Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/121



left Warsaw in the afternoon. The town lay simmering in the glowing sun; people went slowly along in the shadow of the houses; all the military—infantry, Cossacks, gendarmes—were dressed in white linen.

In the train we met acquaintances—Poles who were returning from the Carpathian mountains (Tatra) or from Bohemian watering-places, others who were travellers or residents in the environs. Groups were formed in the corridors; we jested and laughed; thus time passed.

At K. a couple of carriages awaited us—one for ourselves, another for the luggage—and off we went at full speed in the summer evening, along excellent old military highways of the Napoleonic era, along sandy, heavy roads, at last through an endless avenue of tall poplars.

Franciszek told us of his conversations with the Governor-General of Poland, whom I had once met.

After an attack of apoplexy he sent for Franciszek and asked him to accompany him on a journey. Evidently Gurko is more remarkable as a general than as a person of ordinary intelligence. On leaving a place he always left a pair of boots behind, convinced that this would be his only chance of returning alive to the same place. Franciszek pointed out to him that even if the fact of forgetting a pair of boots were a main condition for returning, it would be doubtful that this same result would be obtained if the boots had been left on purpose. Gurko answered, that according to his experience it was undoubtedly so. Whenever he had