Why? by Leo Tolstoy

In the spring of 1830 Pan Jaczéwski, at his family estate of Rozánka, received a visit from Joseph Migoúrski, the only son of a deceased friend.

Jaczéwski, a patriot of the days of the second partition of Poland, was a broad-browed, broad-shouldered, broad-chested man of sixty-five, with a long white moustache on his brick-red face. As a youth he had served with Migoúrski's father under the banner of Kosciúszko; and with all the strength of his patriotic soul he hated the "Apocalyptic Adulteress" (as he called Catherine II) and her abominable paramour, the traitor Poniatówski; and he believed in the reestablishment of the Polish State as firmly as he believed that tomorrow's sun would rise. In 1812 he had commanded a regiment in the army of Napoleon, whom he adored. Napoleon's fall distressed him, but he did not despair of the reestablishment of the Polish kingdom, even though in a mutilated form. His hopes were reawakened when Alexander I opened the Diet in Warsaw; but the Holy Alliance, the general reaction in Europe, and the obstinacy of Constantine,312 deferred the realization of this cherished hope.