“According to my lights, I was,” admitted Cartoner.
Martin laughed again. It is a gay heart that can be amused at three in the morning.
“The truth is,” continued Martin, in his quick and rather heedless way, “that we Poles are under a cloud in Europe now. We are the wounded man by the side of the road from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and there is a tendency to pass by on the other side. We are a nation with a bad want, and it is nobody's business to satisfy it. Everybody is ready, however, to admit that we have been confoundedly badly treated.”
He tossed off his coffee as he spoke, and turned in his chair to nod an acknowledgment to the profound bows of a gold-laced official who had approached him, and who now tendered an envelope, with some murmured words of politeness.
“Thank you—thank you,” said Prince Martin, and slipped the envelope within his pocket.
“It is my passport,” he explained to Cartoner, lightly. “All the rest of you will receive yours when you are in the train. Mine is the doubtful privilege of being known here, and being a suspected character. So they are doubly polite and doubly watchful. As for you, at Alexandrowo you rejoice in a happy obscurity. You will pass in with the crowd, I suppose.”
“I always try to,” replied Cartoner. Which was strictly true.
“You see,” went on Martin, not too discreetly, considering their environments, “we cannot forget that we were a great nation before there was a Russian Empire or an Austrian Empire or a German Empire. We are a landlady who has seen better days; who has let her lodgings to three foreign gentlemen who do not pay the rent—who make us clean their boots and then cast them at our heads.”
The doors of the great room had now been thrown open, and the passengers were passing slowly out to the long, deserted platform. It was almost daylight now, and the train was drawn up in readiness to start, with a fresh engine and new officials. The homeliness of Germany had vanished, giving place to that subtle sense of discomfort and melancholy which hangs in the air from the Baltic to the Pacific coast.
“I hope you will stay a long time in Warsaw,” said Martin, as they walked up the platform. “My father and sister will be coming home before long, and will be glad to see you. We will do what we can to make the place tolerable for you. We live in the Kotzebue, and I have a horse for you when you want it. You know we have good horses in Warsaw, as good as any. And the only way to see the country is from the saddle. We have the best horses and the worst roads.”