Bread was baked only by the richest.  Many had never in their lives tasted such a delicacy; few villages had an oven.  If the people ever kept bees they sold the honey to the city dwellers, they also trafficked in carved spoons and stolen bark; in exchange for these they got at the fairs their coarse blue cloth coats, black fur caps, and bright red kerchiefs for the women.  Looms were rare and spinning-wheels were unknown.  The Prussians heard there no popular songs, no dances, no music—­pleasures which even the most wretched Pole does not give up; stupid and clumsy, the people drank their wretched brandy, fought, and fell into the corners.  And the country nobility were hardly different from the peasants; they drove their own primitive plows and clattered about in wooden shoes on the earthen floors of their cottages.  It was difficult even for the King of Prussia to help these people.  Only the potato spread quickly; but for a long time the fruit-trees which had been planted by order were destroyed by the people, and all other attempts at promoting agriculture met with opposition.

Just as poverty-stricken and ruined were the border districts with a Polish population.  But the Polish peasant in all his poverty and disorder at least kept the greater vivacity of his race.  Even on the estates of the higher nobility, of the starosts, and of the crown, all the farm buildings were dilapidated and useless.  Any one who wished to send a letter must employ a special messenger, for there was no post in the country.  To be sure, no need was felt of one in the villages, for most of the nobility knew no more of reading and writing than the peasants.  If any one fell ill, he found no help but the secret remedies of some old village crone, for there was not an apothecary in the whole country.  If any one needed a coat he could do no better than take needle in hand himself—­for many miles there was no tailor, unless one of the trade made a trip through the country on the chances of finding work.  If any one wished to build a house he must provide for artisans from the West as best he could.  The country people were still living in a hopeless struggle with the packs of wolves, and there were few villages in which every winter men and animals were not decimated.  If the smallpox broke out, or any other contagious disease came upon the country, the people saw the white image of pestilence flying through the air and alighting upon their cottages; they knew what such an apparition meant:  it was the desolation of their homes, the wiping out of whole communities; and with gloomy resignation they awaited their fate.  There was hardly anything like justice in the country.  Only the larger cities maintained powerless courts.  The noblemen and the starosts inflicted their punishments with unrestrained caprice.  They habitually beat and threw into horrible dungeons not only the peasants but the citizens of the country towns who were ruled by them or fell into their hands.  In the quarrels which they had with one another, they fought by bribery in the few courts which had jurisdiction over them.  In later years that too had almost ceased.  They sought vengeance with their own resources, by sudden onslaughts and bloody sword-play.