Selected Polish Tales | Page 2

in this
collection are taken, gives very powerful and realistic pictures of life in
the villages.
_Kaden-Bandrowski_ is a very favourite author in his own country, as
many of his short stories deal with Polish life during the Great War. In
the early part of the War he joined the Polish Legions which formed the
nucleus of Pilsudski's army, and shared their varying fortunes. During
the greater part of this time he edited a radical newspaper for his
soldiers, in whom he took a great interest. The story, The Sentence, was
translated by me from a French translation kindly made by the author.
Mme _Rygier-Nalkowska_, who, with Kaden-Bandrowski, belongs to
the youngest group of Polish writers, is a strong feminist of courageous
views, and a keen satirist of certain national and social conventions.
The present volume only contains a short sketch--a personal experience
of hers during the early part of the War. It would be considered a very
daring thing for a Polish lady to venture voluntarily into the zone of the
Russian army, but her little sketch shows the individual Russian to be
as human as any other soldier. This sketch and the first of Reymont's
have been translated by Mr. Joseph Solomon, whose knowledge of
Slavonic languages makes him a most valuable co-operator.
My share in the work has been to put Miss Benecke's literal translation
into a form suitable for publication, and to get into touch with the
authors or their representatives, to whom I would now tender my
grateful thanks for their courteous permission to issue this volume, viz.
to Mme Glowacka, widow of 'Prus', to the sons of the late Mr.
Szymánski, to MM. Zeromski, Reymont, Kaden-Bandrowski, and to
Mme Rygier-Nalkowska, all of Warsaw.
MARIE BUSCH.

THE OUTPOST

BY
BOLESLAW PRUS
(ALEKSANDER GLOWACKI)

CHAPTER I
The river Bialka springs from under a hill no bigger than a cottage; the
water murmurs in its little hollow like a swarm of bees getting ready
for their flight.
For the distance of fifteen miles the Bialka flows on level ground.
Woods, villages, trees in the fields, crucifixes by the roadside show up
clearly and become smaller and smaller as they recede into the distance.
It is a bit of country like a round table on which human beings live like
a butterfly covered by a blue flower. What man finds and what another
leaves him he may eat, but he must not go too far or fly too high.
Fifteen to twenty miles farther to the south the country begins to
change. The shallow banks of the Bialka rise and retreat from each
other, the flat fields become undulating, the path leads ever more
frequently and steeply up and down hill.
The plain has disappeared and given place to a ravine; you are
surrounded by hills of the height of a many-storied house; all are
covered with bushes; sometimes the ascent is steep, sometimes gradual.
The first ravine leads into a second, wilder and narrower, thence into a
succession of nine or ten. Cold and dampness cling to you when you
walk through them; you climb one of the hills and find yourself
surrounded by a network of forking and winding ravines.
A short distance from the river-banks the landscape is again quite
different. The hills grow smaller and stand separate like great ant-hills.
You have emerged from the country of ravines into the broad valley of
the Bialka, and the bright sun shines full into your eyes.
If the earth is a table on which Providence has spread a banquet for
creation, then the valley of the Bialka is a gigantic, long-shaped dish

with upturned rim. In the winter this dish is white, but at other seasons
it is like majolica, with forms severe and irregular, but beautiful. The
Divine Potter has placed a field at the bottom of the dish and cut it
through from north to south with the ribbon of the Bialka sparkling
with waves of sapphire blue in the morning, crimson in the evening,
golden at midday, and silver in moonlit nights.
When He had formed the bottom, the Great Potter shaped the rim,
taking care that each side should possess an individual physiognomy.
The west bank is wild; the field touches the steep gravel hills, where a
few scattered hawthorn bushes and dwarf birches grow. Patches of
earth show here and there, as though the turf had been peeled. Even the
hardiest plants eschew these patches, where instead of vegetation the
surface presents clay and strata of sand, or else rock showing its teeth
to the green field.
The east bank has a totally different character; it forms an amphitheatre
with three tiers. The first tier above the field is of mould and contains a
row of cottages surrounded by trees: this