Page:Julian Niemcewicz - Notes of my Captivity in Russia.djvu/66

38 were not some instruments, poison, or concealed letters. The excessive stupidity of my poor Francis procured them soon an ample provision of what they were looking for. This poor fellow, in packing up my trunk, instead of filling it with linen, clothes, and other necessary articles, had put into it all the pamphlets and works I had lately published. It may well be imagined that these productions spared but little the Empress and the Russians. There were among them an Elegy on the Second Partition of Poland, a Metrical Epistle to the Traitors, another of a supposed Russian officer, a Plan of the Constitution of Targowica, and a Fragment of Szczesny's Bible. These two last productions were full of outrageous irony, and, I may add, they did not want salt. At the sight of such a treasure, the joy of all the officers of this new kind of custom-house