grandson, of the servants whose friendly faces had been familiar
to me in my early childhood. As a matter of fact he had no such

claim on my consideration. He was the product of some village
near by and was there on his promotion, having learned the

service in one or two houses as pantry boy. I know this because
I asked the worthy V---- next day. I might well have spared the

question. I discovered before long that all the faces about the
house and all the faces in the village: the grave faces with long

mustaches of the heads of families, the downy faces of the young
men, the faces of the little fair-haired children, the handsome,

tanned, wide-browed faces of the mothers seen at the doors of the
huts, were as familiar to me as though I had known them all from

childhood and my childhood were a matter of the day before
yesterday.

The tinkle of the traveller's bells, after growing louder, had
faded away quickly, and the tumult of barking dogs in the village

had calmed down at last. My uncle, lounging in the corner of a
small couch, smoked his long Turkish chibouk in silence.

"This is an extremely nice writing-table you have got for my
room," I remarked.

"It is really your property," he said, keeping his eyes on me,
with an interested and wistful expression, as he had done ever

since I had entered the house. "Forty years ago your mother used
to write at this very table. In our house in Oratow, it stood in

the little sitting-room which, by a tacit arrangement, was given
up to the girls--I mean to your mother and her sister who died so

young. It was a present to them jointly from your uncle Nicholas
B. when your mother was seventeen and your aunt two years

younger. She was a very dear, delightful girl, that aunt of
yours, of whom I suppose you know nothing more than the name.

She did not shine so much by personal beauty and a cultivated
mind in which your mother was far superior. It was her good

sense, the admirablesweetness of her nature, her exceptional
facility and ease in daily relations, that endeared her to every

body. Her death was a terrible grief and a serious moral loss
for us all. Had she lived she would have brought the greatest

blessings to the house it would have been her lot to enter, as
wife, mother, and mistress of a household. She would have

created round herself an atmosphere of peace and content which
only those who can love unselfishly are able to evoke. Your

mother--of far greater beauty, exceptionally" target="_blank" title="ad.异常地；极，很">exceptionallydistinguished in
person, manner, and intellect--had a less easy disposition.

Being more brilliantly" target="_blank" title="ad.灿烂地；杰出地">brilliantlygifted, she also expected more from life.
At that trying time especially, we were greatly concerned about

her state. Suffering in her health from the shock of her
father's death (she was alone in the house with him when he died

suddenly), she was torn by the inward struggle between her love
for the man whom she was to marry in the end and her knowledge of

her dead father's declared objection to that match. Unable to
bring herself to disregard that cherished memory and that

judgment she had always respected and trusted, and, on the other
hand, feeling the impossibility to resist a sentiment so deep and

so true, she could not have been expected to preserve her mental
and moral balance. At war with herself, she could not give to

others that feeling of peace which was not her own. It was only
later, when united at last with the man of her choice, that she

developed those uncommon gifts of mind and heart which compelled
the respect and admiration even of our foes. Meeting with calm

fortitude the cruel trials of a life reflecting all the national
and social misfortunes of the community, she realized the highest

conceptions of duty as a wife, a mother, and a patriot, sharing
the exile of her husband and representing nobly the ideal of

Polish womanhood. Our uncle Nicholas was not a man very
accessible to feelings of affection. Apart from his worship for

Napoleon the Great, he loved really, I believe, only three people
in the world: his mother--your great-grandmother, whom you have

seen but cannot possibly remember; his brother, our father, in
whose house he lived for so many years; and of all of us, his

nephews and nieces grown up around him, your mother alone. The
modest, lovable qualities of the youngest sister he did not seem

able to see. It was I who felt most profoundly this unexpected
stroke of death falling upon the family less than a year after I

had become its head. It was terriblyunexpected. Driving home
one wintry afternoon to keep me company in our empty house, where

I had to remain permanently administering the estate and at
tending to the complicated affairs--(the girls took it in turn

week and week about)--driving, as I said, from the house of the
Countess Tekla Potocka, where our invalid mother was staying then

to be near a doctor, they lost the road and got stuck in a snow
drift. She was alone with the coachman and old Valery, the

personal servant of our late father. Impatient of delay while
they were trying to dig themselves out, she jumped out of the

sledge and went to look for the road herself. All this happened
in '51, not ten miles from the house in which we are sitting now.

The road was soon found, but snow had begun to fall thickly
again, and they were four more hours getting home. Both the men

took off their sheepskin lined greatcoats and used all their own
rugs to wrap her up against the cold, notwithstanding her

protests, positive orders, and even struggles, as Valery
afterward related to me. 'How could I,' he remonstrated with

her, 'go to meet the blessed soul of my late master if I let any
harm come to you while there's a spark of life left in my body?'

When they reached home at last the poor old man was stiff and
speechless from exposure, and the coachman was in not much better

plight, though he had the strength to drive round to the stables
himself. To my reproaches for venturing out at all in such

weather, she answered, characteristically, that she could not
bear the thought of abandoning me to my cheerless solitude. It

is incomprehensible how it was that she was allowed to start. I
suppose it had to be! She made light of the cough which came on

next day, but shortly afterward inflammation of the lungs set in,
and in three weeks she was no more! She was the first to be

taken away of the young generation under my care. Behold the
vanity of all hopes and fears! I was the most frail at birth of

all the children. For years I remained so delicate that my
parents had but little hope of bringing me up; and yet I have

survived five brothers and two sisters, and many of my
contemporaries; I have outlived my wife and daughter, too--and

from all those who have had some knowledge at least of these old
times you alone are left. It has been my lot to lay in an early

grave many honest hearts, many brilliant promises, many hopes
full of life."

He got up briskly, sighed, and left me saying, "We will dine in
half an hour."

Without moving, I listened to his quick steps resounding on the
waxed floor of the next room, traversing the anteroom lined with

bookshelves, where he paused to put his chibouk in the pipe-stand
before passing into the drawing-room (these were all en suite),

where he became inaudible on the thick carpet. But I heard the
door of his study-bedroom close. He was then sixty-two years old

and had been for a quarter of a century the wisest, the firmest,
the most indulgent of guardians, extending over me a paternal

care and affection, a moral support which I seemed to feel always
near me in the most distant parts of the earth.

As to Mr. Nicholas B., sub-lieutenant of 1808, lieutenant of 1813
in the French army, and for a short time Officier d'Ordonnance of

Marshal Marmont; afterward captain in the 2d Regiment of Mounted
Rifles in the Polish army--such as it existed up to 1830 in the

reduced kingdom established by the Congress of Vienna--I must say
that from all that more distant past, known to me traditionally

and a little de visu, and called out by the words of the man just
gone away, he remains the most incomplete figure. It is obvious

that I must have seen him in '64, for it is certain that he would
not have missed the opportunity of seeing my mother for what he

must have known would be the last time. From my early boyhood to
this day, if I try to call up his image, a sort of mist rises

before my eyes, mist in which I perceivevaguely only a neatly
brushed head of white hair (which is exceptional in the case of

the B. family, where it is the rule for men to go bald in a
becoming manner before thirty) and a thin, curved, dignified

nose, a feature in strictaccordance with the physical tradition
of the B. family. But it is not by these fragmentary remains of