Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/100

 88 "Ah! you wish to treat of Russian literature."—"Not this time, your Excellency; you know that the people here generally speak Polish, and are most interested in what is written in that language."—"In what language will you speak?"—"In French."—"That is well; you can say a great deal thus. You address yourself to good society. It would be another affair if you wished to speak in German; there are so many uncultured, hot-headed persons who understand German." His Excellency promised me speedy permission, and kept his word.

It was only then that I could begin my composition, and it progressed extremely slowly.

There were days when in spite of all my diligence I wrote almost nothing, days, when I strove in vain to find expressions with double meaning, images, in themselves indistinct, which could be understood by the audience, circumlocutions, which could be seen through and yet would be unassailable. Fortunately this Polish people, half oriental, prefer the picturesque to the purely rational style, being in this point as in many others, the opposite of the French.

Gradually I acquired practice in the rebus style, and wrote so that by an accent or a pause I could give a sentence a new and more living character; I became expert in hints and implications.

At last I had two copies of my first lecture ready in French and one in Russian for the curator of the University. I furnished them with the necessary stamps, drove with the first lecture to the President of the Censorship, and asked that the censor might begin. I had taken a priest with me—it is always good to have a priest with you, he has friends everywhere, in Poland especially, among the Polish subordinates of the offices. There was nothing in the way. But as bad luck would have it, Apuchtin refused to begin on the Russian text till he had all the lectures.

This was bad; for I wished to see by what was erased in my first lecture what I might venture upon in the next.

Since it was now plain that the Russian February would be at an end before I could get the lectures back from the