After dinner we took an open carriage, and at the barrier entered one of the numerous avenues of the Ujazdow, leading to Belvidere, the country residence of the late Grand-duke Constantine. The avenue is divided by rows of old and stately trees, terminating in a large circular octagon, from which branch off eight other avenues, each at a short distance crossed by others, and forming a sort of labyrinth, said to be one of the finest drives and promenades in Europe, and on Sundays the rendezvous of nearly the entire population of Warsaw. It was a beautiful afternoon, and the throng of carriages, and horsemen, and thousands of pedestrians, and the sun, occasionally obscured and then breaking through the thick foliage, darkening and again lighting up the vista through the trees, gave a beauty to the landscape, and a variety and animation to the scene, that I had not yet found in Warsaw. Passing the Belvidere Palace, my companions described the manner in which the students had made their attack upon it, and pointed out the window by which Constantine escaped. Turning from one of the splendid avenues of the Ujazdow, we crossed a stone bridge, on which stands the equestrian statue of John Sobieski, his horse rearing over the body of a prostrate Turk; it was erected to him as the saviour of Christendom after he had driven the Turks from the walls of Vienna. Beyond this we entered the grounds and park of Lazienki, formerly the country residence of Stanislaus Augustus, situated in a most delightful spot on the banks of the Vistula.
The royal villa stands in the midst of an extensive park of stately old trees, and the walks lead to a succession of delightful and romantic spots, adorned with appropriate and tasteful buildings. Among them, on an island reached by crossing a rustic bridge, are a winter and a summer theatre, the latter constructed so as to resemble, in a great measure, an ancient amphitheatre in ruins; in it performances used formerly to take place in the open air. I am not given to dreaming, and there was enough in the scenes passing under my eyes to employ my thoughts; but, as I wandered through the beautiful walks, and crossed romantic bridges, composed of the trunks and bended branches of trees, I could not help recurring to the hand that had planned these beauties, the good King Stanislaus.
"Dread Pultowa's day,
When fortune left the royal Swede,"
hurled Stanislaus from his throne; and as I stood under the portico of his palace, I could but remember that its royal builder had fled from it in disguise, become a prisoner to the Turks, and died an exile in a foreign land.
From here we rode to the chateau of Villanow, another and one of the most interesting of the residences of the kings of Poland, constructed by John Sobieski and perhaps the only royal structure in Europe which, like some of the great edifices of Egypt and Rome, was erected by prisoners taken in war, being constructed entirely by the hands of Turkish captives. It was the favourite residence of Sobieski, where he passed most of his time when not in arms, and where he closed his days. Until lately, the chamber and bed on which he died might still be seen. The grounds extend for a great distance along the banks of the Vistula, and many of the noble trees which now shade the walks were planted by Sobieski's own hands. The reign of Sobieski is the most splendid era in the history of Poland. The great statue I had just passed presented him as the conqueror of the Turks, the deliverer of Christendom, the redoubtable warrior, riding over the body of a prostrate Mussulman; and every stone in the palace is a memorial of his warlike triumphs; but if its inner chambers could tell the scenes of which they had been the witness, loud and far as the trumpet of glory has sounded his name, no man would envy John Sobieski. The last time he unsheathed his sword, in bitterness of heart he said, "It will be easier to get the better of the enemies I am in quest of than my own sons." He returned broken with vexation and shattered with wounds, more than sixty years old, and two thirds of his life spent in the tented field; his queen drove his friends from his side, destroyed that domestic peace which he valued above all things, and filled the palace with her plots and intrigues. He had promised to Zaluski an office which the queen wished to give to another. "My friend," said the dying monarch, "you know the rights of marriage, and you know if I can resist the prayers of the queen; it depends, then, on you that I live tranquil or that I be constantly miserable. She has already promised to another this vacant office, and if I do not consent to it I am obliged to fly my house. I know not where I shall go to die in peace. You pity me; you will not expose me to public ridicule." Old and infirm, with gray hairs and withered laurels, a prey to lingering disease, the deathbed of the dying warrior was disturbed by a noise worse than the din of battle; and before the breath had left him, an intriguing wife and unnatural children were wrangling over his body for the possession of his crown. A disgraceful struggle was continued a short time after his death. One by one his children died, and there is not now any living of the name of Sobieski.
The next day I visited the field of Vola, celebrated as the place of election of the Kings of Poland. It is about five miles from Warsaw, and was formerly surrounded by a ditch with three gates, one for great Poland, one for little Poland, and one for Lithuania. In the middle were two enclosures, one of an oblong shape, surrounded by a kind of rampart or ditch, in the centre of which was erected, at the time of election, a vast temporary building of wood, covered at the top and open at the sides, which was called the zopa, and occupied by the senate; and the other of a circular shape, called the kola, in which the nuncios assembled in the open air. The nobles, from a hundred and fifty thousand to two hundred thousand in number, encamped on the plain in separate bodies under the banners of their respective palatinates, with their principal officers in front on horseback. The primate, having declared the names of the candidates, kneeled down and chanted a hymn; and then, mounting on horseback, went round the plain and collected the votes, the nobles not voting individually, but each palatinate in a body. It was necessary that the election should be unanimous, and a single nobleman peremptorily stopped the election of Ladislaus VII. Being asked what objection he had to him, he answered, "None at all; but I will not suffer him to be king." After being by some means brought over, he gave the king as the reason for his opposition, "I had a mind to see whether our liberty was still in being or not. I am satisfied that it is, and your majesty shall not have a better subject than myself." If the palatinates agreed, the primate asked again, and yet a third time if all were satisfied; and, after a general approbation, three times proclaimed the king; and the grand marshal of the crown repeated the proclamation three times at the gates of the camp. It was the exercise of this high privilege of electing their own king which created and sustained the lofty bearing of the Polish nobles, inducing the proud boast which, in a moment of extremity, an intrepid band made to their king, "What hast thou to fear with twenty thousand lances? If the sky should fall, we would keep it up with their points." But, unhappily, although the exercise of this privilege was confined only to the nobles, the election of a king often exhibited a worse picture than all the evils of universal suffrage with us. The throne was open to the whole world; the nobles were split into contending factions; foreign gold found its way among them, and sometimes they deliberated under the bayonets of foreign troops. Warsaw and its environs were a scene of violence and confusion, and sometimes the field of Vola was stained with blood. Still no man can ride over that plain without recurring to the glorious hour when Sobieski, covered with laurels won in fighting the battles of his country, amid the roar of cannon and the loud acclamations of the senate, the nobles, and the army, was hailed the chosen king of a free people.
I had enough of travelling post, and was looking out for some quiet conveyance to Cracow. A Jew applied to me, and I went with him to look at his carriage, which I found at a sort of "Bull's-head" stopping-place, an enormous vehicle without either bottom or top, being a species of framework like our hay-wagons, filled with straw to prevent goods and passengers from spilling out. He showed me a couple of rough-looking fellows, who would be my compagnons de voyage, and who said that we could all three lie very comfortably in the bottom of the vehicle. Their appearance did not add to the recommendation of the wagon; nevertheless, if I had understood the language and been strong enough for the rough work, I should perhaps have taken that conveyance, as, besides the probable incidents of the journey, it would give me more insight into the character of the people than a year's residence in the capital. Returning to my hotel, I found that a Polish officer had left his address, with a request for me to call upon him. I went, and found a man of about forty, middle sized, pale and emaciated, wounded and an invalid, wearing the Polish revolutionary uniform. It was the only instance in which I had seen this dress. After the revolution it had been absolutely proscribed; but the country being completely subdued, and the government in this particular case not caring to exercise any unnecessary harshness, he was permitted to wear it unmolested. It was, however, almost in mockery that he still wore the garb of a soldier; for if Poland had again burst her chains, and the unsheathed sword were put in his hands, he could not have struck a blow to help her. Unfortunately, he could not speak French, or, rather, I may say fortunately, for in consequence of this I saw his lady, a pensive, melancholy, and deeply-interesting woman, dressed in black, in mourning for two gallant brothers who died in battle under the walls of Warsaw.
Their business with me was of a most commonplace nature. They had lately returned from a visit to some friends at Cracow, in a calêche hired at the frontier; and hearing from the peasant who drove them that a stranger was looking for a conveyance to that place, out of good-will to him desired to recommend him to me. The lady had hardly finished a sort of apologizing commencement before I had resolved to assent to almost anything she proposed; and when she stated the whole case, it was so exactly what I wanted, that I expressed myself under great obligations for the favour done me. I suggested, however, my doubts as to the propriety of undertaking the journey alone, without any interpreter; but, after a few words with the major, she replied that she would give full directions to the peasant as to the route. As the carriage could not go beyond the frontier, her husband would give me a letter to the commissaire at Michoof, who spoke French, and also to the postmaster; and, finally, she would herself make out for me a vocabulary of the words likely to be most necessary, so as to enable me to ask for bread, milk, eggs, &c.; and with this, and the Polish for "how much," I would get along without any difficulty. While she was writing, another officer came in, old and infirm, and also dressed in the Polish uniform. She rose from the table, met him almost at the door, kissed him affectionately, led him to a seat, and barely mentioning him to me as "mon beau père," resumed her work. While she was writing I watched attentively the whole three, and the expression of face with which the two officers regarded her was unspeakably interesting. They were probably unconscious of it, and perhaps it was only my fancy, but if the transient lighting of their sunken eyes meant anything, it meant that they who sat there in the garb and equipment of soldiers, who had stood in all the pride and vigour of manhood on bloody battle-fields, now looked to a feeble and lovely woman as their only staff and support in life. I would have told them how deeply I sympathized in the misfortunes of their suffering country, but their sadness seemed too deep and sacred. I knew that I could strike a responsive chord by telling them that I was an American, but I would not open their still bleeding wounds; at parting, however, I told them that I should remember in my own country and to their countrymen the kindness shown me here; and as soon as I mentioned that I was an American, the lady asked me the fate of her unhappy countrymen who had been landed as exiles on our shores, and I felt proud in telling them that they had found among our citizens that sympathy which brave men in misfortune deserve, and that our government had made a provision in land for the exiled compatriots of Kosciusko. She inquired particularly about the details of their occupation, and expressed the fear that their habits of life, most of them having been brought up as soldiers, unfitted them for usefulness among us. I did not then know how prophetic were her forebodings, and was saved the necessity of telling her, what I afterward read in a newspaper, that an unhappy portion of that band of exiles, discontented with their mode of life, in attempting to cross the Rocky Mountains were cut to pieces by a party of Indians. Under the pressure of their immediate misfortunes they had not heard the fate of the exiles, and a ray of satisfaction played for a moment over their melancholy features in hearing that they had met with friends in America; and they told me to say to the Poles wherever I found them, that they need never again turn their eyes toward home. She added that the time had been when she and her friends would have extended the hand of welcome to a stranger in Poland; that, when a child, she had heard her father and brothers talk of liberty and the pressure of a foreign yoke, but, living in affluence, surrounded by friends and connexions, she could not sympathize with them, and thought it a feeling existing only in men, which women could not know; but actual occurrences had opened her eyes; her family had been crushed to the earth, her friends imprisoned, killed, or driven into exile, and yet, she added, turning to her husband and father, she ought not to mourn, for those dearest to her on earth were spared. But I could read in her face, as she bent her eyes upon their pallid features, that she felt they were spared only for a season.
Reluctantly I bade them farewell. A servant waited to go with me and show me the calêche, but I told him it was not worth while. I was in no humour for examining the spokes of carriage-wheels; and, if I had been obliged to ride on the tongue, I believe I should have taken it. I went to my hotel, and told my friend of my interview with the major and his lady. He knew them by reputation, and confirmed and strengthened all the interest I took in them, adding that both father and son had been among the first to take up arms during the revolution, and at its unhappy termination were so beloved by the people of Warsaw that, in their wounded and crippled state, the Russian government had not proceeded to extremities with them.
I spent my last evening in Warsaw with my Pole and several of his friends at a herbata, that is, a sort of confectioner's shop, like a café in the south of Europe, where, as in Russia, tea is the popular drink. The next morning, as usual, my passport was not ready. My valet had been for it several times, and could not get it. I had been myself to the police-office, and waited until dark, when I was directed to call the next morning. I went at a little after eight, but I will not obtrude upon the reader the details of my vexation, nor the amiable feelings that passed my mind in waiting till twelve o'clock in a large anteroom. In my after wanderings I sometimes sat down upon a stump or on the sands of the desert, and meditated upon my folly in undergoing all manner of hardships when I might be sitting quietly at home; but when I thought of passports in Russia and Poland, I shook myself with the freedom of a son of the desert, and with the thought that I could turn my dromedary's head which way I pleased, other difficulties seemed light. Ancient philosophers extolled uniformity as a great virtue in a young man's character; and, if so, I was entitled to the highest praise, for in the matter of arranging my passport I was always in a passion. I do not know a single exception to the contrary. And if there was one thing more vexatious than another, it was in the case at Warsaw, where, after having been bandied from office to office, I received my passport, still requiring the signature of the governor, and walked up to the palace, nursing my indignation, and expecting an accumulation, I was ushered in by guards and soldiers, and at once disarmed of all animosity by the politeness and civility of the principal officers of government. I was almost sorry to be obliged to withhold my intended malediction. I hurried back to my hotel. My friend, with three or four of his Warsaw acquaintances, was waiting to see the last of me; my calêche was at the door, and I was already late for a start. I took my seat and bade them farewell. I promised to write to him on my arrival in Paris, and to continue a correspondence on my return home. Most unfortunately, I lost his address. He lived in some town in Poland, near the frontiers of Prussia, and probably at this moment thinks of me unkindly for my apparent neglect. Possibly we may meet again, though probably never; but if we do, though it do not happen till our heads are gray, we will have a rich fund of satisfaction in the recollections of our long journey to Warsaw.