Part 2

_November 25, 1806._ St. Catherine’s day. This was to have been my wedding-day. St. Catherine is the patroness of happy marriages. It is altogether impossible for Prince Adam to leave Russia. The only hope of Polish freedom is his friendship with the Emperor. Now is a momentous time. He must be at his ear to estimate his moods, that he may whisper at the propitious moment, _memento Poloniæ_! He writes: “We Poles who have lost the right to fight upon the field of battle, must, as a last necessity, resort to the coward’s weapons--cajolery and diplomacy.”

* * * * *

_November 27, 1806._ Napoleon is in Posen!

* * * * *

_December 18, 1806._ I received a letter from Prince Adam to-day which brings us nearer together than any he has written before. He has taken me into his confidence. He has a plan for saving Poland. It is this; to use his influence with the Emperor to bring about a defensive union of Russia and England, each of which alone is strong enough to check the advance of France. Then it will be to the advantage of each that Poland be independent, the future’s formidable barrier against continental aggression.

“I shall make Alexander see,” he writes, “that the partition of Poland was foolish.”

This is the object of his life. For this he is sacrificing his youth and his happiness at the Court of Russia.

My honored mother says, in case he succeeds, a king will be chosen for Poland, and it is sure to be either Prince Adam or Prince Poniatowski.

Nothing can make me believe that personal motives enter into his ambition. He is the most disinterested of men. All this time that he has been Minister of Foreign Affairs for Russia, he has received no salary. He refused to accept money, orders, or insignia of rank from the nation that oppressed his race. He said that he considered it his duty to free Poland, since it was his own family, the Czartoryisky, who in ancient days first invited the Russians into the country.

He has no faith in Napoleon. He hates him. It is his desire to be the instrument of his downfall. He writes: “Napoleon is the scourge of Europe. It is the duty of nations to unite and make an end of him.”

As for Poland, no time is to be lost, because the nature of Alexander is undergoing a change. He no longer has Utopian dreams of presenting nations with their freedom. As far as his weak nature will permit, he is being Russianized. Now, when the subject of Poland is mentioned, there must be some other object--and that for Russia’s good.

Then he wrote of life and people in St. Petersburg. He went to the first night of the new opera, _Il Barbiere di Seviglia_. It was written by Signor Paisiello, a protégé of the Great Catherine.

There has been a new play brought out by a Russian at Knipper’s Theater--_Roslaw_ by Kniazin. Prince Adam did not care for it. However, as soon as it is put on sale at Glosunow’s, he will send me a copy that I may judge for myself.

* * * * *

_December 21, 1806._ Napoleon is in Warsaw! The joy of the people is beyond description. It must have been like this when our own king, Jan Sobieski, returned with conquering arms. We have greeted him as if our freedom were assured. But he has said nothing. He has made no promises.

The streets are gay with colors. Side by side are the gold eagle of France and the white eagle of Poland. The soldiers are banqueted everywhere. The people have gone mad and dance and sing without knowing why.

* * * * *

_January 5, 1807._ We have not given Napoleon a chance to ask for soldiers. They are rushing to him in such numbers it is as if the nation threw itself at his feet and cried: “_With the forehead! With the forehead!_”

Prince Poniatowski has raised a legion. Yesterday the consecration of their arms took place in Zielony Plac. When I looked at the youths kneeling at the altar, it seemed to me not a Christian consecration, but a pagan sacrifice of blood in honor of the modern Moloch--Napoleon.

* * * * *

_January 9, 1807._ My honored grandfather has returned from inspecting the French troops. He says that, in comparison with them, our old armies looked like a merrymaking at a country fair.

* * * * *

_January 11, 1807._ _I have met Napoleon!_ It was last night. I am still so excited that I do not know how to tell about it. The ladies of Warsaw have been vexed that he did not arrange for a presentation. Yesterday the invitation came. At nine-thirty we were assembled. We waited a full hour, standing in nervous expectation. At last the door by which we knew he would enter opened, and Talleyrand appeared. It seemed minutes before he spoke. Then he bowed and announced--“The Emperor!” The word had the voice of the thunders and filled all space. I can hear it now. “_The Emperor!!_”

He looked like a god who in haste had been made a man and made too small. By some accident his eyes met mine. For an instant it was as if we two were alone, unconscious of the crowd that swayed between.

As the ladies filed past and were presented, I felt that he was waiting for me. Then a terrible nervousness seized me, which expressed itself in a sort of exaltation, a wild and reckless daring.

When my turn came, he stepped forward eagerly and asked my name. “The Countess Tatjana Tschaska.”

He beckoned me to him. “I am sure now that I shall meet in Poland the only ruler whom I fear.”

“And whom may that be, Sire?”

“The Queen of Beauty,” bowing gallantly.

I retorted: “One of our Slav poets said long ago: ‘One need not fear a Russian Czar so greatly as a Polish woman.’” Then I courtesied and moved on.

As soon as the presentations were over, I saw him making his way toward me. On the instant I was the observed of all. The crowd fell back, seeing that it was his will, and left us alone. I was conscious of a sensation then which I hope will never be repeated in the course of my life. It was as if upon the instant all my ideals, all my standards of living, had been shattered. It was as if I had never lived before. It is in such moods that we do things that we regret and wonder at ever after. There was something within me that rushed to meet him, that swept barriers before it. Outwardly, however, I was calm.

When he came near enough to speak, he asked jestingly: “Are there really none but nobles in Poland?”

In an instant I was on my mettle, defiant and scornful. “Sire, it is easier to be a sovereign prince in France than a petty noble in Poland.” Then I read such admiration in his eyes I regretted the answer and hastened to make amends by inquiring, somewhat awkwardly: “Are you not home-sick for Paris, here in the North?”

“How could I be, when in Warsaw I have found another and a gayer Paris?”

“Why is it that it fascinates the foreigner so?”

“Because here the East and the West meet. The streets--how interesting--a scene from an opera; turbaned Mussulmans, Janizaries, Hungarians, Russians in pointed caps, Poles, Tartars--”

“And what of the people--people such as are here?”

“I do not care so much for the men, but I never saw such pretty women. In them, too, the East and the West meet. They unite the intelligence, the fine presence of the West with the fire and the languor of the East.”

I do not know what else we said. We talked with merriment and unrestraint. Then he bowed, spoke a few words with some of the others, and retired. He has gray-blue eyes that deepen and darken when he talks. He is very small for a man, but so exquisitely proportioned that he gives the impression of stateliness and height. His voice is beautiful. It makes the heart vibrate.

* * * * *

_January 12, 1807._ To-day the Emperor sent one of his aides to inquire for my health and to bring me a book--_Comte de Comminges_. An enclosed note says that this is his favorite book and that every time he reads it he weeps. Strange man who can see his fellows slaughtered by thousands, and weep over the mimic passions of a book!

* * * * *

_January 14, 1807._ At the Assembly last night, I was commanded to the Emperor’s whist table. No sooner had I sat down than he turned to me with the greatest unrestraint of manner. “What stakes shall we play for, my little Countess?”

“When one plays with the King of the World, Sire, it should be for nothing less than a kingdom.”

“Well, then, what shall it be? Name it!”

“The freedom of Poland, Sire.”

You cannot imagine the consternation. Every one was so frightened that I began to be frightened, too. He was not in the least vexed. No one knows better how to value bravery.

“Granted, my little Countess! And I will play for the heart of the bravest of Polish women.”

Then the game began. I cannot tell how furiously we played. It was as if the fate of the world hung in the balance. I never lived such an exciting hour. People crowded around to learn the result. Bets were made. Excitement rose to fever heat. I lost. He leaned across the table and grasped my hands. “Now you are mine. I have won you fairly, you little rebel!”

Then some one cried out,--Prince Murat I think it was: “Sire, I never thought to see you grasp the hand of Russia.”

“What do you mean?” was the somewhat startled answer.

“The Countess Tatjana, Sire, is the affianced bride of Prince Adam Czartoryisky, the real ruler of Imperial Russia.”

“It is my custom always to defeat my enemies,” he answered, but I saw that his face clouded.

“Wait!” I exclaimed. “Prince Adam and I may yet defeat you!”

* * * * *

_January 20, 1807._ In a letter received from Prince Adam to-day was this sentence: “Do not trust the French Emperor. He will deceive the Poles. He will make them promises he has no idea of keeping, and in return they will shed their blood for him by thousands. The people of the South, remember, are light of tongue.”

* * * * *

_January 26, 1807._ Warsaw is still wild over the Emperor. He possesses a strange magnetism. It is as if, like Prometheus, he had stolen the fire of the gods. He is mortal. It cannot last. I wonder if, like Prometheus, he will atone for his temerity by being chained to a rock in the sea that the vultures of envy may eat his heart!

* * * * *

_January 30, 1807._ Again last night I was commanded to the Emperor’s whist table. He had forgotten about our little unpleasantness and was unfeignedly glad to see me. As I entered, he was talking with the Prince General about Goethe, whom he met in Weimar. The Prince General moved away to make place for the players, and the Duke of Bassano came up.

“I must quote for our little Countess, Duke, that saying of Goethe’s which proves him to be a warrior like myself: ‘Women and fortresses were made to storm and take.’”

“When Goethe wrote that, Sire,” I answered, “two exceptions were understood--Russian fortresses and Polish women.”

Then you should have heard the laughter, which he took good-naturedly, replying: “I like spirit in a woman. It indicates race.”

After the game was over, we found ourselves alone. He insisted upon driving me home. We managed it without the others knowing; otherwise I should not have dared. When we were in the sleigh he said, as if he thought I would be greatly interested: “I am going away to-morrow--or the next day, my little Countess.”

“Where, Sire?”

“To White Russia.”

I started as if some terrible thing had been communicated to me, then replied: “Do not seek the wind in the open field.”[6]

The answer did not please him. Some minutes passed before he spoke. Then the conversation took an intimate turn. We drove for two hours at a furious pace, the horses’ feet striking diamonds from the snow. When we reached the white levels of the country, silent and cold in the silver night, I suddenly realized that in the nature of the man beside me were the same great spaces of cold and silence--like the steppe--which nothing could reclaim. For a moment fear rose in my heart.

He said a thousand fond and foolish things and at last asked me if I loved him.

I replied: “One worships the gods, Sire; one does not love them.”

When we reached home and got out of the sleigh, he stood looking at me in silence. His face looked paler than usual and more stern. Suddenly a sort of rage convulsed it. He drew me to him, held me close, and kissed my hair again and again. Then he leaped into the sleigh and was off without a word. For an instant the stars in the winter sky and the sparkling snow-stars upon the earth were one. A noise as of whirling waters dulled my ears. In love as in war he is fierce and furious.

* * * * *

_February 10, 1807._ There has been another battle. We do not know much about it, except that it must have been in the neighborhood of Eylau. I have not heard from Prince Adam. I wonder if he was there. I fancied him on one side and Napoleon on the other, with the black thundering cannon between.

* * * * *

_February 14, 1807._ Every day comes news of an engagement in which the French are successful. To-day a messenger came to me from the seat of war, bringing a small box. In it there was an ornament of diamonds, with a slip of paper, upon which was written: “Russian fortresses may be taken!”

* * * * *

_February 19, 1807._ The French have defeated the Russians at Ostrolenko.

* * * * *

_February 27, 1807._ Despite the war and the sad news that reaches us daily, the carnival has been merry. We do always dance in Warsaw. There is no denying it.

Last night being Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, we celebrated at the Prince General’s in the good old-fashioned way. We wore the Polish costume in compliance with the Prince General’s request. The ladies were resplendent in antique flowered court gowns of old English gilt-brocade; the gentlemen in gorgeous uniforms with all their decorations, long blue and white plumes tossing from their hats.

We began by dancing the Kracoviak, each with a glass of wine in his hand. At the turns of the dance, where the ladies whirl, half kneeling, and their full skirts spread out around them like the petals of a flower, each gentleman made the sign of the cross above his partner’s head with a glass of glowing wine. Then came a gavotte, then a Polonaise, and last the old-fashioned dance where we sing, “Oh, we love one another, yes, we love one another!” Thus we kept it up without once pausing. At midnight the Prince General’s chaplain entered and made a little talk upon the necessity of keeping the fast days. We followed him to the chapel, where mass was said. When he came to the place in the service where he reads, “_Cum jejunatis nolite fieri sicut Pharisæi_,” the men leaped to their feet, flashed their swords from jeweled scabbards, and set their plumed hats high upon their heads to signify that they would fight and die for the faith. It was a splendid and imposing sight--those solemn courtly figures glittering with gems and gold, under the fretful light of tapers in the pale winter dawn. I shall not soon forget it.

* * * * *

_April 20, 1807._ This has been a sad Lent, a veritable season of gloom. I do not know why. I have heard nothing from the Emperor.

* * * * *

MIODUSCHWESKI, NEAR WARSAW ON THE VISTULA.

_June 1, 1807._ Spring is here. Even spring is sad. Not even the birds are merry. Our peasants have sung their saddest songs at the planting. I have heard nothing from the Emperor.

* * * * *

_July 10, 1807._ The Peace of Tilsit has been signed. Prince Adam was there. France won her point, made alliance with Russia and left England out. Prince Adam is broken-hearted. Had Alexander been less weak, Poland would be free. An attempt to influence the mind of Alexander is like writing one’s name on water. There is a Russian proverb that says, however: “You must not expect a cuckoo to be a falcon.”

How discouraging has this long diplomatic battle been to Prince Adam! To it he has sacrificed his youth. Alexander has made use of his talent for ten years by luring him on with the hope of a free Poland. He says that at the Peace of Tilsit Napoleon jested and made all manner of fun of the Poles. Since he is no longer the champion of the people, he has degenerated into an ambitious knave, to whom the god of luck gave a touch of genius.

“Napoleon,” he writes, “is not a man of knightly honor with the blood of kings in his veins. He is merely an adventurous usurper eager for power. He is the first exponent of a modern commercial world whose dawn is just at hand--a world wherein everything will be negotiable, everything will have its price. The chivalric spirit of the past will exist no longer; nothing comparable will exist again after the sword of Napoleon has passed over it.”

(Here the loss of a number of leaves from the diary causes an interruption in the story. It is taken up again with the year 1812).

* * * * *

ZAOZAIMA, NEAR WILNA IN LITHUANIA.

_June 15, 1812._ I have just reached Zaozaima to oversee for the summer one of our Lithuanian estates. My honored mother was unable to come.

I received a letter from Prince Adam to-day. He is no longer Minister of Foreign Affairs, but he still stays on at the Court of Russia because of his influence and friendship with Alexander. He still hopes to effect the freedom of Poland. And I am waiting. How many women are there in Poland to-day whose fate, like mine, is bound up with the fate of the nation!

* * * * *

_June 27, 1812._ A messenger just came post-haste from Prince Adam with this letter: “By the time this reaches you, Napoleon will have crossed the Niemen with the great army of France. Diplomatic relations, as you know, have been severed between France and Russia. Again I have hope of the old alliance of Russia and England.

“Word has been sent to Napoleon that you are in Zaozaima in Lithuania, on the direct route to Russia. His love for you is well known. He will send you word. You can help us. While I have the ear of Alexander and you the heart of Napoleon, something may yet be done for Poland. This is the plan--not to let Napoleon see the army of Russia until after he has left Wilna. When he does see it, it will feign fear and retreat. In case an engagement cannot be avoided, it is our plan to give him the victory and then retreat again. In this way we can bring him into the heart of the country. With you to help, we will lure Napoleon, who is now drunk with success, to a banquet of death in the heart of White Russia.”

* * * * *

_July 18, 1812._ A messenger came from the Emperor to-day and an escort of Lithuanian soldiers. I am commanded to go to Witepsk to the Convent of Our Lady of Good Council and there await him. I did not think it would come so soon.

* * * * *

_July 20, 1812._ All night we rode through the great pine woods of Lithuania. The soldiers sang, alternately, with answering voices, one of the strangely modulated _dainos_ of the country:

“But when shall we go from the Russian land Back again to the Memel strand? When posts and stones to blossom are seen And trees in depth of the sea grow green.”[7]

Poor fellows! There is little probability that they will come back to the Memel.

* * * * *

_July 25, 1812._ Witepsk is a gloomy city filled with cloisters. There are twenty-four here. They look as black and as forbidding as the black pines of Lithuania.

* * * * *

_July 27, 1812._ I found the strangest manuscript in the convent to-day! It is unsigned and ancient. No one knows of its origin. I copy a part which mysteriously refers to the present:

“For I say unto you that the balance must always be kept. Great things will be weighed and estimated by great things. But in the end that shall prevail that is fullest of joy. Joy, alone, is life. Joy, alone, can create. That which is effort is of a baser fiber.

“Out of the gloom and the fog of the North the barbarians came and destroyed the land of joy, the cities of white marble, the gladness of the pagan world. They destroyed the altars whereon the incense smoked and the sacrificial doves slumbered.

“In the ages of ages, when the time shall be ripe and the world shall have forgotten its ancient joy, retribution will fall upon the North.

“Out of the South will come a Cæsar and a god, who, like them of old, shall know not fear, but joy. He will be wise with the wisdom of the sleeping centuries. He will be a Bacchic god, in whose honor for incense cities will burn and the smoking blood of slaughtered nations rise. He will be a Titan, who believes that the only crime is littleness and impotence. A new age will begin with him.”

As I read I saw the white cameo-like face of the Great Emperor framed in the gold of a burning city.

* * * * *

_July 29, 1812._ The Emperor came yesterday. He brought two suits such as are worn by the Polish cavalry, one for me and one for my _dame de compagnon_. I had to cut my hair. Now it is in little yellow curls. He said I must look like the women who lead the armies of the Great Catherine.

We are on the road to Moscow.

* * * * *

_July 30, 1812._ What is so inspiring as the call of trumpets! They are the instrument of courage and high deeds.

* * * * *

_July 31, 1812._ Pan Brodzinski, Pan Anton Malzweski, and Prince Michael Radziwill are with the army. I have not seen them.

* * * * *

_August 1, 1812._ This army is a wonderful sight. In it are people of all nations. The faith of the soldiers in Napoleon is fanatical. In just this way do the Moslems worship Allah. They think he is superior to death. As the days go by and I learn to estimate his power, I, too, can say “_Allah il Allah_.”

* * * * *