JOURNEY TO BRCZWEZMCISL.
I had but just quitted the university, and was a mere stripling, when I received the appointment of judge-commissary at a little town in New East Prussia, as the part of Poland was termed which, during the partition of that country, had fallen to the share of Prussia.
I will not weary the reader by giving any lengthened account of my journey; the country was but one flat throughout, the men mere boors, the officials uncouth, the accommodation execrable. Yet the people all seemed happy enough. Man and beast have each their allotted elements. The fish perishes when out of water—the elegance of a boudoir would prove fatal to a Polish Jew.
Well, to make my story short, I arrived one evening, a little before sunset, at a place called, I believe (but should be sorry to vouch for my accuracy), Brczwezmcisl, a pleasant little town enough. When I say pleasant, to be sure I own that the streets were unpaved, the houses begrimed with soot, and the natives not over refined either in manners or person; but a man who works in a coal-mine is pleasant, after his fashion, even as the pet figurante of the day after hers.
I had pictured to myself Brczwezmcisl, the place where I was to enter upon my functions, as far more formidable than I in fact found it, and perhaps on that account I was now prepared to term it pleasant. I remember that the first time I tried to pronounce the name of the place I very nearly brought on lock-jaw. Hence, no doubt, my gloomy anticipations as to its appearance. Names certainly do influence our ideas to a most marvelous extent. Moreover, what mainly contributed to enhance my secret misgivings as to the town destined to enjoy the benefit of my talents was the fact that I had never yet been so far from home as to lose sight of its church steeple. I had a tolerable idea that my way did not lead me in the vicinity of the Cannibal Islands, or of the lands where men's heads "do grow beneath their shoulders;" but I was not without some apprehension, as I journeyed on, of receiving an occasional pistol-shot, or feeling the cold steel of a stiletto between my ribs.
My heart throbbed violently as I caught the first glimpse of Brczwezmcisl. It appeared, at a distance, a vast plain, covered with mud-heaps. But what mattered that to one of my imaginative powers? There was my goal, there my entering scene in life. Not a soul did I know there, with the exception of an old college acquaintance, named Burkhardt, who had been but recently appointed collector of taxes at Brczwezmcisl. I had apprised him of my near advent, and requested him to provide me with temporary lodgings. The nearer I approached the town, the keener waxed my esteem and friendship for Burkhardt, with whom I had never been on terms of intimacy; indeed, my mother enjoined me always to shun his society, seeing that his reputation for steadiness was not of the highest. But now I was his till death. He was my only rallying point in this wild Polish town; he was the sole plank to which I could cling.
I am not of a superstitious character, but I own to a certain belief in omens; and I had settled in my mind that it would be a lucky sign if the first person we met coming out of the town gates should prove a young woman, and the reverse if one of the other sex. As we were about to enter the town a girl, to all appearance comely and well-made, issued from the gate. Damsel of happy augury! Fain could I have quitted the cumbrous vehicle, and cast my travel-worn frame prostrate at your feet. I wiped my eye-glass that I might not lose one of her features, but grave them for ever in the tablets of my memory.
As she came nearer, I discovered to my dismay that my Brczwezmcisl Venus was a thought hideous. Slim she was, good sooth, but it was the slimness of one wasted by disease! shape and figure had she none. Her face was a perfect surface, for some untoward accident had deprived her of her nose; and had it not been for the merest apology for lips, her head might have been taken for the skull of a skeleton. As we came yet nearer, I remarked that the fair Pole was a warm patriot; for she put out her tongue at me in derision of her nation's oppressors, whose countryman I was.
Under these happy auspices we entered the town, and halted at the Post-office, newly decorated with the Prussian eagle, which would have shown to much greater advantage, in all the glories of fresh paint, had not some patriotic little street blackguards adorned it with a thick coating of mud.