Page:Julian Niemcewicz - Notes of my Captivity in Russia.djvu/97

Rh that I was often obliged to hide my face under my cloak, lest I should betray the laughter that their stupidity excited.

I do not know whether it was those labours, or the length of our journey, that exasperated Titow, the fact, nevertheless, is, that he was growing every day more rude and insufferable. His greatest pleasure was to speak ill of Poland. Though I was a prisoner, I could not suffer such insolence, and reproached him in the strongest terms with his injustice and want of delicacy, but seeing that it was useless to dispute with a barbarian, who was our master, I resolved not to speak to him at all, but to read and be silent. This put him in terrible fits of anger, for as soon as he began his invectives, I took my book and read as if I were alone; he continued, and I proceeded with my reading with still more attention. Wounded to the quick, he closed the wooden shutters of the carriage to deprive me entirely of light, but there being, fortunately, in the board, a little hole, through which a small ray passed, I held my