

LIVES OF THE POLISH HEltOES. 389 



sabres, and pistols, and continued their journey in a carriage as far as 

 Prasnysk, but foreseeing the impossibility of traversing the Russian 

 army in this manner, they resolved to proceed on their perilous route on 

 foot. Some leagues further they met with an envoy despatched into 

 Lithuania like themselves, by the Polish government, who was retracing 

 his steps to Warsaw, having found it impossible to effect a passage. 

 The recital of his failure, the details of the dangers and difficulties 

 which he had encountered, could nothing deter Wollowicz and his com- 

 panion ; they persevered in their mission, trusting to their enterprising 

 courage, and the justice of their cause. 



For a length of time they were obliged to proceed with the utmost 

 caution: here compelled to throw themselves into a marsh, there to 

 conceal themselves in a forest ; marching only during the night, and 

 sometimes during the most horrible tempests. 



At last they succeeded in joining a detachment of the Lithuanian 

 partisan Godlewski, under the command of Captain Modlenski. This 

 detachment was scouring the country, in order to pick up deserters 

 from the Russian army. They had not parted company with it above 

 an hour, when the whole detachment was made prisoners by the 

 enemy. The captain, with the view of purchasing his pardon, dis- 

 covered to the Russians that two Polish emissaries, charged with secret 

 instructions from the government of Warsaw, were in the immediate 

 environs. In a moment fifty cuirassiers and twenty cossacks dashed 

 forward in pursuit of the two Lithuanians, and pursued them as far as 

 the Niemen. This long chase, in which seventy horsemen galloped on 

 the traces of the two fugitives, was marked by a series of incidents that 

 are not without interest. Along their whole route, escaping by miracle 

 from their pursuers, Wollowicz and Przeclawski, met from all classes 

 succour, and frequently a protecting asylum. Overwhelmed with 

 fatigue, surrounded by always increasing dangers, and obliged to make 

 long detours, they never invoked in vain the sacred name of their country 

 to obtain aid and compassion. Once, at the moment when they arrived 

 almost breathless at a small town, a Russian corps, loaded with booty, 

 was entering at the opposite gate. They were on the point of being 

 captured and loaded with irons, when a man made signs to them to 

 follow him, and conducted them to a place of safety. In another place 

 some persons, bribed by the Russians, gave information of the place of 

 their concealment. A detachment was already approaching, when a 

 peasant favoured their escape, and pointed out to them the safest route. 

 On another occasion, a worthy and excellent curate received the 

 patriots in his house, and by his care and attention cured Przeclawski, 

 who was ill and exhausted from fatigue. A devotion on his part that 

 drew down on him the persecution of the Russian authorities. Farther on, 

 some peasants came with their boats and snatched them from the hands 

 of the enemy at the very moment when hunted down to the banks of 

 a river, they were on the point of becoming their prey. Shortly after- 

 wards their presence in the cabin of a "garde forrestier" gave rise to an 

 act of heroism in a boy of fourteen years of age. The two emissaries 

 had just quitted this asylum, when its owner, fearing the persecutions of 

 the Russians, hid himself and left this child its only tenant. A few 

 minutes had scarcely elapsed when the Russians arrive and ask the 

 boy what had become of the guard, for the purpose of interrogating 

 him. In vain, to obtain the secret of his master's retreat, do the 



