and polite general muttered a short Spanish oath under his breath. But somehow the speaker had failed to make that point, and he hurried on: "It was not, technically speaking, a murder. My boy, who had a fine spirit, attacked the rioters, and a clever counsel might have got a verdict for the scoundrel who actually struck the blow. I knew this, and awaited events. I did not even take steps against the man who killed my son, -an only son and child. It was not from a legal point of view worth while." "Quite," said the general-"quite." And he smiled. He seemed to fail to realize that Sir John Pleydell was in deadly earnest, and really harbored the implacable spirit of revenge with which he cynically credited himself. "I traced my man to Gibraltar, and from thence he appears to have come north," continued Sir John Pleydell. "He has probably taken service under Espartero. Many of our English outlaws wear the Spanish queen's uniform. He is, of course, bearing an assumed name, but surely it would be possible to trace him." "Oh, yes," answered Conyngham, "I think you will be able to find him." Sir John's eyes had for a moment a gleam of life in them. "Ah!" he said, "I am glad to hear you say that; for that is my object in coming to this country, and although I have during the course of my life had many objects of ambition or desire, none of them has so entirely absorbed my attention as this one. Half-adozen men have gone to penal servitude in order that I might succeed in my purpose." There was a cold deliberation in this statement, which was more cruel than cynicism, for it was sincere. Conyngham looked at Estella. Her face had lost all color, her eyes were burning, not with the dull light of fear, for the blood that ran in her veins had no taint of that in it, but with anger. She knew whom it was that Sir John Pleydell sought. She looked at Conyngham and his smile of cool intrepidity made her heart leap within her breast. This lover of hers was, at all events, a brave man, and that which through all the ages reaches the human heart most surely is courage. The coward has no friends. Sir John Pleydell had paused, and was seeking something in his pocket. General Vincente preserved his attitude of slightly bored attention. "I have here, went on the baronet, "a list of the English officers serving in the army of General Espartero at the time of my quitting England. Perhaps you will at your leisure be kind enough to cast your eye over it, and make a note of such men as are personally unknown to you, and may, therefore, be bearing assumed names." Conyngham took the paper, and holding it in his hand spoke without moving from the mantelpiece, against which he leant. "You have not yet made quite clear your object in coming to Spain," he said. "There exists between Spain and England no extradition treaty, and even if such were to come in force, I believe that persons guilty of political offences would be exempt from its action. You propose to arraign this man for high treason, a political offence according to the law of many countries." "You speak like a lawyer," said Sir John, with a laugh. "You have just informed us," retorted Conyngham, "that all the En glish in the Spanish service are miscreants. None know the law so intlmately as those who have broken it." "Ah!" laughed Sir John again, wich a face of stone; "there are exceptions to all rules, and you, young sir, are an exception to that which I laid down as regards our countrymen in Spain, unless my experience of faces and knowledge of men play me very false. But your contention is a just one. I am not in a position to seek the air of the Spanish authorities in this matter. I am fully aware of the fact. You surely did not expect me to come to Spain with such a weak case as that." "No," answered Conyngham slowly, "I did not." Sir John Pleydell raised his eyes and looked at his fellow-countryman with a dawning interest. The general also looked up from one face to the other. The atmosphere of the room seemed to have undergone a sudden change and to be dominated by the personality of the two Englishmen. The one will, strong on the surface, accustomed to assert itself and dominate, seemed suddenly to have found itself faced by another as strong, and yet hidden behind an easy smile and indolent manner. "You are quite right," he went on in his cold voice. "I have a better case than that, and one eminently suited to a country such as Spain, where a long war has reduced law and order to a somewhat low ebb. I at first thought of coming here to await my chance of shooting this man-his name, by the way, is Frederick Conyngham-but circumstances placed a better vengeance within my grasp, one that will last longer." He paused for a moment to reflect upon his long-drawn expiation. "I propose to get my man home to England and let him there stand his trial. The idea is not my own; it has, in fact, been carried out successfully before now. Once in England, I shall make it my business to see that he gets twenty years' penal servitude." "And how do you propose to get him to England?" asked Conyngham. "Oh, that is simple enough! Only a matter of paying a couple of such scoundrels as I understood abound in Spain at this moment, a little bribery of officials, a heavy fee to some English ship captain-I propose, in short, to kidnap Frederick Conyngham. But I do not ask you to help me in that. I only ask you to put me on his track; to help me to find him, in fact. Will you do it?" "Certainly," said Conyngham, coming forward with a card in his hand; "you could not have come to a better man." Sir John Pleydell read the card, and had himself in such control that his face hardly changed. His teeth closed over his lower lip for a second, then he rose. The perspiration stood out on his face, the grey of his eyes seemed to have faded to the color of ashes. He looked hard at Conyngham, and then taking up his hat, went to the door with nervous, uneven steps. On the threshold he turned. "Your insolence," he said, breathlessly, "is only exceeded by yourdaring!" As the door closed behind him there came from that part of the room where General Vincente sat a muffled click of steel, as if a sword half out of its scabbard had been sent softly home again. From The Contemporary Review. HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ.1 During the last generation, the leading writer of Poland was Joseph Ignatius Kraszewski, of whose innumerable novels one, at least, "The Jew," has been presented to English readers. Four years ago I had the pleasure of introducing Kraszewski, in a short, critical biography mainly compiled from German sources, and at the same time I ventured to comment on the extraordinary market for literary wares 1 Novels of Sienkiewicz. (Translated by Jeremiah Curtin, author of "Myths and Folk Tales of the Russians, Western Slavs and Magyars," etc.) "Quo Vadis: a Narrative of Rome in the time of Nero; "Children of the Soil; a Novel of Polish Life; "With Fire and Sword: an Historical Novel of Poland and Russia, Temp. 1647-1751;" "The Deluge: an Historical Novel of Poland, Sweden and Russia," a Sequel to "With Fire and Sword;" "Pan Michael:" a Sequel to "The Deluge;" ""Without Dogma; a Novel of Modern Poland" (translated by G. A. Young). London: J. M. Dent & Co. which appear to exist in Poland. time on the Pacific coast, sending back Kraszewski was the author of more than four hundred and fifty volumes, and, though he lived to be a very old man, it is difficult to account either for so prodigious an activity or for so patient and so constant an implied world of purchasers. Extreme fecundity and volubility may, perhaps, be a characteristic feature of Polish authorship, for certainly the writer who, in the present generation, has taken the place vacated by Kraszewski at his death in 1887, threatens to be no less formidable a burdener of bookshelves. Let us, then, glance at the productions of Sienkiewicz-whom his admirers, ineptly enough, style the Polish Tolstoi-while the mass of his compositions is still fairly manageable. In a few years, if he has health and appetite for work, the library of the novels of Sienkiewicz will compete in vastness with the temples of Voltaire and of Lope de Vega. to Warsaw stories and impressions of The Polish critics must have been slow to recognize the genius of the author they are now so eager to adulate, for in 1880 Sienkiewicz had For those who, like myself, have not printed, in three volumes of "Pisma," the happiness of reading Polish, not a great many of the short folk-stories very much seems to be as yet available and incidents of country life, which, about the life of Henryk Sienkiewicz. though not yet translated into English, From various sources, mainly German, enjoy a great popularity in Germany. I gather that it will one day be discov. Of these I shall presently speak. But ered to have been of romantic interest meanwhile Sienkiewicz set off on his in youth. He was born in 1846 (or in travels again, this time to Africa, of 1845), of Lithuanian parents, at Wola which he has published conspicuous Okrzejska in the Lukowschen. It is in impressions, and had returned to Warsisted upon, and not least by himself, saw to become editor-in-chief of the that he is a pure child of Lithuania. newspaper (or magazine) called Slowo. After pursuing his studies at the un- I know not what may be the form of versity of Warsaw, he adopted, at the this periodical, but I speculate with adage of twenty-two, a wandering exist- miration and almost with alarm on the ence; he describes himself as having quality of its subscribers, for the feast been a gypsy, and he would even seem which the editor proceeded to lay be. to have attached himself to some no- fore them was not suited to a frivolous madic tribe. Meanwhile he was re- nor to a captious taste. Sienkiewicz, duced to poverty, or want of means who no doubt had long been preparing may in the first place have driven him for the colossal task, began to publish to the forests. He must have essayed in the pages of Slowo the first chapters literature, however, for the date 1872 of an immense historical romance. is discovered on the title-page of a vol- From 1880 to 1888 it seems to have ume of his humoristic sketches. In been running its gigantic course. For this field no success can have rewarded at least eight years Polish readers, him at first, for so late as 1876 we find without a sigh of impatience, were ochim proceeding to America, in complete cupied in following the long-drawn adpenury, and trying his luck in the gold ventures of a group of half-chivalrous, mines of California. half-savage nobles during the central Sienkiewicz spent a considerable years of the seventeenth century. It required no common powers, we may be sure, to arrest attention so long and to sustain it on a theme which, though less remote to a Pole than to ourselves, must to any living creature, at first sight, seem lacking in actuality. But of the genius of Sienkiewicz, and of his power to excite and to support curiosity, there seems from the first to have been no question. The romance ap peared by instalments, and was completed in thirteen massive volumes, a perfect macrocosm of historical ro mance. Before considering this work, however, a few words may be given to the shorter and more desultory productions of his youth. In 1880, as I have said, before beginning the great historical epos which has made him famous, Sienkiewicz collected his shorter stories and sketches into three volumes under the general title of "Pisma." Among the tales which form this earliest section of his work, several are available for western readers in German. Those that I have met with are mainly village-idylls, dorfgeschichten, which suggest the influence of Jeremias Gotthelf and Auerbach. They are, however, more incisive and photographic, and in their mixture of realistic description and idealistic sentiment they come, sometimes, very close to the early manner of Björnson. From Nitschmann's account of recent Polish literature, I gather that this minute and romantic observation of episodes in the life of peasants, which was already so familiar to German, Swiss, and Scandinavian readers, had the charm of novelty for Poles; but the general European critic will not see much positive originality in these agreeable early tales of Sienkiewicz. We may take as a favorable example the story of "Janko, the Musician." In a remote Lithuanian village there is born to a poor woman a son so weakly and rickety that his presence in the household seems a burden. It is not thought possible that he should live, and as years pass on and he reaches the age at which boys begin to be of use, almost every one, except his not mother, wishes that Janko had lived. Conscious of this want of sympathy, terribly harassed by weakness, cold, and hunger, Janko shrinks more and more from the rough life of the village, and steals at every opportunity into the surrounding forest. Here a magic sense descends upon him; he awakens to a consciousness of the great harmony of nature. The wind in the trees, the birds, the grass, the whole hollow cave of air sing and echo to him. His poor little soul is transformed into a forlorn Eolian harp, across which every elemental force sweeps its wild and fitful melodies. His starved body becomes a sort of rude or primitive violin, ready to respond to a touch; to the vague wonder of the neighbors, more scornful than sympathetic, he is a kind of crazy creature, "Janko, the Musician." Janko watches with entranced delight the movements of a fiddler at a feast, and his whole soul is lost in the yearning to possess, or at least to play upon, to touch, such a divine and supernatural construction. Failing this, he builds a rough violin for himself, a dull concern which, at best, gives out no louder sound than the murmuring of gnats on a summer evening. Yet on this wretched instrument Janko plays from morning to night. But the footman at the great house has a beautiful violin, and, one bright moonlight night, Janko steals out in his shirt, pattering with naked feet over the gravel, and peeps through the window. There, with its pegs shining like glow-worms and its bow like a rod of silver in the moonshine, hangs the mysterious violin. The house is silent, doubtless deserted. Over Janko there falls an intolerable longing to dart in and touch, with but one finger, the exquisite, sacred object. Dare he do so? The wind, the pine-trees, the whispering creepers, urge him on, and then voice of the nightingale rises, piercing the silence, thrusting him onwards to this mad adventure. Only the owl, sailing softly by, hoots, "No, Janko, no!" But the other voices prevail, and the little, crumpled, trembling figure the darts into the doorway, then crouches Augustinowicz, loyal through all vicis. almost on all fours, and creeps towards situdes to the tragic close of the tale. the fiddle. He has just reached it, one The moral of the book is that heady sob rises from a string that he has Slavonic youth expends too rich a store touched, when a rough voice in the of vital energy on the pursuit of love; darkness calls out, "Who's there?" A "love flies from us like a bird, and we match is struck, Janko is discovered, find too late that all our force is shatand, amid a storm of tears and entreat- tered," says Augustinowicz, as the last ies, is cuffed and carried off to prison page closes. An æsthetic story, "Lux as an intending thief. He is con in tenebris lucet," demands mention, demned by the magistrate to be and the ground is then clear for a diswhipped by the town-crier, and so bru- cussion of the great historical triltally is this done, and so feeble is the ogy. attenuated body, and so deep the soul's despair, that on the third day Janko dies in his distracted mother's arms. Other stories in which this poignant and sardonic observation of village types is predominant are "Nature and Life," a curious picture of the autonomy of a large village in a remote part of Poland; and "The Old Servant," in which a charming impression is produced of the patriarchal relations between the landed class and their retainers in far-away old-fashioned places. Another noticeable book, which may be read in German, is "Na Marne," or "Shattered," a novel of student life in Kiew, published by Sienkiewicz before 1881, describing the arrival of a Polish youth at the great university of southern Russia, and his adventures there in love and war. A beautiful element in this book is the faithful friendship of the two contrasted heroes, Schwarz and in Sienkiewicz is certainly slow warming to his work. The openings of his novels are hard reading. Doubtless, the cause of this is the fact that he paints on a very large scale, and that the panoramic style excludes the possibility of finishing up corners and edges. But, unquestionably, the great historical trilogy cannot be approached with a light heart. The cook, in "High Life Below Stairs," who proposed to read Shakespeare "one of these fine mornings," would certainly never have had leisure for a real enjoyment of Sienkiewicz. To enter the trilogy it is requisite to become intimately acquainted with the book which is, I believe, called "Ogniem i mieczem" in Polish, but which the American translator entitles "With Fire and Sword." It is an enormous romance, comparable in size to the huge heroic novels of the seventeenth century, "Cyrus" and "Clélie" and "Pharamond." I know not whether it is too subtle a suggestion, but a certain parallel between these warlike folios and the romance of Sienkiewicz forces itself upon the mind. The action of "With Fire and Sword" opens in 1647; in that year, on the other side of Europe, was published the "Polexandre," of Gomberville, the earliest of the heroic novels. It was, I think, this book of which Madame de Sévigné spoke, when she said: "The beauty of the sentiments, the violence of the passions, the grandeur of the events, and the miraculous success of the heroes' redoubtable swords, all draw me on as if I were a little girl." The qualities she mentions are pre cisely those which meet us in the pages |