custody by a soldier because he wore a blouse.
While waiting for our passports, we were all
questioned by the commissariat as to whence we
came, and whither we should go on leaving Warsaw,
how long we meant to stay in each place,
and where we should lodge. Each of us then
received, instead of his passport, a ticket by
which to reclaim it the day before his departure,
on application to the police. A second ticket
permitted each of us, for this once, to proceed
to our lodgings without a lantern.

I was on my guard, spoke French or German,
and acted the part of a foreigner, as indeed I
had done during my stay in Cracow. My
nationality was not suspected.

We were now released, and conveyed into the
city by the omnibus belonging to the Hôtel
de I'Europe.

All the streets were deserted. Here and there
a patrol was stationed before a closed gate. We
only met mounted Cossacks, who looked savagely
at us. I alighted at the Hôtel de I'Europe, which is
fitted up in the style of the Grand Hôtel in Paris,
but of its three hundred apartments there were
only twenty occupied. Within a very few weeks
it was converted into barracks.

It was in front of the castle at Warsaw that
the Poles were slaughtered by the soldiery in
April and October, 1861.

"What is it that you demand?" inquired the
now deceased Prince Gortschakoff, brother to
the present Russian minister of foreign affairs.

"A fatherland," replied they.

"Fire upon the rebels!" was his command.
And men, women, and children were shot down by
hundreds, and immediately thrown into the river.

In the Saxon Square, in front of a garden of
the same name, stands a monument erected by
the Emperor Nicholas to the memory of the
Poles who, having in 1831 betrayed the national
cause, were shot down by their countrymen and
hanged. The monument is of bronze, in the
form of a square obelisk, on each side of the
granite pedestal of which rest two bronze lions.
The inscription, which is in both Polish and
Russian, says: " In memory of the Poles who
fell from fidelity to their monarch."

I used to pass this monument every day when
I was a boy on my way to school: I and my
comrades regarded it with scorn. Among the
names inscribed upon it is that of Count Hanke.
This nobleman left two sons, one of whom, a
colonel in the Russian service, is now intendant
of the fire brigade, and administrator of the
theatre. The second son of Count Hanke was a
man of truly noble and chivalric exterior, who
gained all hearts at the court of St. Petersburg.
Although on terms of intimacy with the imperial
family, by whom he was brought up and
indulgently treated, he gave up all as soon as the
flag of national insurrection was raised in his
native land, took the field against her oppressors,
and fell, one of the first victims of Muscovite
cruelty. The post of the director of theatrical
affairs is not particularly onerous at this time,
because scarcely a Polish foot has, for the last
two years, crossed the threshold of a theatre.

Probably my reader may remember the Russian
edict that every official who, on receiving a ticket
from the police for the theatre, failed to be
present with his family, should be removed from
his post. This was when the Grand-Duke
Constantine arrived at Warsaw; and the government
might have removed every Polish official,
for they could not force any to visit the theatre.
Representations are now given three times in
the week, at which only Russian officers and
soldiers and their respective wives are present.
I know an actor who lost his only son at Miechow;
but, for all that, he was compelled, during his
time of sorrow, to take his regular part at the
theatre. Since Nicholas ascended the throne,
the stage has been especially devoted to vaudevilles,
operas, and ballets. Dramas and tragedies
taken from the national or foreign literature are
wholly unknown to the people. This is a part
of the system which forbids public instruction,
and would drive the whole nation to sensual
pleasure in order the more easily to subdue it.
Literature declines more and more; talent of
every kind is banished to the icy deserts of
Siberia, or to the mountains of the Caucasus.
The censor, by his signature, is responsible for
printed matter, and but for him the citadel
would be filled with authors and newspaper
writers. Yet, spite of the censor's responsibility,
many persons are imprisoned for the
words that he has licensed. In the year 1854,
when Ahn's method of teaching French was
introduced, the following two extracts were
discovered: " Un roi doit aimer son peuple;"
and immediately afterwards, "Un chien doit
fidelité a son maître." These two sentences, in
spite of the censor's prohibition, were by some
oversight printed in the work. By order of
government, the whole edition, three thousand
copies, was burned.

On the day after my arrival at Warsaw, I
saw with horror to what height the fury of
barbarian despotism can rise.

I was in the eating-room of the Hôtel de
I'Europe, which lies about two hundred paces from
the street in which the Zamoyski Palace stands.
A report, reminding me of the Orsini shot which
I heard at the opera in Paris in 1858, sent all the
guests at once from the room. Three people in
the street had made an attempt on the life of
Berg. I rushed to the scene of action. A
mounted Cossack flew past me at full speed to
bring up a troop which were in the Saxon
market, and a few minutes afterwards these
came at a hand gallop. The street was closed,
and a crowd of people collected behind the
soldiers. On the street lay two dead horses.
Steam and the smoke of gunpowder choked the
air. An officer ordered the soldiers to force
their way into one of the houses. Many female
faces, pale as death, were seen at the windows,
and cast bewildered looks into the street below,
where soldiers were driving back the spectators
with the butt-ends of their muskets, shopmen
were actively putting up the shutters to secure
their places of business, of which there were
twelve in this house—among others, that of