Note 2 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Footnote 2:
(return)
In the diary of a Polish squire we find the following item: "Jan. 5. As the lessee Herszka had not yet paid me the rental of 91 gulden, I went to his house to get my debt. According to the contract, I can arrest him and his wife for as long as I wish, until he settles the bill, and so I ordered him locked up in the pig-sty and left his wife and his sons in the inn. The youngest son, however, I took with me to the palace to be instructed in the rudiments of our religion. The boy is unusually bright and shall be baptized. I already wrote to our priest concerning it, and he promised to come to prepare him. Leisza at first stubbornly refused to make the sign of the cross and repeat our prayers, but Strelicki administered a sound whipping, and to-day he even ate ham. Our venerable priest Bonapari ... is inventing all manner of means to break his stiff-neckedness." Meassef, St. Petersburg, 1902, pp. 192-193.