"You must have heard of a large river--it's swift and black--they call it Narew? Not far from that river there are three big villages, called Mocarze.
"I've seen many, many different villages, and I've looked at many different people. I've seen the big Tartar villages, and the Russian settlements, as large as towns, and the villages on the River Angara and behind Lake Baikal, and where the Poles are so well off;[4] but nowhere, nowhere have I seen villages like our Mocarze.
"There isn't a thing you can't find there. Everything's there. My God!" And Maciej stretched out his arms.
"And those meadows and fields and the hay timee! Oh! those young oak-woods, and the corn, too, like gold!
"Here everything is big, but somehow it's dreary. What can you see in the taiga? What's there to enjoy in the fields? It's like a grave all round you: a vulture crying above, a bear growling in the taiga, and that's all the pleasure you get! At home it's different.
"There, if you go out in the morning through the fields with the dew on them, and shout, it sounds like a bell ringing in the open air. You watch the cheerfulness of the animals, and listen to the birds chirping on the ground and above, and you feel cheerful too. And if you breathe the air coming from those fields and meadows, as if it came from a censer in church, you feel its strength going into you. I've never felt so strong anywhere as at sunrise at Mocarze, when I used to say 'Good-morning!' to the sun. Here the morning's no morning--there's no pleasure in it; none of the birds or animals or people know anything about it. At home it's different.
"I've seen so many countries; I've been through all this big Siberia, and a good bit of the Lake Baikal country, but I've never seen a country like ours anywhere. But I've learnt that since being here. Yes, here! Am I the only one? We've clever people at home--priests and gentlemen and peasants with heads on their shoulders--but none of them know what they have!"
"Each of these villages called Mocarze has its own name. They call the one that's the oldest, Korzeniste; the second, Suche; and the third, which is the newest, Mokry. I am from Mocarze-Suche.
"It's a big village. Pan Olszeski was our master, and we were his serfs. Everyone knows it's not very pleasant to be that. When I was about twenty, Olszeski took me into his service at the house.