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, deferred the realization of this cherished hope.
Since 1825 Jaczéwski had settled in the country and lived there, never leaving Rozánka, spending his time in farming, hunting, and reading the papers and letters, by means of which he still eagerly followed the political events of his native land. His second marriage, to a pretty but poor gentlewoman, was not happy. He did not love or respect her, considered her a burden, and treated her harshly and rudely, as if to revenge himself for the mistake he had made in remarrying. He had no children by this second wife. By his first wife he had two daughters: Wánda, the eldest, a stately beauty who knew the value of her good looks, and found country life tiresome; and a younger one, Albína, her father’s pet, a lively, bonny little girl, with fair curly hair, and large sparkling grey eyes set far apart like her father’s.