e rest of the world was swimming in tears and
blood, and while that man, the god of war, surrounded by a cloud of
regiments, armed with a thousand cannon, harnessing to his chariot golden
eagles beside those of silver,32 was flying from the deserts of Libya to
the lofty Alps, casting thunderbolt on thunderbolt, at the Pyramids, at
Tabor, Marengo, Ulm, and Austerlitz. Victory and Conquest ran before and
after him. The glory of so many exploits, heavy with the names of heroes,
went roaring from the Nile to the North, until at the shores of the Niemen
it was beaten back as from crags by the Muscovite lines that defended
Lithuania as with walls of iron against tidings terrible for Russia as the
plague.

And yet now and then, like a stone from the sky, news came even to
Lithuania; now and then an old man, lacking a hand or a foot, who was
begging his bread, would stand and cast cautious eyes around, when he had
received alms. If he saw no Russian soldiers in the yard, or Jewish caps,
or red collars, then he would confess who he was: he was a member of the
Polish legions, and was bringing back his old bones to that fatherland
which he could no longer defend. Then how all the family--how even the
servants embraced him, choking with tears! He would seat himself at the
board and tell of history more strange than fable; he would relate how
General Dombrowski33 was making efforts to penetrate from the Italian land
into Poland, how he was gathering his countrymen on the plains of
Lombardy; how Kniaziewicz34 was issuing commands from the Roman Capitol,
and how, as a victor, he had cast in the eyes of the French an hundred
bloody standards torn from the descendants of the Caesars; how
Jablonowski35 had reached the land where the pepper grows and where sugar
is produced, and where in eternal spring bloom fragrant woods: with the
legion of the Danube there the Polish general smites the negroes, but
sighs for his native soil.

The words of the old man would spread secretly through the village; the
lad who heard them would vanish suddenly from home, would steal
mysteriously through the forests and swamps, pursued by the Muscovites,
would leap to hiding in the Niemen, and beneath its flood swim to the
shore of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, where he would hear sweet words of
greeting, "Welcome, comrade!" But before he departed, he would climb a
stony hill and call to the Muscovites across the Niemen: "Until we meet
again!" Thus there had sto