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order to make this possible for her, assumes the blame,
so that a divorce may be decreed, although he thereby
makes it impossible to be married again himself. The
following is a case which happened last year: an
estimable and finely educated advocate, who was married to
a young princess, received the confession from her that
she was in love with an officer of the guard. He
declared himself to be the guilty party, and she, by
reason of this accommodation, not very easy for him,
married her lover without impediment.
These glimpses of fundamental traits from the St.
Petersburg family dramas shape themselves into a
typical picture. But the peculiarities are brought into the
clearest light when we compare prominent Russian
individuals of the higher circles with prominent Poles
of the same class.
The typical Polish nobleman of our time is a grand
gentleman whose practical interests are agricultural,
whose diversions are amusements and the theatre,
whose intellectual interests are concentrated in the
advancement of the cause of the Catholic Church
and thereby of the Polish aristocracy. To him the
Church is the precious pledge of the nationality, and in
his mind the aristocracy stands as the indispensable
leader of the nation. He publishes, at his own expense,
some old national work, he subsidizes the national
theatre in Posen or the Polish press in Warsaw, enters into
alliance with Rome and with the Jesuits, — that is, if he
is a zealous Conservative and a zealous Pole. Otherwise,
he only thinks of amusing himself, lives for the ballet,
never misses a horse race, marries the daughter of some
rich Jewish banker to gild his tarnished coat-of-arms,
and then continues the life of his youth with greater
dignity and fewer creditors. He never does any real
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