Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/93

Rh Tolstoi, the minister of police, whom my uncle has been obliged to invite."

Or take a public masquerade. The largest, which is given in carnival time, has the whole of the theatre at its disposal. It is combined with a lottery, the profits of which go to the theatre for a pension fund, and its name, "Tombola," is derived therefrom. It opens at midnight; all the ladies are wrapped up tightly in dominoes and impenetrably masked, and the masks are not taken off, while the gentlemen are not allowed to wear either masks or costumes, but come in evening dress.

This form of masquerade is very old here. E. A. T. Hoffmann, more than eighty years ago, described it as a jubilant and brilliant festival in the pleasure-loving Warsaw of his time.

The piquancy of the arrangement is that the ladies can say what they will to the gentlemen; can attack them, show themselves conversant with their secrets, without letting themselves be known. The chief pleasure it affords is the facility it offers to lovers of meeting one another and disappearing together. If a man is very well known, he is accosted and taken to task by scores of ladies in the hall without being able to retort. A lady comes, takes his arm, and walks off with him till another comes and takes him from her. There are two or three thousand people present and the crowd is great; but there is not the least trace of joviality. There is neither music nor song nor laughter nor loud conversation. If this is a love-masque, it bears a striking likeness to a funeral, or, more exactly, several funerals, different funeral processions which move silently past each other in the spacious rooms.

Wherever you are the oppression is felt.

I recall a grand breakfast at the house of one of the recognised leaders of democratic youth. There were democrats and free-thinkers present, men who had the traditions of 1863 far behind them. The most characteristic thing about them is, that they are men who hardly have an ideal which they expect to be realised before many F