Travel by Night.--A Rencounter.--A Traveller's
Message.--Lithuania.--Poverty of the Country.--Agricultural
Implements.--Minsk.--Polish Jews.--A Coin of Freedom.--Riding in a
Basket.--Brezc.--The Bug.--A searching Operation.--Women
Labourers.--Warsaw.
IT was after dark when we returned to our wagon, still standing at the
end of the bridge opposite Borizoff. Our postillion, like a sensible
man, had lain down to sleep at the head of his horses, so they could not
move without treading on him and waking him; and, when we roused him,
the pain of his beating was over, and with it all sense of the
indignity; and, in fact, we made him very grateful for the flogging by
promising him a few additional kopeks.
We hauled up the straw and seated ourselves in the bottom of our
kibitka. Night closed upon us amid the gloomy forests bordering the
banks of the Berezina. We talked for a little while, and by degrees
drawing our cloaks around us, each fell into a revery. The continued
tinkling of the bell, which, on my first entering Russia, grated on my
ear, had become agreeable to me, and in a dark night particularly was a
pleasing sound. The song of the postillion, too, harmonized with the
repose of spirit at that moment most grateful to us; that too died
away, the bell almost ceased its tinkling, and, in spite of the alarum
of war which we had all day been ringing in our own ears, we should
probably soon have fallen into a sleep as sound, for a little while at
least, as that of them who slept under the waters of the Berezina, but
we were suddenly roused by a shock as alarming to quiet travellers as
the hourra of the Cossack in the ears of the flying Frenchmen. Our
horses sprang out of the road, but not in time to avoid a concussion
with another wagon going toward Borizoff. Both postillions were thrown
off their seats; and the stranger, picking himself up, came at us with a
stream of Lithuanian Russian almost harsh enough to frighten the horses.
I will not suggest what its effect was upon us, but only that, as to
myself, it seemed at first equal to the voice of at least a dozen
freebooters and marauders; and if the English of it had been "stand and
deliver," I should probably have given up my carpet-bag without asking
to reserve a change of linen. But I was restored by the return fire of
our postillion, who drowned completely the attack of his adversary by
his outrageous clamour; and when he stopped to take breath my companion
followed up the defence, and this brought out a fourth voice from the
bottom of the opposite wagon. A truce was called, and waiving the
question on which side the fault lay, we all got out to ascertain the
damage. Our antagonist passenger was a German merchant, used to roughing
it twice every year between Berlin, Warsaw, Petersburgh, and Moscow, and
took our smashing together at night in this desolate forest as coolly as
a rub of the shoulders in the streets; and, when satisfied that his
wagon was not injured, kindly asked us if we had any bones broken. We
returned his kind inquiries; and, after farther interchanges of
politeness, he said that he was happy to make our acquaintance, and
invited us to come and see him at Berlin. We wanted him to go back and
let us have a look at him by torchlight, but he declined; and, after
feeling him stretched out in his bed in the bottom of his wagon, we
started him on his way.
We resumed our own places, and, without dozing again, arrived at the
posthouse, where first of all we made ourselves agreeable to the
postmaster by delivering our German friend's message to him, that he
ought to be whipped and condemned to live where he was till he was a
hundred years old for putting the neck of a traveller at the mercy of a
sleepy postillion; but the postmaster was a Jew, and thought the vile
place where he lived equal to any on earth. He was a miserable,
squalid-looking object, with a pine torch in his hand lighting up the
poverty and filthiness of his wretched habitation, and confessed that he
should be too happy to enjoy the fortune which the German would have
entailed upon him as a curse. He offered to make us a bed of some dirty
straw which had often been slept on before; but we shrank from it; and,
as soon as we could get horses, returned to our kibitka and resumed our
journey.
The whole province of Lithuania is much the same in appearance. We lost
nothing by travelling through it at night; indeed, every step that we
advanced was a decided gain, as it brought us so much nearer its
farthermost border. The vast provinces of Lithuania, formerly a part of
the kingdom of Poland, and, since the partition of that unhappy country,
subject to the throne of Russia, until the fourteenth century were
independent of either. The Lithuanians and Samogitians are supposed to
be of a different race from the Poles, and spoke a language widely
dissimilar to the Polish or Russian. Their religion was a strange
idolatry; they worshipped the god of thunder, and paid homage to a god
of the harvest; they maintained priests, who were constantly feeding a
sacred fire in honour of the god of the seasons; they worshipped trees,
fountains, and plants; had sacred serpents, and believed in guardian
spirits of trees, cattle, &c. Their government, like that of all other
barbarous nations, was despotic, and the nobles were less numerous and
more tyrannical than in Poland. In the latter part of the fourteenth
century, on the death of Louis, successor to Casimir the Great, Hedwiga
was called to the throne of Poland, under a stipulation, however, that
she should follow the will of the Poles in the choice of her husband.
Many candidates offered themselves for the hand dowered with a kingdom;
but the offers of Jagellon, duke of Lithuania, were most tempting; he
promised to unite his extensive dominions to the territory of Poland,
and pledged himself for the conversion to Christianity of his Lithuanian
subjects. But queens are not free from the infirmities of human nature;
and Hedwiga had fixed her affections upon her cousin, William of
Austria, whom she had invited into Poland; and when Jagellon came to
take possession of his wife and crown, she refused to see him. The
nobles, however, sent William back to his papa, and locked her up as if
she had been a boarding-school miss. And again, queens are not free from
the infirmities of human nature: Hedwiga was inconstant; the handsome
Lithuanian made her forget her first love, and Poland and Lithuania
were united under one crown. Jagellon was baptized, but the inhabitants
of Lithuania did not so readily embrace the Christian religion; in one
of the provinces they clung for a long time to their own strange and
wild superstitions; and even in modern times, it is said, the peasants
long obstinately refused to use ploughs or other agricultural
instruments furnished with iron, for fear of wounding the bosom of
mother earth.
All the way from Borizoff the road passes through a country but little
cultivated, dreary, and covered with forests. When Napoleon entered the
province of Lithuania his first bulletins proclaimed, "Here, then, is
that Russia so formidable at a distance! It is a desert for which its
scattered population is wholly insufficient. They will be vanquished by
the very extent of territory which ought to defend them;" and, before I
had travelled in it a day, I could appreciate the feeling of the soldier
from La Belle France, who, hearing his Polish comrades boast of their
country, exclaimed, "Et ces gueux la appellent cette pays une patrie!"
The villages are a miserable collection of straggling huts, without plan
or arrangement, and separated from each other by large spaces of ground.
They are about ten or twelve feet square, made of the misshapen trunks
of trees heaped on each other, with the ends projecting over; the roof
of large shapeless boards, and the window a small hole in the wall,
answering the double purpose of admitting light and letting out smoke.
The tenants of these wretched hovels exhibit the same miserable
appearance both in person and manners. They are hard-boned and
sallow-complexioned; the men wear coarse white woollen frocks, and a
round felt cap lined with wool, and shoes made of the bark of trees,
and their uncombed hair hangs low over their heads, generally of a
flaxen colour. Their agricultural implements are of the rudest kind. The
plough and harrow are made from the branches of the fir tree, without
either iron or ropes; their carts are put together without iron,
consisting of four small wheels, each of a single piece of wood; the
sides are made of the bark of a tree bent round, and the shafts are a
couple of fir branches; their bridles and traces platted from the bark
of trees, or composed merely of twisted branches. Their only instrument
to construct their huts and make their carts is a hatchet. They were
servile and cringing in their expressions of respect, bowing down to the
ground and stopping their carts as soon as we came near them, and stood
with their caps in their hands till we were out of sight. The whole
country, except in some open places around villages, is one immense
forest of firs, perhaps sixty feet in height, compact and thick, but
very slender. As we approached Minsk the road was sandy, and we entered
by a wooden bridge over a small stream and along an avenue of trees.
Minsk is one of the better class of Lithuanian towns, being the chief
town of the government of Minsk, but very dirty and irregular. The
principal street terminates in a large open square of grass and mean
wooden huts. From this another street goes off at right angles,
containing large houses, and joining with a second square, where some of
the principal buildings are of brick. From this square several streets
branch off, and enter a crowd of wooden hovels irregularly huddled
together, and covering a large space of ground. The churches are heavily
constructed, and in a style peculiar to Lithuania, their gable ends
fronting the street, and terminated at each corner by a square spire,
with a low dome between them. The population is half Catholic and half
Jewish, and the Jews are of the most filthy and abject class.
A few words with regard to the Jews in Poland. From the moment of
crossing the borders of Lithuania, I had remarked in every town and
village swarms of people differing entirely from the other inhabitants
in physical appearance and costume, and in whose sharply-drawn features,
long beards, and flowing dresses, with the coal-black eyes and oriental
costumes of the women, I at once recognised the dispersed and wandering
children of Israel. On the second destruction of Jerusalem, when the
Roman general drove a plough over the site of the Temple of Solomon, the
political existence of the Jewish nation was annihilated, their land was
portioned out among strangers, and the descendants of Abraham were
forbidden to pollute with their presence the holy city of their fathers.
In the Roman territories, their petition for the reduction of taxation
received the stern answer of the Roman, "Ye demand exemption from
tribute for your soil; I will lay it on the air you breathe;" and, in
the words of the historian, "Dispersed and vagabond, exiled from their
native soil and air, they wander over the face of the earth without a
king, either human or divine, and even as strangers they are not
permitted to salute with their footsteps their native land." History
furnishes no precise records of the emigration or of the first
settlement of the Israelites in the different countries of Europe; but
for centuries they have been found dispersed, as it was foretold they
would be, over the whole habitable world, a strange, unsocial, and
isolated people, a living and continued miracle. At this day they are
found in all the civilized countries of Europe and America, in the
wildest regions of Asia and Africa, and even within the walls of China;
but, after Palestine, Poland is regarded as their Land of Promise; and
there they present a more extraordinary spectacle than in any country
where their race is known. Centuries have rolled on, revolutions have
convulsed the globe, new and strange opinions have disturbed the human
race, but the Polish Jew remains unchanged: the same as the dark
superstition of the middle ages made him; the same in his outward
appearance and internal dispositions, in his physical and moral
condition, as when he fled thither for refuge from the swords of the
crusaders.
As early as the fourteenth century, great privileges were secured to the
Jews by Casimir the Great, who styled them his "faithful and able
subjects," induced, according to the chronicles of the times, like
Ahasuerus of old, by the love of a beautiful Esther. While in Germany,
Italy, Spain, Portugal, and even in England and France, their whole
history is that of one continued persecution, oppressed by the nobles,
anathematized by the clergy, despised and abhorred by the populace,
flying from city to city, arrested, and tortured, and burned alive, and
sometimes destroying themselves by thousands to escape horrors worse
than death; while all orders were arrayed in fierce and implacable
hatred against them, in Poland the race of Israel found rest; and there
they remain at this day, after centuries of residence, still a distinct
people, strangers and sojourners in the land, mingling with their
neighbours in the every-day business of life, but never mingling their
blood; the direct descendants of the Israelites who, three thousand
years ago, went out from the land of Egypt; speaking the same language,
and practising the laws delivered to Moses on the mountain of Sinai;
mourning over their fallen temple, and still looking for the Messiah who
shall bring together their scattered nation and restore their temporal
kingdom.
But notwithstanding the interest of their history and position, the
Polish Jews are far from being an interesting people; they swarm about
the villages and towns, intent on gain, and monopolizing all the petty
traffic of the country. Outward degradation has worked inward upon their
minds; confined to base and sordid occupations, their thoughts and
feelings are contracted to their stations, and the despised have become
despicable. It was principally in his capacity of innkeeper that I
became acquainted with the Polish Jew. The inn is generally a miserable
hovel communicating with, or a room partitioned off in one corner of, a
large shed serving as a stable and yard for vehicles; the entrance is
under a low porch of timber; the floor is of dirt; the furniture
consists of a long table, or two or three small ones, and in one corner
a bunch of straw, or sometimes a few raised boards formed into a
platform, with straw spread over it, for beds; at one end a narrow door
leads into a sort of hole filled with dirty beds, old women, half-grown
boys and girls, and children not overburdened with garments, and so
filthy that, however fatigued, I never felt disposed to venture among
them for rest. Here the Jew, assisted by a dirty-faced Rachel, with a
keen and anxious look, passes his whole day in serving out to the
meanest customers beer, and hay, and corn; wrangling with and extorting
money from intoxicated peasants; and, it is said, sometimes, after the
day's drudgery is over, retires at night to his miserable hole to pore
over the ponderous volumes filled with rabbinical lore; or sometimes his
mind takes a higher flight, meditating upon the nature of the human
soul; its relation to the Divinity; the connexion between the spirit and
the body; and indulging in the visionary hope of gaining, by means of
cabalistic formula, command over the spirits of the air, the fire, the
flood, and the earth.
Though the days of bitter persecution and hatred have gone by, the Jews
are still objects of contempt and loathing. Once I remember pointing out
to my postillion a beautiful Jewish girl, and, with the fanatic spirit
of the middle ages, himself one of the most degraded serfs in Poland, he
scorned the idea of marrying the fair daughter of Israel. But this the
Jew does not regard; all he asks is to be secured from the active enmity
of mankind. "Like the haughty Roman banished from the world, the
Israelite throws back the sentence of banishment, and still retreats to
the lofty conviction that his race is not excluded as an unworthy, but
kept apart as a sacred, people; humiliated, indeed, but still hallowed,
and reserved for the sure though tardy fulfilment of the Divine
promises."
The Jews in Poland are still excluded from all offices and honours, and
from all the privileges and distinctions of social life. Until the
accession of Nicolas, they were exempted from military service on
payment of a tax; but since his time they have been subject to the
regular conscription. They regard this as an alarming act of oppression,
for the boys are taken from their families at twelve or thirteen, and
sent to the army or the common military school, where they imbibe
notions utterly at variance with the principles taught them by their
fathers; and, probably, if the system continues, another generation will
work a great change in the character of the Jews of Poland.
But to return to the Jews at Minsk. As usual, they gathered around us
before we were out of our kibitka, laid hold of our baggage, and in
Hebrew, Lithuanian, and Polish, were clamorous in offers of service.
They were spare in figure, dressed in high fur caps and long black
muslin gowns, shining and glossy from long use and tied around the waist
with a sash; and here I remarked what has often been remarked by other
travellers, when the features were at rest, a style of face and
expression resembling the pictures of the Saviour in the galleries in
Italy. While my companion was arranging for posthorses and dinner, I
strolled through the town alone, that is, with a dozen Israelites at my
heels and on my return I found an accession of the stiff-necked and
unbelieving race, one of whom arrested my attention by thrusting before
me a silver coin. It was not an antique, but it had in my eyes a greater
value than if it had been dug from the ruins of a buried city, and bore
the image of Julius Caesar. On the breaking out of the late revolution,
one of the first acts of sovereignty exercised by the provincial
government was to issue a national coin stamped with the arms of the old
kingdom of Poland, the white eagle and the armed cavalier, with an
inscription around the rim, "God protect Poland." When the revolution
was crushed, with the view of destroying in the minds of the Poles every
memento of their brief but glorious moment of liberty, this coin was
called in and suppressed, and another substituted in its place, with
the Polish eagle, by way of insult, stamped in a small character near
the tip end of the wing of the double-headed eagle of Russia. The coin
offered me by the Jew was one of the emission of the revolution, and my
companion told me it was a rare thing to find one. I bought it at the
Jew's price, and put it in my pocket as a memorial of a brave and fallen
people.
I will not inflict upon the reader the particulars of our journey
through this dreary and uninteresting country. We travelled constantly,
except when we were detained for horses. We never stopped at night, for
there seldom was any shelter on the road better than the Jews' inns, and
even in our kibitka we were better than there. But, unluckily, on the
seventh day, our kibitka broke down; the off hind wheel snapped in
pieces, and let us down rather suddenly in one of the autocrat's
forests. Our first impulse was to congratulate ourselves that this
accident happened in daylight; and we had a narrow escape, for the sun
had hardly begun to find its way into the dark forest. Fortunately, too,
we were but two or three versts from a posthouse. I had met with such
accidents at home, and rigged a small tree (there being no such things
as rails, property there not being divided by rail fences) under the
hind axle, supporting it on the front. We lighted our pipes and escorted
our crippled vehicle to the posthouse, where we bought a wheel off
another wagon, much better than the old one, only about two inches
lower. This, however, was not so bad as might be supposed, at least for
me, who sat on the upper side, and had the stout figure of my companion
as a leaning-post.
At Sloghan, about two hundred versts from Brezc the frontier town of
Poland, we sold our kibitka for a breakfast, and took the _char de
poste_, or regular troika. This is the postboy's favourite vehicle; the
body being made of twigs interlaced like a long basket, without a
particle of iron, and so light that a man can lift up either end with
one hand. Our speed was increased wonderfully by the change; the horses
fairly played with the little car at their heels; the drivers vied with
each other, and several posts in succession we made nearly twenty versts
in an hour. It will probably be difficult to throw the charm of romance
around the troika driver; but he comes from the flower of the peasantry;
his life, passed on the wild highways, is not without its vicissitudes,
and he is made the hero of the Russian's favourite popular ballads:
"Away, away, along the road
The gallant troika bounds;
While 'neath the douga, sadly sweet,
Their Valdai bell resounds."[2]
We passed the house of a _very respectable_ seigneur who had married his
own sister. We stopped at his village and talked of him with the
postmaster, by whom he was considered a model of the domestic virtues.
The same day we passed the chateau of a nobleman who wrote himself
cousin to the Emperors of Russia and Austria, confiscated for the part
he took in the late Polish revolution, a melancholy-looking object,
deserted and falling to ruins, its owner wandering in exile with a price
upon his head. It rained hard during the day, for the first time since
we left Petersburgh; at night the rain ceased, but the sky was still
overcast. For a long distance, and, in fact, a great part of the way
from Petersburgh, the road was bordered with trees. At eleven o'clock we
stopped at a wretched posthouse, boiled water, and refreshed ourselves
with deep potations of hot tea. We mounted our troika, the postillion
shouted, and set off on a run. Heavy clouds were hanging in the sky; it
was so dark that we could not see the horses, and there was some little
danger of a breakdown; but there was a high and wild excitement in
hurrying swiftly through the darkness on a run, hearing the quick
tinkling of the bell and the regular fall of the horses' hoofs, and
seeing only the dark outline of the trees. We continued this way all
night, and toward morning we were rattling on a full gallop through the
streets of Brezc. We drove into a large stable-yard filled with
kibitkas, troikas, and all kinds of Russian vehicles, at one end of
which was a long low building kept by a Jew. We dismounted, and so ended
nearly three thousand miles of posting in Russia. The Jew, roused by our
noise, was already at the door with a lighted taper in his hand, and
gave us a room with a leather-covered sofa and a leather cushion for a
pillow, where we slept till eleven o'clock the next day.
We breakfasted, and in the midst of a violent rain crossed the Bug, and
entered the territory of Poland Proper. For many centuries the banks of
the Bug have been the battle-ground of the Russians and Poles. In the
time of Boleslaus the Terrible, the Russians were defeated there with
great slaughter, and the river was so stained with blood that it has
retained ever since the name of the _Horrid_. Before crossing we were
obliged to exchange our Russian money for Polish, rubles for florins,
losing, of course, heavily by the operation, besides being subjected to
the bore of studying a new currency; and the moment we planted our feet
on the conquered territory, though now nominally under the same
government, we were obliged to submit to a most vexatious process. The
custom-house stood at the end of the bridge, and, as matter of course,
our postillion stopped there. Our luggage was taken off the wagon,
carried inside, every article taken out and laid on the floor, and a
Russian soldier stood over, comparing them with a list of prohibited
articles as long as my arm. Fortunately for me, the Russian government
had not prohibited travellers from wearing pantaloons and shirts in
Poland, though it came near faring hard with a morning-gown. My
companion, however, suffered terribly; his wearing apparel was all laid
out on one side, while a large collection of curious and pretty
nothings, which he had got together with great affection at the capital,
as memorials for his friends at home, were laid out separately, boxes
opened, papers unrolled, and, with provoking deliberation, examined
according to the list of prohibited things. It was a new and despotic
regulation unknown to him, and he looked on in agony, every condemned
article being just the one above all others which he would have saved;
and when they had finished, a large pile was retained for the
examination of another officer, to be sent on to Warsaw in case of their
being allowed to pass at all. I had frequently regretted having allowed
the trouble and inconvenience to prevent my picking up curiosities; but
when I saw the treasures of my friend taken from him, or, at least,
detained for an uncertain time, I congratulated myself upon my good
fortune. My friend was a man not easily disheartened; he had even got
over the loss of his love at St. Petersburgh; but he would rather have
been turned adrift in Poland without his pantaloons than be stripped of
his precious bawbles. I had seen him roused several times on the road,
quarrelling with postmasters and thumping postillions, but I had never
before seen the full development of that extraordinary head of hair. He
ground his teeth and cursed the whole Russian nation, from the Emperor
Nicolas down to the soldier at the custom-house. He was ripe for
revolution, and, if a new standard of rebellion had been set up in
Poland, he would have hurried to range himself under its folds. I
soothed him by striking the key-note of his heart. All the way from
Petersburgh he had sat mechanically, with his pocket-glass and brush,
dressing his mustaches; but his heart was not in the work, until, as we
approached the borders of Poland, he began to recover from his
Petersburgh affair, and to talk of the beauty of the Polish women. I
turned him to this now.
It is a fact that, while for ages a deadly hatred has existed between
the Russians and the Poles, and while the Russians are at this day
lording it over the Poles with the most arbitrary insolence and tyranny,
beauty still asserts its lawful supremacy, and the Polish women bring to
their feet the conquerors of their fathers, and husbands, and brothers.
The first posthouse at which we stopped confirmed all that my companion
had said; for the postmaster's daughter was brilliantly beautiful,
particularly in the melting wildness of a dark eye, indicating an
Asiatic or Tartar origin; and her gentle influence was exerted in
soothing the savage humour of my friend, for she sympathized in his
misfortunes, and the more sincerely when she heard of the combs, and
rings, and slippers, and other pretty little ornaments for sisters and
female friends at home; and my Pole could not resist the sympathy of a
pretty woman.
We had scarcely left the postmaster's daughter, on the threshold of
Poland, almost throwing a romance about the Polish women, before I saw
the most degrading spectacle I ever beheld in Europe, or even in the
barbarous countries of the East. Forty or fifty women were at work in
the fields, and a large, well-dressed man, with a pipe in his mouth and
a long stick in his hand, was walking among them as overseer. In our
country the most common labouring man would revolt at the idea of his
wife or daughter working in the open fields. I had seen it, however, in
gallant France and beautiful Italy; but I never saw, even in the
barbarous countries of the East, so degrading a spectacle as this; and I
could have borne it almost anywhere better than in chivalric Poland.
We were now in the territory called Poland Proper, that is, in that part
which, after the other provinces had been wrested away and attached to
the dominions of the colossal powers around, until the revolution and
conquest of 1830 had retained the cherished name of the kingdom of
Poland. The whole road is Macadamized, smooth and level as a floor, from
the banks of the Bug to Warsaw; the posthouses and postmasters are much
better, and posting is better regulated, though more expensive. The road
lay through that rich agricultural district which had for ages made
Poland celebrated as the granary of Europe; and though the face of the
country was perfectly flat, and the scenery tame and uninteresting, the
soil was rich, and, at that time, in many places teeming with heavy
crops. As yet, it had not recovered from the desolating effects of the
war of the revolution. The whole road has been a battle-ground, over
which the Poles had chased the Russians to the frontier, and been driven
back to Warsaw; time after time it had been drenched with Russian and
Polish blood, the houses and villages sacked and burned, and their
blackened ruins still cumbered the ground, nursing in the conquered but
unsubdued Pole his deep, undying hatred of the Russians.
On this road Diebitsch, the crosser of the Balkan, at the head of eighty
thousand men, advanced to Warsaw. His right and left wings manoeuvred to
join him at Siedler, the principal town, through which we passed. We
changed horses three times, and rolled on all night without stopping. In
the morning my companion pointed out an old oak, where a distinguished
colonel of the revolution, drawing up the fourth Polish regiment against
the Imperial Guards, with a feeling of mortal hate commanded them to
throw away their primings, and charge with the bayonet, "Coeur a coeur."
In another place five hundred gentlemen, dressed in black, with pumps,
silk stockings, and small swords, in a perfect wantonness of pleasure at
fighting with the Russians, and, as they said, in the same spirit with
which they would go to a ball, threw themselves upon a body of the
guards, and, after the most desperate fighting, were cut to pieces to a
man. Farther on, a little off from the road, on the borders of the field
of Grokow, was a large mound covered with black crosses, thrown up over
the graves of the Poles who had fallen there. About eleven o'clock we
approached the banks of the Vistula. We passed the suburbs of Praga, the
last battle-ground of Kosciusko, where the bloodstained Suwarrow
butchered in cold blood thirty thousand Poles. Warsaw lay spread out on
the opposite bank of the river, the heroic but fallen capital of Poland,
the city of brave men and beautiful women; of Stanislaus, and Sobieski,
and Poniatowsky, and Kosciusko, and, I will not withhold it, possessing
in my eyes, a romantic interest from its associations with the hero of
my schoolboy days, Thaddeus of Warsaw. On the right is the chateau of
the old Kings of Poland, now occupied by a Russian viceroy, with the
banner of Russia waving over its walls. We rode over the bridge and
entered the city. Martial music was sounding, and Russian soldiers,
Cossacks, and Circassians were filing through its streets. We held up to
let them pass, and they moved like the keepers of a conquered city, with
bent brows and stern faces, while the citizens looked at them in gloomy
silence. We drove up to the Hotel de Leipsic (which, however, I do not
recommend), where I took a bath and a doctor.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] The douga is the bow over the neck of the middle horse, to which the
bell is attached; and Valdai the place on the Moscow road where the best
bells are made.