LL this happened long, long ago, in the days when birds and beasts could talk in human speech, and the Polish magnates went about in long 'kountoushi'[3]—coats embroidered with gold and silver, with sleeves slung on behind—and possessed serfs. Perhaps you do not know what a 'serf' was in the old times? Well, a serf was a person just like the rest of us, only he was bound to the land by law; he had not the right to go and live in any other place, and if the land was sold, he was sold with it; he tilled the land, though not for his own profit, but for the profit of the landowner. It was not only in Poland that there used to be these serfs and landlords who owned them, but in all countries—in ours as well as every other; and everywhere the serfs had a hard time of it. Those landlords who had any conscience and commonsense, and who were not in any great need of money, made their serfs work for them a certain part of their time, and bring them eggs, flax, etc.; the rest of their time and goods the serfs could dispose of as they thought fit. Others regarded their peasants as beasts of burden, belonging to them body and soul; they forced the peasants to work for them as much as was possible, and thought they had a right to all the peasants' property. But whether the serf-owner was personally good or bad, it was a loathsome thing in itself that one human being should own another.
One day a Polish 'Pan' (nobleman) of this kind was riding through a village on his land. The green sleeves of his bright-coloured koúntoush streamed back from his shoulders, fluttering in the breeze; his fine dappled horse stepped impatiently under its rider, tossing flakes of white foam from its mouth; and Pan Podliásski himself glanced haughtily to the right and left. The wretched, bare look of the peasants' huts and ruinous farmyards did not distress him at all; in Pan Podliásski's opinion a serf was a serf for nothing else but to be always ragged, dirty, and miserable. Suddenly, as he passed one of the huts, the landlord raised his eyebrows in angry surprise; in the bare and filthy yard stood a first-rate grindstone.
'Where did a rascally serf get such a capital grindstone?' he thought; and turning to his steward, who was riding behind with two or three noble retainers, he asked: 'Whose yard is this?'
'Stanislas Kogoútek's, most illustrious Pan,' respectfully answered the steward.
'Why is the grindstone here?'
'It does not belong to the manor; we have not such a good grindstone,' replied the steward, understanding the mistake of the magnate, who supposed the grindstone to be his, and to have come into the peasant's yard by chance.
'Here! Khlop!' (serf!), cried Pan Podliásski.
A middle-aged peasant, bareheaded, barefooted, and wearing nothing but a shirt and trousers of coarse sacking, ran out of the hut at this summons. He approached his master, bowing humbly, fell on his knees before him, bowed to the ground, and, rising, kissed his stirrup, after which he bowed again.
'Whose is the grindstone?' asked the landlord, frowning.