For the Right. Karl Emil Franzos
landscape at the very point where mountain and plain stand facing each other--abrupt and unblending--like hatred and love in the heart of man.
The spot in question--half-way between Colomea, the hill-crowned capital of the district, and Zablotow, a poor Jewish townlet of the plain--is within the parish boundary of Zulawce, a village not, however, visible from the railway, its cottages, a couple of miles beyond, covering an eastern slope of the magnificent mountain range. The thatched dwellings are as poor as anywhere in that part of Galicia, not even the church or the manor house commanding any attention. But all the more charming is the neighbourhood. Approaching the village from the Pruth, you reach its first outlying cottages without the effort of climbing, but by the time you have ascended to the farthermost dwellings you have a splendid lowland landscape at your feet--spreading fields of gold, verdant woods and heath-covered tracts, skirted by the Pruth as with a broad silver ribbon, the glittering rivulet of the Czerniawa winding between. And your eye will carry you farther still, to the natural horizon, northward. But the eastern view is altogether different, and incomparably bewitching, the gloriously wooded hill-country of the Bukowina rising gradually, terrace upon terrace, from the deep-sunk valley of the Czeremosz. Indeed, this prospect, as seen from the village, is wondrously grand, a succession of gigantic steps, as it were, leading from earth toward heaven, the highest mountain-tops melting away in the ethereal blue. To the west and south the view is bounded by the "Welyki Lys," a gigantic mountain forest which separates Galicia from Hungary--dark and dreary, and unutterably monotonous. Nowhere in the lower Carpathians is there a spot to equal Zulawce for Nature's variety, looking upon the village as a centre.
But this is not all for which the place is noteworthy. Life there, on the whole, is regulated after the ways of the lowlands; but the people themselves approach the Huzul type--a peculiar race, inhabiting the mountains, and which, on account of the common language, is generally classed with the Ruthens, but being of a different origin and of different conditions of life is distinct from them, as in appearance so in habit and in character. The Huzul is a hybrid, uniting the Slavonic blood of the Ruthen with the Mongolian blood of the Uzen, his speech betraying the former while his name testifies to the latter; so also does the defiant dauntlessness of his bearing, hidden beneath an appearance of proud restraint, but apt to burst out suddenly, like a hot spring through the covering snow. The Ruthens of the lowlands, on the contrary, are purely Slavonic; industrious therefore, enduring and very patient, not easily roused, but once the fire is kindled it will go on burning with a steady glow. These virtues, however, have sad vices for a reverse--a bluntness which is both dull and coarse, and an abject humility, bending the neck of the conquered man even lower than need be. An unfair load of hardships may be pleaded in their excuse. The Ruthen for centuries bore the chains of serfdom, and these broken he continued the subject of some Polish nobleman, no law protecting his body, still less his goods, no mental culture reaching him whose soul received the barest crumbs of spiritual teaching. In this respect things, to be sure, went as ill with the Huzuls, but for the rest theirs was a life of liberty on the mountains, acknowledging no nobleman and no officer of the crown. Poorly enough they lived in the forest wilds, their sheep yielding milk and cheese, the barren soil a few oats for scarcely eatable bread, while meat was within reach of him only who would stake his own life in killing a bear. To this day there are glens where no money has ever been seen; for which reason it has never been thought worth while to levy taxes, the great lords remaining in the lowlands where the soil was fruitful and he who tilled it a slave. "Within those mountains there are but bears to be found and a wild people called Uzels," thus wrote a German explorer in the seventeenth century. He might have written it yesterday, for with the bear only does the Huzul share the sovereignty of the mountains, and his very freedom is no better than the liberty of the bear--yet liberty it is! Thus the difference between the Ruthens of the uplands and the Ruthens of the plain is immense, and scarcely to be bridged over--free huntsmen up yonder, yoke-bearing bondmen below.
"No falcon can lived caged, no Huzul in bondage," says the proverb. The village of Zulawce appeared to give the lie to this saying, but only at first sight. The people there tilled the soil; they went to church, paid tithes, and yielded forced labour; but for the rest they were Huzuls, and cousins-german to the bear-hunters of the Welyki Lys. They never forgot that they were men; they chose to govern themselves, and did not hesitate to meet injustice with a bullet or a blow of the axe. The lord of the manor, old Count Henryk Borecki, knew this well enough, and though he might groan he never attempted to treat the peasants of Zulawce as he would treat the churls on his lowland property. Not that he was a gracious lord, but he was prudent; and being a passionate huntsman himself, he loved to spend the season on that borderland of the great forest, which led to many a scuffle, but open rupture there was none while he lived.
When he had departed, matters grew worse. His son, Count George, never troubled the people with his presence, for he lived in Paris. He was a famous cavalier, devoting himself to the rising generation, so far as it was of the feminine gender, and given to dancing at Mabille. His far-off estates he only bore in mind when his purse was low; for which reason, indeed, he thought of them as often and as anxiously as any pattern landlord, keeping up a lively correspondence with his stewards in Podolia--money they must send him, or dismissed his service they should be. These unfortunate "mandatars" had a hard time of it; but they did their best, fleecing the peasants to the utmost, and keeping their stewardships. Now, the mandatar of Zulawce also, Mr. Severin Gonta, for all that can be told to the contrary, might have wished to adopt this plan; but having lived for twenty years in the village, and knowing the people and their knock-down propensities, he preferred having recourse to the cutting of my lord's timber instead, sending the proceeds to Paris. Count George, however, in the pursuit of his noble passions, enlarged his friendships, admitting even usurers to the benefit of his private acquaintance.
Thus it came about that Mr. Severin one day received the youthful landlord's ultimatum: "Send me another thousand florins a year, or go to the devil." Mr. Severin was soon resolved. He knew he had cut the timber till never a tree remained, and he preferred his bodily safety to the stewardship he held. So he quitted his post, being succeeded by the young Count's private secretary, a certain Mr. Wenceslas Hajek.
Mr. Wenceslas at the time--it was in the year of Grace 1835--was a young man of eight-and-twenty, with an experience far beyond his years. A Bohemian by birth, he soon rose to the dignity of an imperial detective, and in recognition of his peculiar talents was sent to Italy as a spy. He had acquired a knowledge of French, and was known to have committed a daring robbery upon a privy councillor of Milan, for which achievement he was not, like an ordinary mortal, sent to prison as a thief, but to Paris on a secret mission for Prince Metternich. He duly reported to his government; but his was a sympathetic temperament, and, pitying the refugees, he failed not to report to them as well. For a while he flourished, receiving pay from both sides; but being found out he was dismissed ignominiously. Thereupon he took a distaste for politics, establishing a private agency for nondescript transactions, the least doubtful of which were the arrangements he brought about between spendthrift nobles and their friends who lent upon usury. In this capacity he came to be introduced to Count George, who found him simply invaluable, appointing him his private secretary before long. Now, Mr. Wenceslas might thus have lived happily ever after, had his natural disposition not again played him the fool. He loved money, and took of his master's what he could. Count George was helpless, since the rascal knew his every secret; it was plain he could not dismiss him, but he promoted him to the stewardship of Zulawce. "I don't care how much of a blackguard he is, so long as he forwards my revenues," this distinguished nobleman thought within himself, continuing his pursuits in Paris.
It was in the month of May, 1835, that Wenceslas Hajek made his entry at Zulawce. He had scarcely an eye for the vernal splendour of the grand scenery which surrounded him; but he certainly felt impressed on seeing the peasantry on horseback ready to receive him into their village. It was with a queer look of surprise that he gazed upon those giant figures with their piercing eagle eyes. They were clothed in their best, wearing brown woollen riding-coats, dark red breeches, black sandals, and high felt hats with waving plumes, sitting their small spirited steeds as though they had grown together with them. Among mountaineers the Huzuls are the only equestrian people, and none of their Slavonic neighbours go armed, as they do, with the gun slung behind them, the pistol in the belt, and the battle-axe to hand. Mr. Wenceslas knew he trembled when these well-accoutred