Poland: A Novel Part 17

'Oh, they don't despise you, Bukowski. I'm sure my husband doesn't despise you. If he did, he wouldn't use you as his voice in the Seym, would he?'

'He uses and despises,' Bukowski said, dropping his voice on the last word as if to end that line of argument.

'Yes, there are degrees,' she conceded. Flicking her dress so that its folds fell attractively over the stones on which she sat, she said: 'My father ... well, you're right about him. He despises all your three groups. He sees Poland as the fief of about sixty families-the only ones in his opinion who count.' She brought her hands to her face to hide the broad smile; then she dropped them to look bewitchingly at her husband's factotum. 'Tytus, when I was about eighteen my father took me aside, sat me in a chair, and showed me a small sheet of paper on which he had written seven names. I can see them yet, in order, starting with Radziwill. Then: Lubomirski, Lubonski, Potocki, Ossolinski, Mniszech, Granicki. They were the families from which I must select my husband, for in his opinion no others existed.'

'How were they numbered?' Tytus asked.

'A combination of ancient power and modern wealth. The Granickis were newcomers, but they were d.a.m.ned rich. The Mniszechs were of Czech derivation but they were d.a.m.ned powerful. Ossolinski and Lubonski were both ancient and rich, and Lubomirski, of course, was best of all.'

'Then why did he place the Radziwills first?'

'Because we are first.'

'Weren't the Czartoryskis and Zamoyskis already rather rich and powerful?'

'Father had them on his list-over to one side, with a note above them: "If things go poorly." '

'Meaning?'

'That if I couldn't catch a Lubomirski or one of the rich Radziwills ... You know, of course, that our branch of the Radziwills ... we had d.a.m.ned little. That's why my father has had to be so ...' She thought for a long time as to how best she might characterize her conniving parent, and she smiled as she visualized him in his long overcoat darting here and there as his probing nose smelled out possibilities. No appropriate word came, and in the end she said in a kind of defeat: 'That's why Father has had to be so flexible.'

'Was it easy, catching a Lubonski?'

'From the moment I saw Laskarz, and I think that from the moment he saw me ... because I was not ugly when I was young ...' She kicked at the stone wall with the heel of her left boot, then asked in real anxiety: 'Oh, Tytus, what's going to happen to Poland?'

One day in 1786 they carried this question to the count, who laughed at their fears, citing an old truism: 'Anarchy is the salvation of Poland. We have always thrived on chaos.'

'But if we can't defend ourselves?' his wife asked.

'Our strategy is to be so obviously weak that no neighbor will feel it necessary to attack us.'

'It seems to me,' Bukowski said, 'that in 1772 our neighbors attacked us rather severely. They stole half our citizens.'

'That was a readjustment,' Lubonski argued, 'and I think you'll agree we're better off now than we were then.'

'People are beginning to take seriously the proposals of the Czartoryskis,' Tytus warned, and the countess jumped to his support: 'Yes, I've heard much good said about their plans.'

Now the count dropped his easy reb.u.t.tals, for he had heard even some of his a.s.sociates discussing seriously the proposed reforms, and he simply could not fathom why a man in his senses would even listen to them, let alone accord them attention. 'I want you to hear, one by one, the incredible things they're suggesting. First, abolition of the liberum veto, the agency with which we protect our rights. Second, the Seym to serve for two years instead of six weeks, and G.o.d knows what would happen then. Third, townsmen to have the vote. Fourth, banishing landless gentry from the Seym on the grounds that they vote always for the magnates who pay their bills. Fifth, an end to private armies like ours and the installation of a strong central army, which would threaten our freedoms. Sixth, peasants to be given their own land, at our expense. Seventh, additional power to the king, who would soon dictate to the magnates. Eighth, hereditary king rather than free election by the magnates and the gentry.'

As he listed these demands, his voice grew more and more grave, until at last it was a mournful rumble, as if he were lamenting the pa.s.sage of an era, and he looked soberly at his listeners to impress upon them the revolutionary nature of these proposals. But then he brightened. 'This was before your time in the Seym, Tytus, but when the patriots awakened to what was happening, we sprang to action. Lubomirski, myself, Granicki, Mniszech ... there were other good men too, but we led the way in defense of the motherland.'

'What did you do?' the countess asked.

'We proposed our own series of bills, the ones that would preserve freedom. First, the king to be elected, preferably from among foreign nominees, by us magnates. That would protect us from dictators and hereditary domination. Second, continuance forever of the liberum veto, which is the protection of the few against the pressure of the many. Third, the ancient right of any magnate to renounce allegiance to the king, if the king persists in error. Fourth, land ownership and office occupancy reserved exclusively for magnates and their supportive gentry. Fifth, landowners' control of peasants to be continued and strengthened.'

'Who won?' the countess asked.

'For the moment, reason prevailed and we won. But revolutionaries like Czartoryski refuse to surrender, and if we ever have a Seym again, you can be sure they'll be back with their radical reforms.'

In 1788, to everyone's astonishment, the Seym was permitted to open a session which many predicted would be a turning point in Polish history, and they were right, because the sober, well-educated men who met this time were deeply aware of the fact that the salvation of their country depended upon the decisions they were about to make, and they approached their task with prayers and a proper gravity.

Historically, Seyms were supposed to meet only in alternate years and then for just six weeks. This one lasted four glorious and rewarding years that saw one after another of the restrictive old privileges swept away: the liberum veto was abolished, meaning that henceforth Poland's parliament would operate like those of other nations, on the majority principle; townsmen were allowed to own land; the more onerous impositions on the peasants were removed, but of course serfdom was continued, since even reformers could not visualize Poland without it; the Catholic church was deprived of its vast land holdings but was justly compensated; and most important of all, the town businessmen were invited into the halls of government.

On 3 May 1791 a new const.i.tution evolved out of this revolutionary four-year Seym. It was recognized as the best in Europe and the equal of what had recently been promulgated in America; philosophers hailed it as an architect's drawing for a modern nation. With one gigantic leap, Poland left the Middle Ages and catapulted herself into the front rank of governments. The Czartoryskis had defeated the Lubonskis.

But in Prussia and Russia the new plan activated alarms of terror, for the rulers of those autocracies properly evaluated it as a mortal blow to their dictatorships. In Berlin the King of Prussia summoned Baron von Eschl and stormed: 'Your part.i.tion in 1772 was supposed to have forestalled such nonsense. If this new const.i.tution is allowed to function even one year, it will spread havoc in the German states. Everyone will be demanding similar freedoms.'

'We must start a war to disrupt things,' Von Eschl proposed.

That we'll do, but first you get yourself to Warsaw and repair the damage your leniency allowed.'

'Are you willing, Sire, to support me if we erase Poland altogether this time?'

'Wipe it out.'

'Even if Austria refuses to come along?'

'We're in a better position if she doesn't. I want you to occupy everything we need-Warsaw ... Krakow ... Lublin ... all the way to Brest-Litovsk.'

'Russia and Austria might combine against us.'

'That's a risk we must take. But Poland is to be eliminated. It has no excuse for existence.' And with this harsh directive, Von Eschl made his way to Warsaw.

In Moscow the Empress Catherine was even more disturbed, and at a session with her councillors she enunciated, without being aware that she was doing so, the policy that would henceforth govern Russian-Polish relations: 'Whenever the people of Poland enjoy a better life than those in Russia, we are in mortal danger. At such times Poland must be held down.' After the meeting she held private counsel with Fyodor Kuprin: 'My dearest little adviser, things have gone sadly wrong in Poland. Hurry there and make corrections.'

'Total dismemberment this time?'

The question posed the most severe difficulties for Catherine, and she attacked it circuitously: 'I intended that my old friend Poniatowski should vacillate, for I knew he was weak. But I never expected him to be this weak. When those men laid that new const.i.tution before him, he should have shot them all. Since he refused to do the job, we'll have to do it for him.'

'Then you do mean total dismemberment?'

'I wish I did, my treasured little guide, but we must keep one consideration always in the forefront. We are not strong enough right now to engage in war with Prussia. Sadly, we must temporize. And what we must prevent more than anything else is a situation in which Prussia grabs most of Poland and sits on our front doorstep, growling to be let in to Moscow.'

'What must I do?'

'Cut Poland to pieces. Great slices off here and there. But leave a central core, because for the present we need it as protection against Prussia.'

'You hand me a most difficult a.s.signment. Kill, but not quite.'

She rose and kissed him, this strange little man who had served the Romanoffs so dutifully, chopping off heads for Empress Anna, ripping out tongues for Empress Elizabeth, subjugating Cossacks for Czar Peter, and now destroying nations for Catherine. 'We do one thing at a time, little friend, but I a.s.sure you that before the years pa.s.s, you and I will finish with Poland forever. Now off to Warsaw.'

While the two diplomats were moving into position for their a.s.sault on the Polish nation, pamphleteers in both Berlin and St. Petersburg started sending out messages to all the courts and journals of opinion in Europe, one from autocratic Russia sounding the tone that would prevail: It is sickening to all who love freedom to learn in dispatches from Warsaw how the freedom which the people of Poland once enjoyed is being trampled underfoot by the same kind of revolutionary excess which has darkened France with the blood of its best citizens. In Poland the rights of man have long been protected by an admirable system known as the Golden Freedom, under which kings and peasants alike, knights and townsmen, equally enjoyed the benefits of benign rule, and under which the precepts of Christianity were observed.

Now the historic Golden Freedom which made Poland a leader among nations is being swept away. Radical reforms strike at the very heart of a free nation, threatening to make it a nation of slaves, and this the liberty-loving nations of the world must not permit. It is the duty of all to rise up and warn the tyrants of Warsaw that the family of nations will not allow this desecration to go forward. It is our duty to halt it and to restore to a strong and beautiful nation the freedom it has always enjoyed.

When Baron von Eschl reached Warsaw he became the leading spokesman for all who were defending Poland's freedom, and he rallied around him magnates like old Ja.n.u.sz Radziwill, now eighty-three but still persuasive in argument, and the Paseks, who carried weight with the distant magnates who maintained their own armies. Von Eschl's heart bled, almost literally many Poles thought, for the good of Poland, and on his extensive trips into the eastern portion of the truncated country he noted the location of all castles and the means by which they attempted to defend themselves.

He was a brilliant, forceful debater, and whenever he met with magnates, for he refused to deal with anyone of lower position, he stressed one overwhelming fact: 'Gentlemen, always bear in mind what happened in the aftermath of 1772. The Prussian government did not confiscate a single estate owned by your brothers. No Polish magnate lost a square of land to us. But what happened where Russia took over? You know better than I. Kleofas Granicki, a true friend of Russia's through the years, two of his largest estates near Vitebsk ripped from him and given to Russian generals who now call themselves n.o.blemen ... at Granicki's expense. If you side with Russia, all your precious freedoms will be lost. If you side with Prussia, your estates and your freedoms alike will be protected.'

In this manner Von Eschl won over to his side many of the leaders of Poland, but Fyodor Kuprin was not idle. He met often with his Prussian counterpart, compared notes with him, and smiled when Poles suggested to them that their countries might soon be at war with each other over how to divide Poland. That some kind of further part.i.tion threatened, everyone acknowledged, but the form it might take, with Austria not partic.i.p.ating, was uncertain.

In Tytus Bukowski's mind several pressing questions arose. 'Why,' he asked patriots like himself, 'do we allow these two foreigners to parade about Warsaw plotting the war that might destroy us?' To this he received no sensible answer, except that King Stanislaw August was too weak to discipline them. Tytus also asked: 'How will this nation continue to exist if even more territory is stolen from us?' The answer to this was a universal 'We'll get by somehow.' His third question was more persistent, and he directed it to almost every Pole he met: 'What can you and I do to prevent the tragedy that looms?'

He even asked this question of Countess Lubonska during one of his visits home when the Seym was not in session, and she responded gloomily: 'I'm terribly afraid a great theft is under way, Tytus. Let's discuss this with the count.'

When Tytus presented Lubonski with his evidences of Prussian and Russian duplicity, he found the count reconciled to whatever evil might happen. 'Your Seym has gone too far too fast. Any one of the reforms might have been palatable. I have nothing against townsmen owning a little land. But taken altogether ... it's inescapable that Russia should react unfavorably.'

'But you've always sided with Austria,' the countess said. 'If what Tytus reports is true, there could be a part.i.tion between Prussia and Russia alone. Poland could even disappear.'

'Now that's ridiculous,' the count said. 'Poland will always be needed where it is. If it didn't already exist, Russia and Prussia would have to invent it.'

'As a Habsburg man,' Tytus asked, 'are you happy to see Austria excluded?'

'Such things are of little moment, Tytus. Poland will always be there, and if a few miles are chopped off for Prussia and a few for Russia, no great harm is done.'

He ordered refreshments and then heard that his son and Bukowski's were tending horses at the stables, and he sent for them, and when the young men appeared-Roman Lubonski, aged twenty-two, tall and extremely shy, and Feliks Bukowski, a year younger and a slender, healthy fellow-he asked them to join the discussion, for he was eager to have his son learn the workings of Polish politics, and this meant that young Bukowski must, too, for in a sense, well-adjusted Feliks was a planned companion for the self-consciously diffident Roman.

'Tytus has been telling us that things looked dark at Warsaw. Explain to the boys.' And Tytus gave a brief summary of the ominous slide which he and his friends in the Seym had witnessed, concluding: 'It looks like war.'

'Should it come,' the count said, 'we have no part in it ... no interest in it. Do you understand that, young men?'

'I should think we'd all be very interested,' Feliks said.

'I agree,' his father said hastily, without considering what effect such opposition to the count's opinion might have. To his relief, Lubonski did not lose his temper: 'All we're discussing is a little tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of the fat. Russia wants a few miles that Poland doesn't need. Prussia wants her share. And there's no more to it. To start a war over such inconsequentials would be folly. Don't you agree, Tytus?' And this time Tytus nodded.

But when Bukowski and his son were back at their own home the discussion was quite different, for Tytus said: 'I'm a Pole, Feliks, and so are you. What happens up there concerns me and I hope to G.o.d it concerns you ... always.'

'The count says we're Austrians now. But the countess tells me on the sly: "You're Polish and always will be." I asked her if she was Polish too, and she said: "Forever." '

Tytus led his son to a window, and as if to lend emphasis to what he was about to say, pointed toward the river: 'As long as the Vistula flows, it waters the soul of Poland.'

'What can be done if Russia and Prussia attack?' the young man asked.

'Nothing,' his father said in a frank admission of the futility that oppressed him. 'But the time will come, Feliks, and be attentive to recognize it when it does come, when patriots will arise and sweep Austrians out of our lands, and Germans out of the west, and Russians out of the east.'

'Are you sure?' Feliks asked.

'As sure as a man can be. Poland will be Poland again.'

'When?'

Tytus slumped in a chair and pondered that most difficult of questions, and when he had weighed all possibilities, he felt that he must speak honestly with his son: 'I fear there will be another great retreat, and then perhaps another. It's even possible that our lovely neighbors will gobble us up completely. For a time. Maybe even for a long time, because they're powerful and we're weak.' He rose from his chair, and again he and his son looked down at the great river which had always commanded so much of their family's life, and his voice was strong as he said: 'As long as the Vistula flows, Poland will be Poland.'

Two weeks later a most fatuous debate erupted in the Seym, proving that even a patriot like Tytus Bukowski could behave like a child when some matter of truly Polish concern had to be handled. This one involved horses.

A deputy with experience in both Russia and Prussia addressed the parliament with some vigor: 'I have visited five foreign nations in my day, and being of a military cast of mind, I have invariably studied the armies of the lands I've been in. And I want to a.s.sure you gentlemen that we in Poland are committing a terrible mistake, which must be corrected if this nation is to preserve its existence.

'Listen to these figures. In the Prussian army the foot soldiers who fight the battles and take the land const.i.tute sixty-eight percent; cavalry who dash about for show, thirty-two percent. [Here there was a wild upheaval as cavalry officers in the Seym demanded a retraction, which the speaker was forced to give.] I meant no aspersion on our proudest branch of service.

'In Russia the proportion is sixty-nine to thirty-one in favor of the foot soldier. In Austria, which has always been partial to cavalry and losing important battles, something closer to sixty to forty. [Here again there was rioting and a demand for another apology, this time not only to the cavalry but to Austrian heroism.] In France, so far as we can ascertain during the revolution, seventy to thirty, and in England, where they fight with heroic courage to win their battles, which they seem always to do, seventy-two infantry to twenty-eight cavalry.

'And what is the proportion in Poland? Foot soldiers who do the fighting, twenty-nine percent; and cavalry who-[Cries of Careful. Retract. Retract. And a general disturbance in which Delegate Tytus Bukowski, who loved horses, challenged the speaker to a duel. Unperturbed, the critic continued.] So we must ask ourselves whether in our new army, which the Seym has so courageously authorized, we intend to have the infantry fighting or the cavalry parading.'

The debate, so forthrightly presented, fell quite out of hand, and it was the general opinion of all the delegates, save those who had traveled abroad or studied military history, that no Polish gentleman worthy of that distinguished name would go into battle on foot; it had never been done and it never would be. Orators reminded the Seym of the gallant Polish knights who had ridden into battle at Grunwald in 1410 and of the even more dashing, daring winged cavalry who had defeated the Turks in Vienna in 1683.

'The honor of Poland has always ridden astride some great horse, and it always will,' cried a Lubomirski appointee, and Tytus Bukowski, speaking for Count Lubonski, said: 'The Polish infantry is a rabble of peasants armed with clubs, and no gentleman would have anything to do with it.' At the conclusion of a fiery oration defending the horse, he renewed his challenge to the delegate who had opened this subject, but the acting chairman, a clergyman, prevailed upon him to withdraw it, which he did in a phrase which circulated approvingly throughout the castles of Poland: 'As long as Poland has a well-trained cavalry, she will remain free, and if the day ever comes when she relies on the foot soldier, she will march to her surrender.'

But when in the summer of 1792 a group of magnates begged Czarina Catherine to send in an army to protect their Golden Freedom from the nihilistic reforms proposed by the Seym, and when the ardent defenders of the horse saw that the Russians came with few cavalry and many foot soldiers, who occupied and held on to territory, even men like Tytus Bukowski had to confess their error, for the new-style Russian army was irresistible. And when shortly thereafter Prussian armies of comparable composition began to win great victories in the west, Polish reformers saw that their cause was doomed; by the beginning of 1793 all was lost.

Tytus did not hurry back to the sanctuary in Austrian Poland to which he was ent.i.tled. Circ.u.mstances had converted him into a patriot; with like-minded friends, he had given Poland one of the finest const.i.tutions in the world, one of the best forms of government, guaranteeing freedom for all within a workable future, and he could not stand idly by and see this n.o.ble vision perish.

Count Lubonski, aware, from things his wife had disclosed, that Tytus might stay with the reformers, saw to it that the two young men-his son and Bukowski's-did not bolt off to join him; he kept them tight within his castle and was careful to censor what news reached them. They were fine lads, he thought, better educated by far than he had been at their age, and although Roman did seem rather slow at times and reticent to state his opinions, when he did so they proved surprisingly sound. He had his mother's brilliance of insight, his father's tremendous stability, and the count could visualize him performing well at the court in Vienna. 'He could easily become the governor general of Polish Austria.' Lubonski told his wife, 'and I like the way in which young Bukowski helps him in this developing period. We must look out for young Feliks and a.s.sist him when we can, because I'm afraid his father is irresponsible.'

Tytus Bukowski was proving his lack of stability rather spectacularly. Gathering about him eighteen members of the Seym, he organized a cavalry unit and placed it at the disposal of the general defending Warsaw, but the Polish effort was so chaotic, compared to the steady pressure of the Prussians from the west and the Russians from the east, that not even the valiant efforts of the patriots accomplished anything, and a general debacle ensued.

The army was defeated. The traitorous magnates who had invited Catherine in to devastate the country she had once given to her bedfellow Poniatowski fled the country. Prussia and Russia occupied the entire nation, or as much of it as they cared to. And tall, austere Baron von Eschl and short, clever Fyodor Kuprin met as before to draw the new lines.

When Bukowski saw the map he choked with despair. This was not the nibbling away of which Count Lubonski had spoken so cavalierly; this was wholesale, callous, brutal dismembering of a great and Christian state. For no moral cause whatever, except a desire to crush a liberal nation whose leaders were charting new courses to freedom, Prussia and Russia had castrated Poland in defense of their Golden Freedom. All the good works of the years from 1772 to 1793 were scorned and discarded by outsiders before the insiders had a chance to make them function. It was one of the crudest destructions in history and one of the least warranted, the more remarkable in that no foreign state protested. A sovereign nation was raped while the trading nations loaded their ships and spoke of freedom of the seas, and religious leaders spoke of moral responsibility and justice.

The more Bukowski studied the map, the deeper became his despair. Russia was taking a vast expanse from Vitebsk to Minsk, and Prussia was doing the same, from Poznan almost to the gates of Warsaw. 'My G.o.d!' Tytus cried when he saw the pitiful remnant, an elongated strip with no logical basis for existence. 'How do they expect us to live?' And he was so outraged that he stormed into the quarters where his improvised cavalry unit was berthed and persuaded a group of men like himself to make protest against this crime. They mounted their horses, brandished what informal weapons they could find, and started out at a slow canter to attack the Granicki palace, where the Prussian and Russian diplomats were meeting to refine the boundaries of the lands they were stealing. As they reached Senatorska, the wide avenue leading to the royal castle and the palace, they spurred their horses to a faster pace, but when the time came to leave Senatorska and head for the palace, a detachment of Prussian guards intercepted them, the German commander shouting: 'Halt! It is forbidden!'

Bukowski, in the lead, refused to slow his horse; instead he spurred it, so that he and the horse leaped right past the Germans, with others following.

At this moment Baron von Eschl, hearing the disturbance, came to the front door of the palace, and comprehending immediately what was happening, he screamed in his high, quavering voice: 'Fire on them!' This brought the Prussian guards to their senses, and kneeling in the snow, they took aim and brought Bukowski down, four bullets through his back. When his horse stumbled, other horses fell, and there was a general ma.s.sacre.

When the fusillade stopped, all Polish hors.e.m.e.n having been gunned down, Von Eschl walked over to the commander and said: 'You'd better shoot them all again. We need no heroes.' And as he watched, the officer went to each of the prostrate bodies and put a bullet through the temple. No such coup de grce was needed for Tytus Bukowski, for he had died at the first volley.

As soon as Count Lubonski learned that his factotum had been killed in the disturbances attendant upon the Second Part.i.tion, he dispatched a messenger to the manor house at Bukowo with a request that the inheritor of the Bukowski estate report to him at once.

Selecting one of the Arabian horses for which the manor was noted-and which kept it plagued by nagging debts-Feliks rode slowly south to Castle Gorka, where he presented himself to the count, who in this time of sorrow would be his adviser and in a sense his commander, for he still practically owned the Bukowskis and their estate.

'Feliks!' the count cried as he hurried forward to greet the young man. 'I am saddened by news which has reached me from the north.'

As he and his wife feared, the young man had already heard of the shooting and was distraught, and Countess Lubonska tried to console him: 'Your father died a hero, and in a heroic cause.' The count, hearing these dubious words, wanted to growl 'He died a d.a.m.ned fool opposing the inevitable,' but he kept his silence, for he liked young Bukowski and wanted him to adjust quickly to his loss.

Feliks was twenty-two years old, and unlike most of the Bukowskis, was slight of build, blond-haired and generally attractive. He had a quick mind, a rarity in his rather stodgy family, and a keen interest in all things Polish, but in this tragic time he was obviously confused and not yet aware that he was now in charge of his family's fortunes.

'Sit down, Feliks, while I call my son,' said the count as he poured the young man a gla.s.s of Hungarian wine. Lubonski, fiftysix years old and at the height of his considerable powers, fumbled among his papers while they were waiting, and when the tall young n.o.bleman appeared, Lubonski cried: 'Good! Now we can study the map.'

'Why?' Roman asked.

'Because there's a new world to be mastered ... a new Poland to be understood ... and because it's needful that each of you find a wife.'

Roman blushed. 'I have not thought about a wife,' he said, and his father snapped: 'Young men rarely do ... at least not in the right way.' Then, unfurling a map, he added: 'This time, though, we shall all go about it in the right way,' and with the young men standing behind him he began to piece out the grand tour they would be starting three days from then. But before he indicated the first stop he looked up at them, smiled warmly, and said: 'What we shall be doing, the three of us, is searching out the beautiful young ladies of Poland.' Then he added almost sadly: 'But of course, with the new changes, most of them won't be in Poland any longer.'

With long, delicate fingers, almost the hallmark of his family, he indicated a castle only a short distance to the north: 'We'll go first to Baranow of the Leszczynskis, one of our n.o.blest families, then up to that troublesome spot, Pulawy, to see what the great Czartoryskis plan to do with what's left of Poland, then over to my favorite city, Zamosc of the equally powerful Zamoyskis.'

Here he lifted his hand from the map and asked the two young men to sit down while he addressed them. 'It is important, it is crucially important, that you see and understand these two new families-Czartoryski, Zamoyski. They represent dangerous forces in our society against which you must protect both yourselves and the nation. They're charming people. They're able. And I am the first to admit that they've done some good things. But they represent a terrible threat to the welfare of Poland, and they must be opposed in whatever they attempt.'