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 manœuvred 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, "Cœur à cœur." 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.