"They do not take me seriously," he said to his intimate friends; "they
do not honor me by recognizing me as a dangerous person; but we shall
see."
And the Prince Bukaty was thus allowed to go where he listed, and live
in Warsaw if he so desired. Perhaps the secret of this lay in the fact
that he was poor; for a poor man has few adherents. In the olden times,
when the Bukatys had been rich, there were many professing readiness to
follow him to the death--which is the way of the world. "You have but to
hold up your hand," cries the faithful follower. But wise men know
that the hand must have something in it. The prince had been young and
impressionable when Poland was torn to pieces, when that which for eight
centuries had been one of the important kingdoms of the world was wiped
off the face of Europe, like writing off a slate. He was not a ruffian,
as Deulin had described him; but he was a man who had been ruffled, and
nothing could ever smooth him.
He was too frank by nature to play a hopeless game with the cunning and
the savor of spite which hopeless games require. If he liked a man, he
said so; if he disliked one, he was equally frank about it. He liked
Cartoner on the briefest of brief introductions, and said so.
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