The dogs, in a word, behaved as dogs do over their carrion, and,
having secured a large portion, kept a jealous eye on their neighbor's
jaw.
The Bukatys had lost all in Poland except a house or two in Warsaw, but
a few square miles of fertile land in Galicia brought in a sufficiency,
while Wanda had some property in the neighborhood of Breslau bequeathed
to her by her mother. The grim years of 1860 and 1861 had worn out this
lady, who found the peace that passeth man's understanding while Poland
was yet in the horrors of a hopeless guerilla warfare.
"Russia owes me twenty years of happiness and twenty million rubles,"
the old prince was in the habit of saying, and each year on the
anniversary of his wife's death he reckoned up afresh this debt. He
mentioned it, moreover, to Russian and Pole alike, with that calm
frankness which was somehow misunderstood, for the administration never
placed him among the suspects. Poland has always been a plain-speaking
country, and the Poles, expressing themselves in the roughest of
European tongues, a plain-spoken people. They spoke so plainly to Henry
of Valois when he was their king that one fine night he ran away to
mincing France and gentler men.
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