Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/16

4 how beautiful is the vicinity, how full of character is the peasants' costume here in the region which we are going through, the long white cloaks with red borders, and how well they know how to wear their clothes in comparison with the North German peasants in their stiff, ugly costume!

Austria is a rich land in a comparatively peaceful state of dissolution, where there are many kinds of men, but no Austrians. It is true we must except the imperial family and one or two antiquities of the old Constitutionalists. Besides these there are only Germans in Vienna, as outside Vienna there are only Hungarians, Czechs, &c.

The train rushes on. A little Polish servant, accompanying a traveller, calls my attention to a young Russian, who now and then spoke French to him. "He knows very well that I understand Russian, but still he speaks French to me; that is the way with them all; they are at heart ashamed of being Russians," an extremely naïve but very significant expression of Polish national hatred.

To profit by the daylight while it lasts, I read Sienkiewicz's "Bartek Vainqueur" in the Nouvelle Revue.. ..

The train stopped at Granica, the frontier station. Passports have to be inspected and baggage examined. A blond Russian police soldier, in his becoming uniform, a long grey coat, a cap without a vizor, a sabre at his side, entered, demanded the passports and carried them away.

Then we received permission and orders to alight. When a traveller suggested that we could leave our rugs, overcoats, and articles of that kind in the carriage, since we were to return to the same train in an hour, the little Pole informed him of his mistake: "Everything must be taken out; even an umbrella left behind excites suspicion, and if a coat is left, the lining is examined."

The first things found in my travelling-bag were the two numbers of the Nouvelle Revue, which I had been reading in the carriage.

"What is this?" asked the chief of the uniformed custom-house officers in German.

"What is it?" I answered. "It is the Nouvelle Revue."