“Yet you are very pale.”
“Oh!” I replied eagerly, “do not think it is from fear. Six weeks ago I was wounded in an engagement with your troops, and to-day I have gone out for the first time.”
Here the Muscovite smiled.
“What is your age? Nineteen? Do you know that there are very few Poles as young as you are who would face death in this way without a shudder?”
“But I am not a Pole; I am French.”
“Do you speak the truth?”
“I never lie,” I replied, presenting him my man’s passport.
He examined it carefully.
“This saves you,” he said at last, beginning to be almost civil. “We have not yet the right to hang the French, even though they may have fought with the rebel troops. I shall send you with an escort across the frontier of Silesia; but if ever you again set foot on Russian soil you will be hanged without mercy and without shrift.”
I was sent out of his presence, escorted by two Cossacks, thoroughly unlicked bears, who had orders to shoot me on the least suspicious movement on my part. I had the pleasure of these gentlemen’s society in a third-class carriage during the whole journey from Myszkow to Szczakowa—that is, for four mortal hours. You can imagine, therefore, that I did not breathe freely till I had stepped out of the carriage and found myself once more on Silesian soil, released from their attentions.