Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/123

Rh Since this I have become familiar with the country. I know it pretty well, so much the better as no breath from the surrounding world has disturbed my peace. Not a book, not a newspaper have I been able to get during the time I have been here. All my newspapers are sent to the censorship, and my letters are detained in Warsaw. I don't know anything about the world—that is, Denmark—save what is to be found in the telegrams of the Gazeta Polska, and that is not much. I have telegraphed and written to the post office in Warsaw; everything rebounds from Russian bureaucracy. I wonder if at any place, even in Turkey, there is such a wonderful want of law as in Russia.

Outside the garden the landscape extends in all its flatness. Rich it is, cornfield beyond cornfield, and pleasant, for poplars and birches, willows and lindens shade the roads. But the finest ornaments of the landscape at present are the enormous stacks of rye, put up in a way unknown among us, like ancient round towers with low, pointed roofs. The roof is golden, the towers are brown, because here the ear is not visible in all its length, and in the sun these stacks look most cheerful. Save for these, the flatness is only broken by windmills, trees, and now and then far away by a church or a wood. All around, girls with white kerchiefs on their heads are raking hay.

The arrangement of the house is above all praise. It is an oasis of civilisation in a land of rustics. Everything proclaims the most exquisite refinement of taste; and especially pleasing is a library, so enormous, so entertaining, so beautifully bound, that its equal will not easily be found in the private houses of any capital. Each room has its peculiar stamp, and the ground floor opens into a vast palmhouse.

The manor forms no slight contrast to the surrounding habitations. When the peasants want help or advice, they do not apply to the priest, who for the rest is a very honest young man (he has been to Rome and speaks a little Italian), but to our lady of the manor; and it must be confessed that human nature is so strong in them that they steal anything they want which they do not obtain as a gift. They