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more petitions from me to spurn," he mentally Whenever wagon-loads of stone or wood had to be

resolved, and resolved it in the bitterness of a wounded heart.

transported over heavy country by-roads, Pavel's horses were sure to be put in requisition; but if, At Noah's, Pavel had heard a great deal of as happened once or twice, an animal died in conoppression, but never suffered from it; young as sequence of being over-labored, Pavel had no rehe was, he had now to feel it. The count's dress, nor could he get his beast replaced. On steward was by nature a grinding, harsh-tempered such occasions, however, he lamented the loss less man, who had the double task to perform of pre- than he was enraged at witnessing the sufferings senting correct accounts to a master who was not of the poor animals, for which he ever had the easy to blind, and feathering his own nest. These greatest sympathy, and seeing them expire beneath two achievements demanded the greatest nicety of a brutality which he could neither avert nor reproceeding, and the sufferers were, of course, the venge; and when his over-burthened horses looked serfs. If the terms of a peasant's tenure exacted at him with the reproachful glances of human betwo days' work in the week, then as surely would ings, and he was yet compelled to flog them on, the steward require a third to be devoted to his his heart hardened towards mankind-no amount own bit of land; and whatever advantages devolved of human suffering could move him after that. on the peasants by right, he curtailed it by half." Man, at least," thought he, "might complain, If a cottage required repair, or a case of peculiar might resist; but I-serf that I am-can I comdistress occurred, it was noted down in his books, plain? can I resist? am I not as much in the and set forth at a most extravagant rate; but the thrall as these poor victims?" and he grew more roof was not thatched, the relief was not afforded. insensible with injustice, his temper became fiercer, Of those tithes that are paid in kind, a large por- his thoughts darker. tion found its way into his own yard and granary. His system was this:-If a man's tithe comprised two fowls at a certain season, it was an understood thing that he must deliver three, that the steward might have his share. Should the peasant neglect this precaution, he might make sure that the work allotted to him and his horses would try both man and cattle in such a manner, that the unlucky serf | might consider himself fortunate if he could purchase forgiveness by the payment of an extra fowl, with, perhaps, the addition of a basket of eggs, or a measure of wheat and rye. If the peasant happened to keep on his own land one cow or horse more than was, by regulation, allotted to that piece of ground, the animal must either be given up, or the steward duly softened.

There was nothing in his home to soften these impressions. Jakubska, discontented, often beside herself with drink, always irritable, incapable of attending to her womanly duties, yielded him no comfort; but, by her loathsome presence and habits, added a sting to his wretchedness. She played her mean tricks even upon him. Often did he find his pockets rifled in the night of the very few pence they contained. Often when he had, by dint of the severest exertion and self-denial, laid by the tithe due to church or lord, would she dispose of the treasured-up debt in his absence, and leave him to settle it with the exacting steward and the count's justice as best he might. At first Pavel remonstrated-threatened to abandon her; but she laughed his threats to scorn. Thus there was not It was not long before Pavel became acquainted in the whole village a man more sober or hardwith this man. His independent bearing was ev-working, yet more frequently fined and punished, than Pavel. For now Pavel was a man. Ten long years had passed in this perpetual hopeless struggle with his destiny; still neither Jakubska's vices, nor the steward's persecutions diminished, nor did any change of feeling occur to turn the current of his afflictions. They settled down ever more gloomily on his spirit, and left at the bottom of his nature but one element, that of sullen despair.

idently displeasing from the first; and the steward was not slow in manifesting symptoms of hostility. He was confirmed in this course by the count's having ordered him to keep a sharp look-out after the Jakubskas, which he interpreted into a token of dislike, and, therefore, set down the lone widow and her youthful son as legitimate objects of his malignity; and he showed it in a series of galling annoyances. Thus, free pasture on the castle lands for the widow's cattle being among the privileges granted by the late countess, Pavel one day permitted a favorite goat to stray into one of these paddocks. He was immediately summoned before the count's court of justice, and punished-slightly, indeed, for no extent of ill-will could construe this into a crime. On paying his periodical visits to the steward's house with his mother's tithes, he was invariably accused of having brought light weights, and forced to add greatly to what was really due; when it was his turn to work on his lords's lands, he never worked sufficiently—he had never done his task properly; and more was ex-kind towards their lords is not generally known to acted from him than from any one else, though all the Gallician peasantry; but there was a hope, a were overtoiled, and knew themselves to be so. vague feeling, that now their rights, such as they

It is not, however, to be supposed that discontent was restricted to Pavel. The whole estate, for fifteen years under the steward's rule, complained grievously; and forgetting altogether how often they had, under similar circumstances, complained of the count, they now longed for his presence among them.

At last, one morning in spring, the great event was announced-he was about to return. To say that the people rejoiced at the prospect of seeing him for his own sake, would be saying too much; affection so vivid as to inspire a sentiment of this

drew near to offer nosegays to the countess; but the footmen took the flowers from their hands, and remitted them to his mistress. The children looked abashed. They had hoped and expected that the carriage-door would be opened, and a few kind words from their new mistress would have repaid the courtesy, but the door remained closed, and the veil that half hid the countess' face was not removed. The thin lace could not, however, conceal the movement of her hand, which raised a handkerchief to her lips in order to suppress a yawn.

were, would be respected, and their situation some- | ters of the most affluent inhabitants of the villages, what bettered. They hailed the event, in short, as one likely to be productive of good. To Pavel, it was fraught with a nameless, indescribable interest. He could not have shaped his confused hopes and sensations into form; but he had a presentiment as of some impending change. At any rate, he would be roused from the torpor in which his whole being was petrifying. Soon, indeed, wagons, laden with furniture, made their appearance slowly nearing the chateau; and, a few days later, the count followed alone, to prepare everything for the reception of his family. Now, for the first time since her death, the apartments of the late countess were thrown open. These the general determined to appropriate to his own use, and gave directions that another part of the mansion should be fitted up for his present wife.

About a week after his arrival, an elegant travelling carriage, preceding several others, was seen entering the estate, and rolling at great speed along the road leading to the mansion. The count's orders had been given that a village fete should be got up to celebrate the arrival of the mistress of Stanoiki. The peasants of the two chief villages, in the nearest of which Pavel resided, were, accordingly, decked out in their best attire, and with rifles, from which to send forth triumphant salutes; accompanied by little village maidens with baskets full of flowers and early violets, to strew upon the countess' path. They now stood drawn up to receive her on the lawn before the chateau, singing some old native song, in which the words maminka and papinka gos podino and gos podina (mother, father, lord and lady) figured ad infinitum.

There was, however, something like a blight upon the scene. The idea of alighting never seemed to occur to the countess; and her carriage, hermetically closed, looked, together with those that immediately followed it, like so many hearses drawn up in the midst of the rejoicing peasantry. The violets and primroses fell at the horses' feet, and were soon trampled beneath their hoofs. The weather was damp, and the rifles flashed in the pan; and the rich pure voices peculiar to the Sclavonic race were accompanied by the croaking of frogs from the marshy banks of the river, where they were rejoicing in the first warmth of the year.

Whilst the physiognomy of the Slavonic peasant is distinguished by the peculiar type of the slave, extreme depression, and an apathy which borders on stolidity, the noble of those countries unites, with an undeniable grace and peculiarly aristocratic form, a harshness of aspect, and a hauteur which, coupled with the brutalized appearance of the lower orders, gives a key to the existence of the latter. The General Count Stanoiki, as he rode up to the carriage in which his wife sat, and took his stand beside it, had a look so cold, so abstracted from the scene, so unapproachable, that the peasants felt a chill at their hearts that increased the natural mournfulness of their voices. The chorus of welcome being finished, a few young girls, daugh

The carriage then rolled into the castle-yard, and the peasantry were sent home till the evening, when their presence would be required for the framework of a rural fete.

The guests were shown their several apartments. The servants, all huddled together in the common room, immediately fell to upon what eatables they could find; and soon the so long silent house reechoed to the unwonted sounds of animation. The count, his wife, and child, repaired to the room where first we saw Leon. Here nothing had been altered. The chamber was as naked and faded as of yore; the persons who occupied it alone were changed. The count was no longer in his prime as when last he stood there; the few years that had since elapsed seemed to have weighed him down. His tall figure was, indeed, erect as ever; but his head was bald, and the thin locks yet clinging to the temples were fast merging from gray into the silver tints. His bushy eyebrows and fierce mustachios were thickly grizzled; and his aquiline features had assumed an austere expression that repulsed all advances. The heart naturally closed before that aspect of utter abstraction.

His lady, though nearly thirty, scarcely seemed past twenty, so juvenile was her style of beauty. Of middle height and slender form, with eyes, hair, and skin, of the palest possible tints, with features which, though not strictly regular, were the most delicate imaginable, with lips well nigh as colorless as her cheek, the countess was one of those women for whom the words ethereal and sylph-like seem expressly invented, or who, more properly, may be said to have inspired them. She understood well the peculiarity of her style, and how to make the most of it; her hair surrounded her face in fleecy clouds, and her dress was ever of the lightest, most transparent materials. I know not if Lavater has illustrated the truth of the following remark; it is generally in this sort of nebula phantom that the hardest kernel may be found. A warm heart, and a lively fancy, like rich soils, develop a more abundant and highly colored vegetation; but beneath these spotless snows one may be pretty sure to discover, in the long run, a good, solid foundation of ice, and hard, sterile ground. Those who had no systems, and drew no foregone conclusions, might be divided, with respect to the countess, into two distinct classes: her inferiors, who, even at the first glance, felt an unutterable repulsion from her, and her equals, who strongly sus

as her person.

"It is necessary that my son should be known on his principal estate-that from which he will one day draw a considerable part of his fortune; and as you will never let him go anywhere without you

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pected her mind to be of the same unearthly nature | answer; but as his wife remained silent, he said This difference was easy to un- in a milder tonederstand. To the former, her half-closed eyes, which, it seemed, she could not take the trouble to open to their full extent to gaze on their worthlessness, the sneer of her curling lip, the impatience of her slightly-elevated eyebrows, conveyed an impression of such ineffable insolence, that more "I know my duty as a mother and a wife," inperfect features than hers would have been ob-terrupted the countess, drawing herself up primly. scured by it. Among her equals her disdainful "If you go where I do not like to be, still I must indolence vanished; her frigid grace was deemed follow-I am yet too young and too good-looking purity, and her angel wings were clearly discern- to spend my summers alone at a bath, or on one ible. In téte à téte with her husband, her coun- estate when you are at another." tenance had a third and no less marked expression; "But I shall like to be here," said the boyit was that of irrepressible ennui, which the differ-"I think there will be more pleasure in boating ence in their age might explain, but could not jus- and riding, on the lake and about these grounds, tify.

Near the fauteuil on which his mother lay reclining, stood her son, now twelve years of age, with the same gray eyes, flaxen curls, and pallor, that distinguished his mother, but with features more irregular, and which want of strength and expression rendered utterly insignificant. It was a puny, sickly child, on whose faded, old-looking countenance might be traced the baneful effects of late hours and the atmosphere of crowded rooms. The child had remained the solitary fruit of their union, and was the heir of Stanoiki. Certainly the group bore little resemblance to that which had preceded it fifteen years before, yet there was one thing that was not changed-the heir of Stanoiki was as spoiled and as wilful as ever Leon had been.

"It is all very well," said the countess, languidly, endeavoring to suppress a yawn, "to visit this place en passant, but it is too much out of the way of my friends to spend here any length of time."

"It is my intention," said the general, "to devote the few next summers to my estate; I have too long neglected it."

"I always hated the place!" said the countess. "How could you hate, my dearest Sophie, what you did not know?"

than anywhere I have yet been."

"Well, Casimir, if you like it," said the mother, "it will be a comfort at least; but I can't fancy with what I shall amuse my guests!—drive them to the mines-boat down the river-et puis après?"

"Oh, you'll have scandal and cards here, as everywhere else," said the general.

The countess was about to cast on her husband one of her most vindictive glances, but one of the guests happening to enter the chamber at the moment, she exchanged it for one of welcome.

The general left the room, followed by Casimir. "Where are the stables, papa? where is my pony? where is the boat you promised me?"

The count passed his hand over his brow as these accents, tinged with an infantine acridity, that reminded him but too well of the maternal ones, reached his ear. Similar requests, made in a franker, more joyous tone, still dwelt on his memory, and the figure of a bold, dark boy, shooting along the river alone in his boat, or scouring the grounds on his pony, flitted across his mind. But that child of his love was no more, though the child of the slave still existed. Recollections here crowded from all sides upon him. For fifteen years he had not had the courage to face them, and he felt it would yet be the work of time to disconnect the images of the past from that abode.

"Oh, because that is the great drawback to marrying a widower-there is always a portion of his past life which does not belong to one. Now this place is so connected with your first wife and child, that I fancy their shadows are haunting ev-proposals had been accepted by a young creature ery spot."

The words conjured up the image of a soft, pale female, and a hearty boy, which was as instantly repressed by the strength of the count's will, but his brow clouded over.

He had known but little of happiness since Vanda's death. Childless and wealthy, when his

who might have been his daughter, and whose brilliant advantages of person and fortune entitled her to make her own selection, he thought he had every reason to congratulate himself; nor had the warnings of a few, faithful old friends, as to the

"You have the talent," he said, sharply, 66 ever danger of wedding one so much his junior, been in to evoke disagreeable subjects."

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Disagreeable to me, I conceive," said the countess, "but to you, I should not have thought so."

any way justified by the sequel. The countess' behavior, as a wife, was beyond the breath of scandal. Not only virtue, but prudence and discretion had guided her every step. But if the count knew none of those heart-burning jealousies that are generally the lot of elderly husbands of young "I always told you I hated the idea of coming wives, yet his self-love gained but little on that to Stanoiki," resumed the countess. The count score; for the countess made him feel, as well as shrugged his shoulders, and for a time returned no the rest of the world, how admirable was her be

"Your delicacy should have made you feel it," replied the count.

"The general looks moved, my dear," observed

"This place, you know," said the countess,

romantic story, too-cousins-an attachment of early youth-all that sort of thing-one must make allowances; it quite overcomes him. I assure you I feel for him-it is so natural. Of course he has no longer that affection to offer me which, after all, one must be fair, belongs but to one period of life."

havior, considering the very peculiar and delicate circumstances in which she was placed. The first her friend. time she stood prepared, radiant in her fairy beauty, all gauze and gossamer, with her marabout boa" is so fraught with tender reminiscences—such a mingling with a cloud of fair hair, to be taken by him to a court-ball at Vienna, he felt a pride in his new bauble, such as he had not experienced since the sun of his emperor had blazed forth in glory. But pride gave way to mortification when, putting her child-like hand in his broad palm, she said, in her peculiarly low, yet acidulated accents "Now mind, my dear general, our position is exceptional, so must our manners be-you must be doubly careful of me, and I shall be more re-general. served than other women, for no one can suspect | Casimir. me of a romantic attachment to you."

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"But you so young, with your warm heart!" Oh, I-I have such a perfect esteem for the He is, too, the father of my beloved A romantic, silly girl might not like always having the remembrance of another rising "It need not be romantic," said the general, in between her and her husband, but you know with a tone of pique, "but still.

"Still," said the countess, 66 my part will be a very difficult one just at first, till the world understands me thoroughly, and gets accustomed to the immense disparity of our years."

me it is so different."

"Your angelic temper makes you bear anything, my dear."

"We cannot expect unalloyed delight on this earth-we should not even desire it."

Other guests now assembling in the salon pre

"I," said the general, with a reddening brow, "I shall never condescend to play the jealous hus-vented the countess from gratifying her patient band."

"I don't ask you-it would be wearisome-be kind and fatherly, that is all I demand."

That night the arrow entered the general's heart, and had rankled there ever since. He perceived plainly, and so did the world, that he was not loved that he was as much alone in his second marriage as he would have been had he remained a widower. The countess lived beside him, but not with him. Their pursuits, their amusements, their likings and dislikings, their joys and their griefs, had nothing in common. The count, an old trooper of the "grand army," hated the Jesuits. The countess, of a family devoted to them, lived and breathed but through their counsels. In his faults, as in his virtues, the count was reserved, but not false the countess was a finished actress, and her husband at last came to the opinion that her manifold virtues were all but so many stage effects. Beneath the coldness of the count's air lay concealed passion; but the countess had not a fibre in her whole system which it was in the power of man to move. An inflexible will an indomitable pride-an unbounded self-esteem, were the qualities enshrined within that fragile casket; their hearts, parted from the first, were like two parallel lines running on; they never met by the way. But here, at Stanoiki, the count had known true happiness. Vanda had gilded years of felicity on this spot; and never had his regrets, no, not even in the first hour of bereavement, been so poignant as now, when experience had taught him how irretrievable was his loss.

While he was thus musing, the countess and her female friend were discussing the general; not that she was one of those vulgar women who are in the habit of complaining of, or making formal accusations against, the man whose name they bear, to a third party; she was altogether above that.

listener with more of those wise saws and pious maxims which, when forming, as they did with this lady, the ground-work of conversation, are neither amusing, edifying, nor sincere. One sentiment alone seemed genuine-her almost idolatry of her son. The affection could only be surpassed by the injudiciousness of its application. Cloyed with sweetmeats and blasé with toys from his cradle, ever present at the countess' late soirées, his education neglected-for no tutor could be found so thoroughly deprived of hope and resources as to remain for any length of time with this hopeful scion-his every wish gratified, no one on the establishment daring to venture upon the slightest opposition to his desires, and the Josephinka of his mother, who had replaced the Countess Vanda's Seraphinka, being proportionably humble and slavish as the rule she lived under was exacting, rendered fretful and irritable by the mismanagement of his stomach and disposition, Casimir was an embryo tyrant, whom even his mother was glad to obey. She had indeed managed to instruct him in the first rudiments of reading and writing, but there seemed but little prospect of his ever turning this instruction to good account. There was, it is true, no danger of his perusing light booksthe countess eschewing French novels as she eschewed plays, operas, and ballets, on account of their immoral tendency-but as often happens in such cases, the boy read not at all. The history of the Dukes of Burgundy, by Barante, lay open on the countess' table, always presenting the same page to view, for eleven successive years, and her son had a Buffon des enfans which seemed likely to do him similar service in time.

We said that the countess had but one affection in her heart, but one tie in life. This was, however, doing the lady injustice. She was a zealous patriot, and would have sacrificed for Poland, as an abstract idea, even the fortune of her child.

Perhaps this feeling was too absorbing to allow boatman so bold and safe as Pavel—now to run others of a less pure nature to stand beside it, and after his pony, and satisfy his many caprices, was had consequently raised her above ordinary temp-gall and wormwood-it was gall and wormwood tations. In her country's cause she had already, to see him riding about the grounds as he once as we have seen, lost a brother who, having suc- rode, spending his time roaming as he once roamed, ceeded to large estates in Russian-Poland, one day and treated with more servile respect than he had disappeared, no clue to his fate having ever been been treated withal. Pavel's dark looks and sulky obtained. Whether he had fled to distant countries, bearing seemed to give zest to the child's tyrannic as was his intention, and perhaps died in his ex- humor. He found a sort of charm in this tacit ile, or perished by the hand of an unknown assassin, opposition. Though too young to read aright the was what no one had been able to ascertain; and play of the features, he instinctively felt he was the countess, who inherited after him, had felt and tormenting, and like all children too much left to exhibited on this occasion a sorrow which, con- themselves and their own whims, he was not insidering the general tenor of her character, her sensible to the pleasure resulting from the conhusband might be excused for secretly suspecting sciousness of power. Yet sometimes there was to be greatly exaggerated. She had, however, that in Pavel's look which would check the boy neglected no means of procuring intelligence of in the very height of his enjoyment, and a monitor his fate; hitherto these efforts had been fruitless, in his breast told him he had gone far enough for and except herself, no one indulged the belief that that day. he was yet on earth.

The evening fete went off badly. The peasantry were awkward from want of habit in that sort of thing. The ladies were tired, the lamps burned dimly, and the crackers would not explode. Every one said that it was a failure, which the countess, of course, attributed to Vanda's spirit, and her husband's maladresse, and the guests went to bed with a dim consciousness that this estate was rather far from Lemberg for amusement.

Pavel had affected illness to avoid going near the castle, but he was now ordered, with one or two more, to work in the gardens. Never had he approached those precincts since he had last been there with the Countess Vanda. During the many years he had spent on the domain, he had uniformly avoided the premises. With what feelings did he now approach them! In spite of the insensibility in which he had endeavored to steep his soul, at sight of those well-remembered parterres, a flood of recollections crowded in upon him. In those broad alleys he had walked with his gentle protectress—in that shady bower he had sat, with scarce controlled impatience, listening to her tender words-he was then the future lord of those grounds upon which he was now called to labor as a serf. The master and mistress never made their appearance in the garden, but Casimir constantly crossed his path. The first time Pavel set eyes on this usurper, as he deemed him, of what fate had intended to be his lot, his emotion was so great that he was obliged, on pretext of indisposition, to leave the place. But in time, whether there was something in Pavel that roused his latent love of teasing, or he found his services agreeable, Casimir seemed to take a fancy to him -he was ever having him called. The very sound of the boy's imperative voice, the sight of the scornful countenance he had inherited from his mother, made Pavel's heart beat. Should he, a man in his full strength and power, obey the beck of that child's hand-be ordered about by his querulous tones!-he would rather work in the mines, and labor for his master all the days of the week!--to be ever at that boy's disposal, now to boat him down the river-for there was no other

One morning, the count, accompanied by his wife, and many of his guests, chanced to ride over a field on which, it being robot day, the peasants were at work. A little apart from the rest, in a fit of abstraction, his scythe lying beside him, his arms folded on his chest, a large straw-hat shading his face, stood a young man, in whose attitude and picturesque negligence of costume there was but little of the serf. His striking person and countenance drew all eyes involuntarily upon him. The count looked at him with a vague interest; and turning to the bailiff, who had come up when the party halted, and cutting short a long story with which that personage was favoring him, abruptly inquired the name of the youth.

"Pavel Jakubski, excellency," was the answer "the most dangerous-tempered man on the whole estate."

Pavel's were

At that moment their eyes met. filled with melancholy reproach. The count could not repress a start-could not conquer himself so far as to withdraw his gaze instantly; and his eyes fell before the peasant's steady look. To conceal his agitation, or perhaps in consequence of it, he looked fiercer than usual; and feeling that he must not appear to quail before one of his serfs, cast upon Pavel a glance of uncompromising severity, then turned away without a word.

"What a handsome brigand!" exclaimed a young lady who rode near the countess, in tones so unmeasured that they reached Pavel's ears.

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'My dear," said the countess, with the air of mild virtuous reproof in which she loved to indulge, "people of this sort are below the notice of ladies like us."

"Oh, that dark fellow !" put in Casimir, "you cannot think, mamma, how I hate him. He is always so reluctant to do anything for me, I am obliged to compel him; and he always seems as if he were about to say something impertinent."

"I should think there is no one bold enough on this estate to brave its future lord," replied the lady. "General, this must be looked to."

"What must be looked to?" said the general, somewhat abruptly.

"That young peasant you were just now ob

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