Empire against Persia or Turkey.  Its first campaign, against Russia itself, was to be its last.  In 1831, on the outbreak of the Revolution, Mr. Nicholas B. was the senior captain of his regiment.  Some time before he had been made head of the remount establishment quartered outside the kingdom in our southern provinces, whence almost all the horses for the Polish cavalry were drawn.  For the first time since he went away from home at the age of eighteen to begin his military life by the battle of Friedland, Mr. Nicholas B. breathed the air of the “Border,” his native air.  Unkind fate was lying in wait for him amongst the scenes of his youth.  At the first news of the rising in Warsaw all the remount establishment, officers, vets., and the very troopers, were put promptly under arrest and hurried off in a body beyond the Dnieper to the nearest town in Russia proper.  From there they were dispersed to the distant parts of the Empire.  On this occasion poor Mr. Nicholas B. penetrated into Russia much farther than he ever did in the times of Napoleonic invasion, if much less willingly.  Astrakhan was his destination.  He remained there three years, allowed to live at large in the town but having to report himself every day at noon to the military commandant, who used to detain him frequently for a pipe and a chat.  It is difficult to form a just idea of what a chat with Mr. Nicholas B. could have been like.  There must have been much compressed rage under his taciturnity, for the commandant communicated to him the news from the theatre of war and this news was such as it could be, that is, very bad for the Poles.  Mr. Nicholas B. received these communications with outward phlegm, but the Russian showed a warm sympathy for his prisoner.  “As a soldier myself I understand your feelings.  You, of course, would like to be in the thick of it.  By heavens!  I am fond of you.  If it were not for the terms of the military oath I would let you go on my own responsibility.  What difference could it make to us, one more or less of you?”

At other times he wondered with simplicity.

“Tell me, Nicholas Stepanovitch”—­(my great-grandfather’s name was Stephen and the commandant used the Russian form of polite address)—­“tell me why is it that you Poles are always looking for trouble?  What else could you expect from running up against Russia?”

He was capable, too, of philosophical reflections.

“Look at your Napoleon now.  A great man.  There is no denying it that he was a great man as long as he was content to thrash those Germans and Austrians and all those nations.  But no!  He must go to Russia looking for trouble, and what’s the consequence?  Such as you see me, I have rattled this sabre of mine on the pavements of Paris.”

After his return to Poland Mr. Nicholas B. described him as a “worthy man but stupid,” whenever he could be induced to speak of the conditions of his exile.  Declining the option offered him to enter the Russian Army he was retired with only half the pension of his rank.  His nephew (my uncle and guardian) told me that the first lasting impression on his memory as a child of four was the glad excitement reigning in his parents’ house on the day when Mr. Nicholas B. arrived home from his detention in Russia.