Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/52

 40 national museum at Rapperswyl, Switzerland, for safety, still there is to be found in almost every home in Warsaw an album with reproductions of Arthur Grottger's remarkable paintings at Cracow, representing the history of the sufferings of Poland, a (prohibited) lithograph of the same artist's March of the Exiles to Siberia, and some pictures of the defence of Warsaw in 1831, representing the last Polish regiment, which blew itself up with Ordon's redoubt. The Poles regard with tenderness and emotion not only the faces, but the antique, semi-comical chasseur uniform of the soldiers, with the swallow-tail coats. This was, it is true, the last Polish military uniform.

It is in accordance with this national feeling, made vigilant by oppression, that they cherish a hatred for all foreign authors who occasionally or systematically depreciate the Poles. Not that they took Heine's celebrated lampoon (Zwei Ritter) about the two valiant noblemen, Krapülinski and Waschlapski much to heart. They have laughed at its wit and know it by heart, and they know very well how warmly he expressed himself in many places about Poland. But they are familiar with Freytag's Soll und Haben; they attach great importance to a casual remark of the younger Dumas about the Poles from everywhere, who took part in the insurrection of the Commune, and in February they were in an uproar over the word ausrotten (exterminate), in reference to the Poles in Prussia, used by Eduard von Hartmann in an article in a review, an expression which they took too much au sérieux. The Poles pay altogether too much attention to what is written about them in Europe. Anxiety as to what is said about one is a general accompaniment of weakness.