with the Chamberlain; his elder daughter Anna is of
marriageable age, a fair and well-dowered young lady. I wanted to begin
negotiations.”
At this Telimena grew pale, closed her book, rose a bit, and sat up.
“As I love my mother,” she said, “is there any sense in this, my dear
brother? Are you a God-fearing man? So you think that you will really be
doing a good turn to Thaddeus if you make a sower of buckwheat out of the
young man! You will close the world to him! Believe me, some time he will
curse you! To think of burying such talent in the woods and the garden!
Believe me, judging from my knowledge of him, he is a capable boy, worthy
of acquiring polish in the great world. You will do well, brother, if you
send him to the capital, for instance, to Warsaw; or, if you wish to know
my real opinion, to St. Petersburg. I shall surely be going there this
winter on business; we will consider together what to do with Thaddeus. I
know many people there and have influence; that is the best means of
making a man. Through my aid he will gain access to the leading houses,
and when he is known to important people he will get an office and a
decoration; then let him abandon the service if he wishes and return home,
being by that time of some importance and well known in society. What do
you think about that, brother?”
“In his early years,” said the Judge, “it is not bad for a young man to
gain social experience, to see the world, and acquire polish among men. I
myself, when young, covered no small ground; I have been in Piotrkow and
in Dubno, now following the court as a lawyer, now attending to my own
affairs; I have even visited Warsaw. Not a little did I profit by this. I
should like to send out my nephew also among men, simply as a traveller,
as an apprentice who is finishing his term, in order that he might acquire
some little knowledge of the world. Not for the sake of office-holding or
decorations! I beg your most humble pardon; a rank in the Muscovite
hierarchy, a decoration, what sort of distinction are they? What man among
our ancient notables—nay, even among those of this present day—what man of
any prominence among the district gentry cares for such trifles? And yet
these men are esteemed among us, for we respect in them their family,
their good name, or their office—but a local office, conferred by the
votes of their fellow-citizens, and not by the influence of any one set in
authority.”
“If that is your opinion, brother,” interrupted Telimena, “so much the
better; send him out as a traveller.”
“You see, sister,” said the Judge, mournfully scratching his head, “I
should like to do so very much, but what if I have new perplexities!
Brother Jacek has not abandoned the oversight of his son, and has just
sent down upon me that Bernardine Robak, who has arrived from across the
Vistula, a friend of my brother, who knows all his plans. And so the fates
have already uttered their decree as to Thaddeus, and will have him marry,
but marry Zosia,53 your ward; the young couple will receive, besides my
own fortune, a dowry in ready money by the generosity of Jacek. You know
that he is rich, and that through his favour I possess almost all my own
estate; thus he has the right to give directions. Pray think this over, in
order that it may be accomplished with the least possible trouble; we must
make them acquainted. To be sure, they are very young, especially little
Zosia, but that is no matter; it is time at last to release Zosia from
confinement, for at all events she is growing up and is no longer a
child.”
Telimena, amazed and almost panic-stricken, raised herself gradually and
knelt on the shawl; at first she listened with attention, then with a
gesture she opposed him, waving her hand vigorously over her ear, as if
she were driving off the unpleasant words like gnats, back into the mouth
of the speaker.
“Ha! ha! that is a new idea! Whether that is good or bad for Thaddeus,”
she said angrily, “you may judge for yourself, my dear sir. I don’t care
anything about Thaddeus, plan for him yourselves; make him a steward, or
put him in a tavern; let him be a bar-tender, or bring game for your table
from the woods; do with him whatever you wish! But as for Zosia! What have
you men to do with Zosia? I control her hand; I alone. That Jacek provided
money for Zosia’s education, and that he has assigned her a small yearly
allowance, and has deigned to promise more, does not mean that he has
bought her. Besides you both know, and it is pretty generally known too,
that your generosity for us is not without its reasons; the Soplicas owe
something to the family of the Horeszkos.”
To this part of her speech the Judge listened with indescribable confusion
and grief and with evident repugnance. As though fearing what she might
say further, he bowed his head, made a gesture of assent, and flushed
deeply.
Telimena concluded by saying:—
“I have had the care of her; I am of her kin, Zosia’s only guardian. No
one but me shall ever plan her happiness!”
“But what if she finds happiness in this marriage?” said the Judge,
raising his eyes; “what if she likes young Thaddeus?”
“What if she likes him? That’s a pear on a willow tree! Like him or
not—much I care for that! To be sure Zosia will not be a wealthy match,
but yet she is not a common village girl, a simple gentleman’s daughter;
her ancestors were called, ‘Your Grace’; she is the child of a wojewoda;
her mother was a Horeszko: she will get a husband! I have taken such pains
with her education—if only she has not degenerated into savagery here!”
The Judge listened with attention, looking her in the eye; he was
apparently mollified, for he said cheerfully enough:—
“Well, what’s to be done? God knows that I have sincerely wished to do the
right thing. Only do not be angry, sister; if you do not agree, sister,
you are quite within your rights. It is a sad business, but there is no
use being angry. I gave the advice, for my brother bade me; no one here is
using compulsion. If you refuse Thaddeus, sister, I will reply to Jacek
that through no fault of mine the betrothal of Thaddeus and Zosia cannot
come to pass. Now I will take my own counsel; perhaps I can open
negotiations with the Chamberlain and arrange the whole matter.”
In the meantime Telimena’s wrath had cooled down:—
“I do not refuse him, my dear brother; not at all! You said yourself that
it is rather early, that they are too young. Let us think it over and
wait; that will do no harm. Let us make the young people acquainted; we
will observe them—we must not thus expose to chance the happiness of
others. Only I caution you betimes, brother, do not prompt Thaddeus, and
do not urge him to fall in love with Zosia, for the heart is not a
servant, and acknowledges no master, and will not let itself be forcibly
put in chains.”54
Thereat the Judge, arising, walked away in deep thought. Thaddeus
approached from the opposite side, pretending that the search for
mushrooms had enticed him there; the Count slowly moved on in the same
direction.
During the dispute between the Judge and Telimena the Count had been
standing behind the trees, mightily affected by the scene. He took from
his pocket paper and pencil, implements that he had always with him, and,
leaning on a stump and spreading out the sheet before him, he was
evidently drawing a picture, and saying to himself: “They might have been
grouped thus intentionally, he on the rock, she on the grass, a
picturesque group! What characteristic heads! and what contrasting faces!”
He approached, checked himself, wiped his lorgnette, brushed his eyes with
his handkerchief, and continued to gaze:—
“Is this marvellous, this charming prospect destined to perish or to be
transformed when I approach near it? Will that velvet grass prove only
poppies and beets? In that nymph shall I discover only a mere
housekeeper?”
Although before this the Count had often seen Telimena at the Judge’s
house, where he had been a frequent visitor, he had paid little heed to
her; he was now amazed to find her the model of his picture. The beauty of
the spot, the charm of her posture, and the taste of her attire had so
changed her that she was hardly recognisable. Her eyes shone with her
recent anger, which was not yet extinct; her face, animated by the fresh
breath of the breeze, by her dispute with the Judge, and by the sudden
arrival of the young men, had assumed a deep flush, of unwonted
liveliness.
“Madam,” said the Count, “deign to pardon my boldness; I come both to
crave forgiveness and to express my gratitude. To crave forgiveness, since
I have stealthily followed your steps; and to express gratitude, since I
have been the witness of your meditations. Much have I injured you, and
much do I owe to you! I have interrupted a moment of meditation; to you I
owe moments of inspiration! blessed moments! Condemn the man; but the
artist awaits your forgiveness. Much have I dared, and more will I dare!
Judge!”
Here he knelt and offered her his landscape.
Telimena passed judgment on his sketch with the tone of a courteous lady,
but of one conversant with art; of praise she was chary, but she did not
spare encouragement.
“Bravo, I congratulate you,” she said, “you have no small talent. Only do
not neglect it; above all you need to search out a beautiful environment!
O happy skies of the Italian lands! rose gardens of the Caesars! ye
classic cascades of Tibur, and dread craggy paths of Posilipo! That,
Count, is the land of painters! On us may God have pity! A child of the
Muses, put out to nurse in Soplicowo, would surely die. My dear Count, I
will have this framed, or I will put it in my album, in my collection of
drawings, which I have gathered from every source: I have numbers of them
in my desk.”
So they began to converse of the blue of the skies, of the murmur of waves
and of fragrant breezes, and of the summits of crags, mingling here and
there, after the fashion of travellers, laughter and mockery at the land
of their fathers. And yet around them stretched the forests of Lithuania,
so majestic and so full of beauty! The black currant, intertwined with a
wreath of wild hop; the service tree, with the fresh blush of a
shepherdess; the hazel, like a mænad, with green thyrsuses, decked with
the pearls of its nuts as with clusters of grapes; and beneath them the
children of the forest, the hawthorn in the embrace of the elder, the
blackberry pressing its black lips upon the raspberry. The trees and
bushes joined hands with their leaves, like young men and maidens standing
ready for a dance around a married pair. In the midst of the company stood
the pair, distinguished from all the rest of the forest throng by
gracefulness of form and charm of colour; the white birch, the beloved,
with her husband the hornbeam. But farther off, like grave elders sitting
in silence and gazing on their children and grandchildren, stood on this
side hoary beeches, and on that matronly poplars; and an oak, bearded with
moss, and bearing on its humped back the weight of five centuries,
supported itself—as on the broken pillars of sepulchres—on the petrified
corpses of other oaks, its ancestors.
Thaddeus writhed, being not a little wearied by the long conversation in
which he could not take part. But when they began to glorify the forests
of foreign lands, and to enumerate in turn every variety of their
trees—oranges, cypresses, olive trees, almonds, cactuses, aloes, mahogany,
sandalwood, lemons, ivy, walnuts, even fig trees—praising extravagantly
their forms, flowers, and bark, then Thaddeus constantly sniffed and
grimaced, and finally could no longer restrain his wrath.
He was a simple lad, but he could feel the charm of nature, and, gazing on
his ancestral forest, he said full of inspiration:—
“In the botanical garden at Wilno I have seen those vaunted trees that
grow in the east and the south, in that fair Italian land—which of them
can be compared to our trees? The aloe with its long stalk like a
lightning rod? Or the dwarfish lemon tree with its golden balls and
lacquered leaves, short and dumpy, like a woman who is small and ugly, but
rich? Or the much-praised cypress, long, thin, and lean, which seems the
tree, not of grief, but of boredom? They say that it looks very sad upon a
grave; but it is like a German flunkey in court mourning, who does not
dare to lift his arms or turn his head, for fear that he may somehow
offend against etiquette.
“Is not our honest birch tree fairer, which is like a village woman
weeping for her son, or a widow for her husband, who wrings her hands and
lets fall over her shoulders to the ground the stream of her loose
tresses? Mute with grief, how eloquently she sobs with her form! Count, if
you are in love with painting, why do you not paint our own trees, among
which you are sitting? Really, the neighbours will laugh at you, since,
though you live in the fertile plain of Lithuania, you paint only crags
and deserts.”
“Friend,” said the Count, “beautiful nature is the form, the ground, the
material, but the soul is inspiration, which rises on the wings of
imagination, is polished by taste, and is supported by rules. Nature is
not enough, enthusiasm is not enough; the artist must fly away into the
spheres of the ideal! Not everything that is beautiful can be painted! You
will learn all this from books in the course of time. As for painting: for
a picture one requires viewpoints, grouping, ensemble—and sky, the Italian
sky! Hence in landscape art Italy was, is, and will be the country of
painters. Hence also, except for Breughel—not Van der Helle, but the
landscapist, for there are two Breughels55—and except for Ruysdael, in the
whole north where has there been a landscape artist of the first rank? The
sky, the sky is necessary.”
“Our painter Orlowski,”56 interrupted Telimena, “had a Soplica’s taste.
(You must know that this is the malady of the Soplicas, not to like
anything except their own country.) Orlowski, who spent his life in St.
Petersburg, a famous painter (I have some of his sketches in my desk),
dwelt close by the Emperor, in his court, as in paradise; and, Count, you
cannot believe how homesick he was, he loved constantly to call to mind
the days of his youth; he glorified everything in Poland, land, sky,
forests.”
“And he was right,” cried Thaddeus warmly; “that Italian sky of yours, so
far as I have heard of it, is blue and clear, but yet is like frozen
water: are not wind and storm a hundred times more beautiful? In our land,
if you merely raise your head, how many sights meet your eye! how many
scenes and pictures from the very play of the clouds! For each cloud is
different; for instance, in spring they crawl like lazy tortoises, heavy
with showers, and send down from the sky to the earth long streamers like
loose tresses: those are the streams of rain. The hail cloud flies swiftly
on the wind like a balloon; it is round and dark-blue, with a glint of
yellow in the centre; around it may be heard a mighty uproar. Even these
white cloudlets of every day, just see how rapidly they change! At first
they are like a flock of wild geese or swans; and from behind, the wind,
like a falcon, drives them into a dense throng; they crowd together, grow
and increase; new marvels! They gain curved necks, send forth manes, shoot
out rows of legs, and over the vault of the skies they fly like a herd of
chargers across the steppe. All are white as silver; they have fallen into
confusion; suddenly masts grow from their necks, and from their manes
broad sails; the herd changes into a ship, and majestically floats slowly
and quietly across the blue plain of the skies!”
The Count and Telimena looked up; Thaddeus with one hand pointed out a
cloud to them, while with the other he squeezed Telimena’s dainty fingers.
The quiet scene lasted for several minutes; the Count spread a sheet of
paper on his hat and took out his pencil; then, unwelcome to their ears,
the house bell resounded, and straightway the quiet wood was full of cries
and uproar.
The Count, nodding his head, said in an impressive tone:—
“Thus fate is wont to end all in this world by the sound of a bell. The
calculations of mighty minds, the plans of imagination, the sports of
innocence, the joys of friendship, the outpourings of feeling hearts! when
the bronze roars from afar all is confused, shattered, perturbed—and
vanishes!”
Then, turning a feeling glance on Telimena, he added, “What remains?” and
she said to him, “Remembrance”; and, desiring somewhat to relieve the
Count’s sadness, she gave him a forget-me-not that she had plucked. The
Count kissed it and pinned it on his bosom. Thaddeus on the other side
separated the branches of a shrub, seeing that through the greenery
something white was stealing towards him. This was a little hand white as
a lily; he seized it, kissed it, and silently buried his lips in it as a
bee in the cup of a lily. On his lips he felt something cold; he found a
key and a bit of white paper curled up in the hole of it; this was a
little note. He seized it and hid it in his pocket; he did not know what
the key meant, but that little white note would explain.
The bell still pealed, and, as an echo, from the depths of the quiet woods
there resounded a thousand cries and shouts; this was the uproar of people
searching for one another and calling, the signal that the
mushroom-gathering was over for the day: the uproar was not at all gloomy
or funereal, as it had seemed to the Count, but a dinner uproar.57 Every
noon this bell, calling from the gable, invited the guests and servants
home to dinner; such had been the custom on many old estates, and in the
Judge’s house it had been preserved. So from the wood there came a throng
carrying boxes, and baskets, and handkerchiefs with their ends tied up—all
full of mushrooms; each young lady carried in one hand, like a folded fan,
a large _pine-lover_; in the other _tree-fungi_ tied together in a bunch,
like field flowers, and _leaf-mushrooms_ of various colours. The Seneschal
had his _fly-bane_. With empty hands came Telimena, and after her the
young gentlemen.
The guests entered in order and stood about the table. The Chamberlain
took his place at the head; this honour befitted him from his age and his
office; advancing to it he bowed to the ladies, the old men, and the young
men. By him the Monk took his station, and next the Bernardine was the
Judge. The Bernardine pronounced a short grace in Latin, brandy was passed
around; thereupon all sat down, and in silence and with relish they ate
the cold Lithuanian salad of beet leaves.
The dinner was more quiet than usual; no one talked, despite the host’s
entreaties. The factions involved in the mighty strife over the dogs were
thinking of the morrow’s contest and the wager; great thought is wont to
constrain the lips to silence. Telimena, though she talked constantly with
Thaddeus, was forced to turn now and then to the Count, and even now and
then to glance at the Assessor; thus a hunter gazes at the same time at
the net into which he is coaxing goldfinches, and at the snare for
sparrows. Thaddeus and the Count were both content with themselves, both
happy, both full of hopes, and therefore not inclined to chatter. The
Count would cast a proud look at the flower, and Thaddeus would stealthily
gaze into his pocket, to see whether that little key had not run away; he
would even reach in his hand and finger the note which he had not yet
read. The Judge, pouring out Hungarian wine and champagne for the
Chamberlain, served him diligently, and often pressed his knees; but he
had no zest for conversation with him, and it was evident that he felt
certain secret cares.
They changed the plates and the viands in silence; at last the tiresome
routine of the dinner was interrupted by an unexpected guest. A forester,
rushing in, did not even observe that it was dinner time, but ran up to
his master; from his bearing and his expression it was clear that he was
the bringer of important and unwonted tidings. On him the whole company
turned their gaze; recovering his breath somewhat, he said: “A bear, sir!”
All guessed the rest, that the beast had come out from the _jungle_,58
that it was slipping through to the wilderness beyond the Niemen; all
immediately recognised that it must be pursued at once, although they had
not consulted together or thought the matter over. The common thought was
evident from the clipped words, the lively gestures, the various orders
that were issued, which, though they came tumultuously and at one time
from so many lips, still all tended to a like aim.
“To the village!” shouted the Judge, “on horseback, for the headman of the
peasants! To-morrow at daybreak let the beaters be ready, but volunteers!
Whoever comes with a pike I will release from two days’ work on the roads
and five days’ field-service for myself.”
“Hurry,” cried the Chamberlain, “saddle my grey, and gallop full speed to
my house; get quickly my two bulldogs,59 which are famous all over the
district; the male is named Sprawnik, and the bitch Strapczyna.60 Gag
them, tie them in a sack, and to save time bring them here on horseback.”
“Vanka,” cried the Assessor in Russian to his boy, “draw my Sanguszko
hunting knife over the whetstone; you know, the knife that the prince
presented to me; and look to my belt, to see whether there is a bullet in
every cartridge.”
“Get the guns ready!” shouted everybody.
The Assessor kept calling: “Lead, lead! I have a bullet mould in my game
bag.”
“Tell the parish priest,” added the Judge, “to serve mass early to-morrow
in the forest chapel; a very short offertory for hunters, the usual mass
of St. Hubert.”
After the orders had been given a silence followed. All were deep in
thought and cast their eyes around as if looking for some one; slowly the
Seneschal’s venerable face attracted and united all eyes. This was a sign
that they were seeking a leader for their future expedition and that they
offered the staff of office to the Seneschal. The Seneschal rose,
understood the will of his comrades, and, rapping impressively on the
table, he drew from his bosom a golden chain, on which hung a watch large
as a pear.
“To-morrow,” he said, “at half past four, the gentlemen hunters and the
beaters will present themselves at the forest chapel.”
He spoke, and moved from the table; after him went the Forester. These two
had to plan and arrange the chase.
Even so act generals, when they ordain a battle for the morrow—the
soldiers throughout the camp clean their arms and eat, or sleep on cloaks
or saddles, free from care, but the generals consult within the quiet
tent.
Dinner was interrupted, the day passed in the shoeing of horses, the
feeding of dogs, the gathering and cleaning of arms; at supper hardly any
one came to the table. Even the faction of Bobtail ceased to be agitated
by its long and weighty quarrel with the party of Falcon; the Notary and
the Assessor went arm in arm to look for lead. The rest, wearied with
toil, went early to sleep, in order to rise in good season.
[To-day Thaddeus had been given a room in an out-building. Going in, he
closed the door and hid the candle in the fireplace, pretending that he
had already gone to sleep—but he did not close his eyes. He evidently
awaited the night, and to him the time seemed long. He stood by the window
and through the opening cut in the shutter observed the doings of the
watchman, who was continually walking about the yard. When he saw him far
away, at one bound he leapt out, closed the window, and bending to the
ground crept along like a pointer. His further steps the autumn night
shrouded in thick darkness.61]
BOOK IV—DIPLOMACY AND THE CHASE
ARGUMENT
A vision in curl papers awakes Thaddeus—Belated discovery of a
mistake—The tavern—The emissary—The skilful use of a snuffbox
turns discussion into the proper channel—The jungle—The
bear—Danger of Thaddeus and the Count—Three shots—The dispute of
the Sagalas musket with the Sanguszko musket settled in favour of
the single-barrelled Horeszko carbine—Bigos—The Seneschal’s tale
of the duel of Dowejko and Domejko, interrupted by hunting the
hare—End of the tale of Dowejko and Domejko.
Ye comrades of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, trees of Bialowieza, Switez,
Ponary, and Kuszelewo! whose shade once fell upon the crowned heads of the
dread Witenes and the great Mindowe, and of Giedymin, when on the height
of Ponary, by the huntsmen’s fire, he lay on a bear skin, listening to the
song of the wise Lizdejko; and, lulled by the sight of the Wilia and the
murmur of the Wilejko, he dreamed of the iron wolf;62 and awakened, by the
clear command of the gods, he built the city of Wilno, which sits among
the forests as a wolf amid bison, wild boars, and bears. From this city of
Wilno, as from the she-wolf of Rome, went forth Kiejstut and Olgierd and
his sons,63 as mighty hunters as they were famous knights, in pursuit now
of their enemies and now of wild beasts. A hunter’s dream disclosed to us
the secrets of the future, that Lithuania ever needs iron and wooded
lands.
Ye forests! the last to come hunting among you was the last king who wore
the cap of Witold,64 the last fortunate warrior of the Jagiellos, and the
last huntsman among the rulers of Lithuania. Trees of my Fatherland! if
Heaven grants that I return to behold you, old friends, shall I find you
still? Do ye still live? Ye, among whom I once crept as a child—does great
Baublis65 still live, in whose bulk, hollowed by ages, as in a goodly
house, twelve could sup at table? Does the grove of Mendog66 still bloom
by the village church? And there in the Ukraine, does there still rise on
the banks of the Ros, before the mansion of the Holowinskis, that linden
tree so far-spreading that beneath its shade a hundred youths and a
hundred maidens were wont to join as partners in the dance?
Monuments of our fathers! how many of you each year are destroyed by the
axes of the merchants, or of the Muscovite government! These vandals leave
no refuge either for the forest warblers or for the bards, to whom your
shade was as dear as to the birds. Yet the linden of Czarnolas, responsive
to the voice of Jan Kochanowski, inspired in him so many rimes!67 Yet that
prattling oak still sings of so many marvels to the Cossack bard!68
How much do I owe to you, trees of my Homeland! A wretched huntsman,
fleeing from the mockery of my comrades, in exchange for the game that I
missed how many fancies did I capture beneath your calm, when in the wild
thicket, forgetful of the chase, I sat me down amid a clump of trees!
Around me here the greybearded moss showed silver, streaked with the blue
of dark, crushed berries; there heathery hillocks shone red, decked with
cowberries as with rosaries of coral.—All about was darkness: over me the
branches hung like low, thick, green clouds; somewhere above the
motionless vault the wind played with a wailing, roaring, howling,
crashing thunder; a strange, deafening uproar! It seemed to me that there
above my head rolled a hanging sea.
Below, the crumbling remains of cities meet the eye. Here an overthrown
oak protrudes from the ground, like an immense ruin; on it seem to rest
fragments of walls and columns; on this side are branching stumps, on that
half-rotted beams, enclosed with a hedge of grass. Within the barricade it
is terrible to look: there dwell the lords of the forest, wild boars,
bears, and wolves; at the gate lie the half-gnawed bones of some unwary
guests. Sometimes there rise up through the green of the grass, like two
jets of water, a pair of stag’s antlers; and a beast flits between the
trees like a yellow streak, as when a sunbeam falls between the forest
trees and dies.
And again there is quiet below. A woodpecker on a fir tree raps lightly
and flies farther on and vanishes; it has hidden, but does not cease to
tap with its beak, like a child when it has hidden and wishes to be sought
for. Nearer sits a squirrel, holding a nut in its paws and gnawing it; its
tail hangs over its eyes like the plume over a cuirassier’s helmet: even
though thus protected, it keeps glancing about; perceiving the guest, this
dancer of the woods skips from tree to tree and flashes like lightning;
finally it slips into an invisible opening of a stump, like a Dryad
returning to her native tree. Again all is quiet.
Now a branch shakes from the touch of some one’s hand, and between the
parted clusters of the service berries shines a face more fair than they.
It is a maiden gathering berries or nuts; in a basket of simple bark she
offers you freshly gathered cowberries, rosy as her lips. By her side
walks a youth who bends down the branches of the hazel tree; the girl
catches the nuts as they flash by her.
Now they have heard the peal of the horns and the baying of the hounds;
they guess that a hunt is drawing near them; and between the dense mass of
boughs, full of alarm, they vanish suddenly from the eye, like deities of
the forest.
In Soplicowo there was a great commotion; but neither the barking of the
dogs, nor the neighing of the horses and the creaking of the carts, nor
the blare of the horns that gave the signal for the hunt could stir
Thaddeus from his bed; falling fully dressed on his couch, he had slept
like a marmot in its burrow. None of the young men thought of looking for
him in the yard; every one was occupied with his own affairs and was
hurrying to his appointed place; they entirely forgot their sleeping
comrade.
He was snoring. Through the heart-shaped opening that was cut in the
shutter the sun poured into the darkened room like a fiery column,
straight on the brow of the sleeping lad. He wanted to doze longer and
twisted about, trying to avoid the light; suddenly he heard a knocking and
awoke; cheerful was his awakening. He felt blithe as a bird and breathed
freely and lightly; he felt himself happy and smiled to himself. Thinking
of all that had happened to him the day before, he blushed and sighed, and
his heart beat fast.
He looked at the window. Marvellous to say, in the sunlit aperture, within
that heart, there shone two bright eyes, opened wide, as is wont to be the
case when one gazes from daylight into darkness; he saw also a little
hand, raised like a fan on the side towards the sun, to shield the gaze;
the tiny fingers, turned towards the rosy light, reddened clear through,
as if made of rubies; he beheld curious lips, slightly parted, and little
teeth that shone like pearls among corals; and the face, though it was
protected from the sun by a rosy palm, itself glowed all over like the
rose.
Thaddeus was sleeping beneath the window; himself hidden in the shade,
lying on his back, he wondered at the marvellous apparition, which was
directly above him, almost touching his face. He did not know whether he
was awake, or whether he was imagining one of those dear, bright childish
faces that we remember to have seen in the dreams of our innocent years.
The little face bent down: he beheld, trembling with fear and joy, alas!
he beheld most clearly—he recalled and recognised now that short, bright
golden hair done up in tiny curl papers white as snow, like silvery pods,
which in the gleam of the sun shone like a crown on the image of a saint.
He started up, and the vision straightway vanished, frightened by the
noise; he waited, but it did not return! He only heard again a
thrice-repeated knocking and the words: “Get up, sir; it is time for
hunting, you have overslept.” He jumped from his couch, and with both
hands pushed back the shutters, so that their hinges rattled, and flying
open they knocked against the wall on either side. He rushed out and
looked around, amazed and confused, but he saw nothing, nor did he
perceive traces of any one. Not far from the window was the garden fence;
on it the hop leaves and the flowery garlands were trembling; had some
light hands touched them or had the wind stirred them? Thaddeus gazed long
on them, but did not dare enter the enclosure; he only leaned on the
fence, raised his eyes, and, with his finger pressed on his lips, bade
himself be silent, in order not to break the stillness by a hasty word.
Then he rapped his forehead, as though he were tapping for some ancient
memories that had been lulled to sleep within him; finally, gnawing his
fingers, he drew blood, and shouted at the top of his voice: “It serves me
right, it does.”
In the yard, where a few moments before there had been so many cries, now
everything was desolate and silent as in a graveyard; all had gone afield.
Thaddeus pricked up his ears, and put his hands to them like trumpets; he
listened till the wind that blew from the forest brought to him the sound
of horns and the shouts of the hunting throng.
Thaddeus’s horse was waiting saddled in the stable. So, musket in hand, he
vaulted upon it, and like a madman galloped towards the inns that stood
near the forest chapel, where the beaters were to have gathered at early
dawn.
The two taverns bent forward from either side of the road, threatening
each other with their windows like enemies. The old one rightfully
belonged to the owner of the castle; the new one Judge Soplica had built
to spite the castle. In the former, as in his own inheritance, Gerwazy
ruled supreme; in the latter Protazy occupied the highest place at the
table.
The new tavern was not peculiar in its appearance. The old one was built
according to an ancient model, which was invented by Tyrian carpenters,
and later spread abroad over the world by the Jews; a style of
architecture completely unknown to foreign builders: we inherit it from
the Jews.
The tavern was in front like an ark, behind like a temple; the ark was
Noah’s genuine oblong chest, known to-day under the simple name of stable;
in it there were various beasts, horses, cows, oxen, bearded goats; and
above flocks of birds; and a pair each of various sorts of reptiles—and
likewise insects. The rear portion, formed like a marvellous temple,
reminded one by its appearance of that edifice of Solomon that Hiram’s
carpenters, the first skilled in the art of building, erected on Zion. The
Jews imitate it to this day in their schools, and the design of the
schools may be traced in their taverns and stables. The roof of lath and
straw was peaked, turned-up, and crooked as a Jew’s torn cap. From the
gable protruded the edges of a balcony, supported on a row of close-set
wooden columns; the columns, which were a great architectural marvel, were
solid, though half decayed, and were put up crooked, as in the tower of
Pisa; they did not conform to Greek models, for they lacked bases and
capitals. On the columns rested semicircular arches, also of wood, in
imitation of Gothic art. Above were artistic ornaments, crooked as the
arms of Sabbath candlesticks,69 executed not with the graver or chisel,
but with skilful blows of the carpenter’s hatchet; at their ends hung
balls, somewhat resembling the buttons that the Jews hang on their
foreheads when they pray, and which, in their own, tongue, they call
_cyces_. In a word, from a distance the tottering, crooked tavern was like
a Jew, when he nods his head in prayer; the roof is his cap, the
disordered thatch his beard, the smoky, dirty walls his black frock, and
in front the carving juts out like the _cyces_ on his brow.
In the centre of the tavern was a partition like that in a Jewish school;
one portion, divided into long and narrow rooms, was reserved exclusively
for ladies and gentlemen who were travelling; the other formed one immense
hall. Along each wall stretched a many-footed narrow, wooden table; by it
were benches, which, though lower, were as like the table as children are
like their father. On these benches around the room sat peasants, both men
and women, and likewise some of the minor gentry, all in rows; only the
Steward sat by himself. After early Mass they had come from the chapel to
Jankiel’s, since it was Sunday, to have a drink and to amuse themselves.
By each a cup of greyish brandy was already frothing, the hostess was
running about with the bottle, serving every one. In the centre of the
room stood the host, Jankiel, in a long gown that reached to the floor,
and was fastened with silver clasps; one hand he had tucked into his black
silk girdle, with the other he stroked in dignified fashion his grey
beard. Casting his eye about, he issued orders, greeted the guests who
came in, went up to those that were seated, and started conversation,
reconciled persons quarrelling, but served no one—he only walked to and
fro. The Jew was old, and famed everywhere for his probity; for many years
he had been keeping the tavern, and no one either of the peasants or of
the gentry had ever made complaint against him to his landlord. Of what
should they complain? He had good drinks to choose from; he kept his
accounts strictly, but without any knavery; he did not forbid merriment,
but would not endure drunkenness. He was a great lover of entertainments;
at his tavern marriages and christenings were celebrated; every Sunday he
had musicians come from the village, including a bass viol and bagpipes.
He was familiar with music and was himself famous for his musical talent;
with the dulcimer, his national instrument, he had once wandered from
estate to estate and amazed his hearers by his playing and his songs, for
he sang well and with a trained voice. Though a Jew, he had a fairly good
Polish pronunciation, and was particularly fond of the national songs, of
which he had brought back a multitude from each trip over the Niemen,
_kolomyjkas_70 from Halicz and _mazurkas_ from Warsaw. A report, I do not
know how well founded, was current throughout the district, that he was
the first to bring from abroad and make popular in that time and place the
song which is to-day famous all over the world, and which was first played
in the Ausonian land to Italians by the trumpets of the Polish legions.71
The talent of song pays well in Lithuania; it gains people’s affection and
makes one famous and rich. Jankiel had made a fortune; sated with gain and
glory, he had hung his nine-stringed dulcimer upon the wall, and settling
down with his children in the tavern he had taken up liquor-selling.
Besides this he was the under-rabbi in the neighbouring town, and always a
welcome guest in every quarter, and a household counsellor: he had a good
knowledge of the grain trade on the river barges;72 such knowledge is
needful in a village. He had also the reputation of being a patriotic
Pole.73
He was the first to bring to an end the quarrels between the two taverns,
which had often led even to bloodshed, by leasing them both. He was
equally respected by the old partisans of the Horeszkos and by the
servants of Judge Soplica. He alone knew how to keep an ascendancy over
the terrible Warden of the Horeszkos and the quarrelsome Apparitor; in
Jankiel’s presence both Gerwazy terrible of hand and Protazy terrible of
tongue stifled their ancient wrongs.
Gerwazy was not there; he had gone to join the beaters, not wishing that
the Count, young and inexperienced, should undertake alone so important
and difficult an expedition. So he had gone with him for counsel, and
likewise for defence.
To-day Gerwazy’s place, the farthest from the threshold, between two
benches, in the very corner of the tavern (called _pokucie_74), was
occupied by the Monk, Father Robak, the alms-gatherer. Jankiel had seated
him there; he evidently highly respected the Bernardine, for whenever he
noticed that his glass was empty he immediately ran up and told them to
pour out for him July mead.75 They said that the Bernardine and he had
been acquainted when young, somewhere off in foreign lands. Robak often
came by night to the tavern, and consulted secretly with the Jew about
important matters; they said that the Monk was smuggling goods, but this
was a slander unworthy of belief.
Leaning on the table, Robak was discoursing in a low voice; a throng of
gentry surrounded him and pricked up their ears, and bent down their noses
to the Monk’s snuffbox. Each took a pinch, and the gentlemen sneezed like
mortars.
“Reverendissime,” said Skoluba with a sneeze, “that is fine tobacco, it
goes way up to your topknot. Never since I have worn a nose”—here he
stroked his long nose—“have I met its like”—here he sneezed a second time.
“It is real Bernardine, doubtless made in Kowno, a city famous throughout
the world for tobacco and mead. I was there in——”
“To the health of you all, my noble gentlemen!”
Robak interrupted him. “As for the tobacco—hm—it comes from farther off
than my friend Skoluba thinks; it comes from Jasna Gora, the Bright
Mountain; the Paulist Brethren prepare such tobacco in the city of
Czenstochowa,76 where stands the image, famed for so many miracles, of Our
Lady the Virgin, Queen of the Crown of Poland: she is likewise still
called Duchess of Lithuania! She still watches over her royal crown, but
in the Duchy of Lithuania the schism77 is now established!”
“From Czenstochowa?” said Wilbik. “I confessed myself there when I went on
a pilgrimage thirty years ago. Is it true that the French are now visiting
the city, and that they are going to tear down the church and seize the
treasury—for this is all printed in the _Lithuanian Courier?_”
“No, it is not true,” said the Bernardine. “His Majesty the Emperor
Napoleon is a most exemplary Catholic; the Pope himself anointed him, and
they live in harmony, and spread the faith among the French people, which
has become a trifle corrupted. To be sure they have contributed much
silver from Czenstochowa to the national treasury, for the Fatherland, for
Poland, as the Lord God himself bids; his altars are always the treasury
of the Fatherland. Why, in the Duchy of Warsaw we have a Polish army of a
hundred thousand, perhaps soon there will be more. And who will pay that
army? Will it be you Lithuanians? You are now giving your pennies only for
the Muscovite coffers.”
“The devil we are!” cried Wilbik; “they take them from us by force.”
“O, my dear sir,” a peasant spoke up humbly, bowing to the Monk and
scratching his head, “for the gentry it is only half bad, but they skin
_us_ like linden bark.”
“You stupid son of Ham!”78 cried Skoluba, “it is easier for you; you
peasants are as used to skinning as eels; but for us _men of birth_, us
gentlemen accustomed to golden liberty! Ah, brothers! Why, in old times a
gentleman on his garden patch——”
“Yes, yes,” they all cried, “was a wojewoda’s match.”79
“To-day they even deny our gentle birth; they bid us hunt up papers and
prove it by documents.”
“That’s nothing for such as you!” shouted Juraha. “Your precious ancestors
were peasants who obtained nobility, but I am of princes’ blood! To ask me
for a patent, showing when I became a nobleman! Only God remembers that!
Let the Muscovite go to the forest and ask the oak grove who gave it a
patent to grow above all the shrubs!”
“Prince!” said Zagiel. “Go tell that to some one else! You will find no
end of princes’ coronets in this district.”
“You have a cross in your coat of arms,” shouted Podhajski; “that is a
covert allusion to the fact that a baptised Jew was a member of your
line.”
“That is false!” interrupted Birbarz; “now I spring from the blood of
Tatar counts, and yet my coat bears crosses above a ship.”
“The white rose of five petals,” cried Mickiewicz, “with a cap in a golden
field: it is a princely coat; Stryjkowski writes frequently of it.”80
After this a mighty hubbub arose all over the room. The Bernardine had
recourse to his snuffbox; he offered a pinch to each of the orators in
turn, and the wrangling immediately subsided: each accepted for courtesy’s
sake, and sneezed several times. The Bernardine, taking advantage of the
intermission, continued:—
“Ah! this tobacco has made great men sneeze! Will you believe me that four
times General Dombrowski has taken a pinch from this snuffbox?”
“Dombrowski!” they shouted.
“Yes, yes, he, the general. I was in the camp when he was recapturing
Dantzic from the Germans.81 He had something to write; and, fearing that
he might go to sleep, he took a pinch, sneezed, and twice patted me on the
back. ‘Father Robak,’ he said, ‘Father Bernardine, perhaps we shall see
each other in Lithuania before the year is over. Tell the Lithuanians to
receive me with Czenstochowa tobacco; I take none but that.’ ”
The Monk’s speech aroused such amazement and such joy that the whole noisy
assembly was silent for a moment; then they repeated under their breath
the words, “Tobacco from Poland? Czenstochowa? Dombrowski? from the
Italian land?” until finally all at once, as if thought had fused with
thought and word with word, all cried with one voice, as if a signal had
been given: “Dombrowski!” All shouted together, all embraced one another;
the peasant and the Tatar count, the prince’s hat and the cross, the white
rose, the griffin, and the ship; they forgot everything, even the
Bernardine; they only sang and shouted: “Brandy, mead, wine!”
Father Robak listened to the song for a long time; finally he wanted to
cut it short. So he took in both hands his snuffbox, broke up the melody
with a sneeze; and, before they got together again, he hastened to speak
thus:—
“You praise my tobacco, my good friends; now see what is going on inside
the snuffbox.”
Here, wiping with his handkerchief the soiled base of the box, he showed
them a little painted army, like a swarm of flies: in the middle sat a man
on a charger, the size of a beetle, evidently the leader of the troop; he
had made his horse rear, as though he wanted to leap into the skies; one
hand he held on the bridle, the other up to his nose.
“Gaze,” said Robak, “at that threatening form, and guess whose it is.”
All looked with curiosity.
“That is a great man, an emperor, but not of the Muscovites; their tsars
have never used tobacco.”
“A great man,” cried Cydzik, “and in a long grey coat? I thought that
great men wore gold, for among the Muscovites any sort of a general, sir,
fairly shines with gold, like a pike in saffron.”
“Bah!” interrupted Rymsza; “why, in my youth I saw Kosciuszko, the chief
of our nation: he was a great man, but he wore a Cracow peasant’s coat,
that is to say, a _czamara_.”
“Much he wore a _czamara_!” retorted Wilbik. “They used to call it a
_taratatka_.”82
“But the _taratatka_ has fringe,” shouted Mickiewicz, “and the other is
entirely plain.”
Thereupon there arose disputes over the various forms of the _taratatka_
and the _czamara_.
The ingenious Robak, seeing that the conversation was thus becoming
scattered, undertook again to gather it to a focus—to his snuffbox: he
treated them, they sneezed and wished one another good health; he
continued his speech:— “When the Emperor Napoleon in an engagement takes
snuff time after time, it is a sure sign that he is winning the battle.
For example, at Austerlitz: the French just stood beside their cannon, and
on them charged a host of Muscovites. The Emperor gazed and held his
peace; whenever the French shot, the Muscovites were simply mowed down by
regiments like grass. Regiment after regiment galloped on and fell from
the saddle; whenever a regiment fell, the Emperor took a pinch of snuff,
until finally Alexander with his little brother Constantine and the German
Emperor Francis fled from the field. So the Emperor, seeing that the fight
was over, gazed at them, laughed, and dusted his fingers. And now if any
of you gentlemen who are present here ever serves in the army of the
Emperor, let him remember this.”
“Ah! my dear Monk!” cried Skoluba, “when will that be? Why, on every
holiday set down in the calendar they prophesy to us that the French are
coming, A man looks and looks until his eyes are weary, but the Muscovite
keeps on holding us by the neck as he always has. I fear that before the
sun ris
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