I was again setting out alone. My guide or conducteur was a Polish peasant. Without having seen him, I had calculated upon making ordinary human intelligence, to some extent, a medium of communication; but I found that I had been too soaring in my ideas of the divinity of human nature. When I returned to the hotel I found him lying on the sidewalk asleep; a servant kicked him up and pointed me out as his master for the journey. He ran up and kissed my hand, and, before I was aware of his intention, stooped down and repeated the same salutation on my boot. An American, perhaps, more than any other, scorns the idea of man's debasing himself to his fellow-man; and so powerful was this feeling in me, that before I went abroad I almost despised a white man whom I saw engaged in a menial office. I had outlived this feeling; but when I saw a tall, strong, athletic white man kneel down and kiss my foot, I could almost have spurned him from me. His whole dress was a long shirt coming down to his feet, supported by a broad leathern belt eight inches wide, which he used as a pocket, and a low, broad-brimmed hat, turned up all round, particularly at the sides, and not unlike the headgear of the Lebanon Shakers.
Before putting myself out of the reach of aid, I held a conversation with him through an interpreter. The lady of the major had made out a chart for me, specifying each day's journey, which he promised to observe, and added that he would be my slave if I would give him plenty to drink. With such a companion, then, I may say most emphatically that I was again setting out alone; but my calêche was even better than the Polish officer represented it, abundantly provided with pockets for provisions, books, &c., and altogether so much more comfortable than anything I was used to, that I threw myself back in it with a feeling of great satisfaction. I rolled for the last time through the streets of Warsaw; looked out upon the busy throng; and though, in the perfectly indifferent air with which they turned to me, I felt how small a space I occupied in the world, I lighted my pipe and smoked in their faces, and, with a perfect feeling of independence toward all the world, at one o'clock I arrived at the barrier.
Here I found, to my great vexation, that I was an object of special consideration to the Emperor of Russia. A soldier came out for my passport, with which he went inside the guardhouse, and in a few minutes returned with the paper in his hands to ask me some question. I could not answer him. He talked at me a little while, and again went within doors. After sitting for a few moments, vexed at the detention, but congratulating myself that if there was any irregularity it had been discovered before I had advanced far on my journey, I dismounted and went inside, where, after detaining me long enough to make me feel very uncomfortable, they endorsed the visé and let me go. I again lighted my pipe, and in the mildness and beauty of the day, the comfort of my calêche, and the docility and accommodating spirit of my peasant, forgot my past, and even the chance of future difficulties. There was nothing particularly attractive in the road; the country was generally fertile, though tame and uninteresting. Late in the afternoon we stopped at a little town, of which I cannot make out the name. Like all the other towns on this side of Warsaw, in the centre was a square, with a range of wooden houses built all around fronting on the square, and the inhabitants were principally Jews. My peasant took off his horses and fed them in the square, and I went into a little kukernia, much cleaner and better than the town promised, where I had a cup of coffee and a roll of bread, and then strolled around the town, which, at this moment, presented a singular spectacle. The women and children were driving into the square herds of cows from the pasture-grounds in the unenclosed plains around; and, when all were brought in, each proprietor picked out his own cow and drove her home, and in a few moments opposite almost every house stood the family cow, with a woman or child milking her. After this the cows strolled back into the square to sleep till morning.
A little before dark we started, and, after a fine moonlight ride, at about ten o'clock drove into a sort of caravanserai, being simply a large shed or covered place for wagons and horses, with a room partitioned off in one corner for eating and sleeping. There were, perhaps, fifteen or twenty wagons under the shed, and their wagoners were all assembled in this room, some standing up and eating off a board stretched along the wall, some drinking, some smoking, and some already asleep on the floor. In one corner was a party of Jews, with the contents of a purse emptied before them, which they were dividing into separate parcels. The place was kept by a Jew, who, with his wife, or some woman belonging to the establishment, old and weatherbeaten, was running about serving and apparently quarrelling with all the wagoners. She seemed particularly disposed to quarrel with me, I believe because I could not talk to her, this being, in her eyes, an unpardonable sin. I could understand, however, that she wanted to prepare me a supper; but my appetite was not tempted by what I saw around me, and I lighted my pipe and smoked. I believe she afterward saw something in me which made her like me better; for while the wagoners were strewing themselves about the floor for sleep, she went out, and returning with a tolerably clean sheaf of straw under each arm, called me to her, and shaking them out in the middle of the floor, pointed me to my bed. My pipe was ended, and putting my carpet-bag under my head, I lay down upon the straw; and the old woman climbed up to a sort of platform in one corner, where, a moment after, I saw her sitting up with her arms above her head, with the utmost nonchalance changing her innermost garment.
I was almost asleep, when I noticed a strapping big man, muffled up to the eyes, standing at my feet and looking in my face. I raised my head, and he walked round, keeping his eyes fixed upon me, and went away. Shortly after he returned, and again walking round, stopped and addressed me, "Spreechen sie Deutsch?" I answered by asking him if he could speak French; and not being able, he went away. He returned again, and again walked round as before, looking steadily in my face. I rose on my elbow, and followed him with my eyes till I had turned completely round with him, when he stopped as if satisfied with his observations, and in his broadest vernacular opened bluntly, "Hadn't we better speak English?" I need not say that I entirely agreed with him. I sprang up, and catching his hand, asked him what possessed him to begin upon me in Dutch; he replied by asking why I had answered in French, adding that his stout English figure ought to have made me know better; and after mutual good-natured recriminations, we kicked my straw bed about the floor, and agreed to make a night of it. He was the proprietor of a large iron manufactory, distant about three days' journey, and was then on his way to Warsaw. He went out to his carriage, and one of his servants produced a stock of provisions like the larder of a well-furnished hotel; and as I had gone to bed supperless, he seemed a good, stout, broad-shouldered guardian angel sent to comfort me. We sat on the back seat of the carriage, making a table of the front; and when we had finished, and the fragments were cleared away, we stretched our legs on the table, lighted our pipes, and talked till we fell asleep on each other's shoulder. Notwithstanding our intimacy so far, we should not have known each other by daylight, and at break of day we went outside to examine each other. It was, however, perhaps hardly worth while to retain a recollection of features; for, unless by some such accident as that which brought us together, we never shall meet again. We wrote our names in each other's pocketbook as a memorial of our meeting, and at the same moment started on our opposite roads.
CHAPTER XIII.
Friendly Solicitude.—Raddom.—Symptoms of a Difficulty.—A Court of Inquisition.—Showing a proper Spirit.—Troubles thickening.—Approaching the Climax.—Woman's Influence.—The Finale.—Utility of the Classics.—Another Latinist.—A Lucky Accident.—Arrival at Cracow.
At about eight o'clock we stopped to feed, and at the feeding-place met a German wagoner, who had lived in Hamburgh, and spoke English. He seemed much distressed at my not understanding the language of the country. He was a stout, burly fellow, eating and drinking all the time, and his great anxiety was lest I should starve on the road. He insisted upon my providing against such a fatality, and had a couple of fowls roasted for me, and wrapped in a piece of coarse brown paper; and, at parting, backed by a group of friends, to whom he had told my story, he drank schnaps (at my expense) to my safe arrival at Cracow.
At eleven o'clock we reached Raddom. There was a large swinging gate at the barrier of the town, and the soldier opening it demanded my passport to be viséd by the police; he got into the calêche with me, and we drove into the town, stopped in the public square, and went to the bureau together. He left me in an antechamber, and went within, promising, by his manner, to expedite the business, and intimating an expectation of schnaps on his return. In a few minutes he returned, and barely opening the door for me to enter, hurried off, apparently with some misgivings about his schnaps. I entered, and found three or four men, who took no notice of me. I waited a few moments, and seeing my passport on a table before one of them, went up, and, certainly without intending anything offensive, took up the passport with a view of calling his attention to it; he jerked it out of my hand, and looking at me with an imperious and impertinent air, at the same time saying something I have no doubt in character with the expression of his face, he slapped it down on the table. Two or three officers coming in, looked at it, and laid it down again, until at length one man, the head of that department, I suppose, took it up, wrote a note, and giving the note and the passport to a soldier, directed me to follow him. The soldier conducted me to the bureau of the government, the largest building, and occupying a central position in the town, and left me in an antechamber with the usual retinue of soldiers and officers. In about a quarter of an hour he came out without the passport, and pulled me by the sleeve to follow him. I shook my head, asked for the passport, and, in fact, moved toward the door he had left. He seemed a good-hearted fellow, and, anxious to save me from any imprudence, pulled me back, held up his fingers, and pointing to the clock, told me to return at one; and touching his hat respectfully, with probably the only French words he knew, "Adieu, seigneur," and a look of real interest, hurried away.