lish Diet who voted for the death-penalty at the trial of the
Poles implicated in the Decembrist rising of 1825. More than that, when
the students of the University at Warsaw deserted their lecture-rooms
_en masse_ to attend the funeral of the patriotic Bielinski in the
folio-wing year, Zygmunt Krasinski was forbidden by his father to join
them, and peremptorily ordered to go to his work. This invidious
isolation blasted Zygmunt's youth and affected his whole career. He had
to be removed from the University, was sent with a tutor to Geneva in
1829, and never saw Poland again save as a conquered province of Russia.
His father transferred his allegiance to Nicholas I, migrated to St.
Petersburg, was held in high honour by the Tsar and execrated by his
fellow-countrymen. Later on he effectually thwarted Zygmunt's desire to
join in the rising of 1830, and by his persistence forced him into a
reluctant _mariage de convenance_. Zygmunt Krasinski was undoubtedly in
a painful position, for he could not openly declare himself without
still further compromising his father's position. He hated his father's
policy, but he loved the man who had trained him to love his country,
and, above all, he feared him. It was a new and tragic variant on _odi
et amo_, which drove Zygmunt Krasinski into a strange life of
compromise, evasion, and sacrifice. To put it brutally, he was not a
fighting man; so far as action went, he feared his father more than he
loved his country, and there was a sting of truth in the bitter taunt
addressed to him by his brother-poet Slowacki: 'Thou wert afraid, son of
a noble.' He was often conscious of his weakness as when he wrote to
Henry Reeve in 1830: 'I am a fool, I am a coward, I am a wretched
being, I have the heart of a girl, I do not dare to brave a father's
curse.' But it is right to remember that he was physically a weakling,
tormented by ill-health, neurotic, and half-blind from his nineteenth
year. Torn in two by the conflict between filial duty and the desire to
serve his country, always dreading the worst for himself, never free
from the apprehension that he would end his days in Siberia, he took
refuge in anonymity as the only means of salving his conscience and
sparing his father. The curious and self-protective devices by which he
secured secrecy were sometimes more ingenious than dignified. Some of
his works were put forth under the names or initials of his friends. The
secret was most loyally kept