Bishop Kajetan So?tyk, coadjutor of Kiev, who hasn’t slept and is exhausted, has just dismissed his secretary and is now writing a letter to the Bishop of Kamieniec, Miko?aj Dembowski.
Hurriedly and in my own hand I must inform you, my friend, that though I am in good physical health, I am tormented by troubles that here press in from all sides so that I sometimes feel as cornered as an animal. You have come to my aid many times, and so this time, too, I turn to you as to a brother, in the name of our long-standing friendship, which it would be in vain to seek among others.
Interim . . .
Meanwhile . . . Meanwhile . . . Now he doesn’t know what to write. How, after all, can he explain himself? Dembowski doesn’t play cards himself, how could he understand Bishop So?tyk’s situation? Suddenly he’s overwhelmed by a feeling of great injustice, he feels in his breast a gentle, warm pressure that seems to be dissolving his heart and turning it into a trickling pulp. He recalls taking up the bishopric in ?ytomierz, his first arrival in the dirty, muddy town, enclosed on all sides by forest. His thoughts rush out to his pen now, quick and easy, and his heart is fortified, and his energy returns. He writes:
You must remember well that when I took up the bishopric in ?ytomierz, the place was rife with every type of sin. Whether bigamy or polygamy, vice was universal. Husbands would sell off their wives when they committed bad deeds and exchange them for new women. Neither concubinage nor debauchery was considered wicked, and apparently, upon marriage, both parties promised each other mutual freedom in that respect. Moreover, there was no observance of religious dictates, none of the commandments, everywhere just sin and depravity, moreover misery with poverty.
I must scrupulously remind you, too, of how the diocese had been divided into 3 deaneries: ?ytomierz with 7 parishes, including 277 villages and towns, Chwast with 5 parishes, or 100 villages and towns, and Owruck with 8 parishes, 220 villages and towns. Altogether the Catholic population is a mere 25,000. And my income from the humble episcopal estates has totaled 70,000 Polish zlotys; with expenditures for the consistory, and the diocesan school, that amount was nothing. You are aware of how little comes in from such poor properties. My own income as bishop was exclusively any revenue from the villages of Skryhylówka, Wepryk, and Wolica.
The moment I arrived here, I occupied myself first thing with getting the finances in order. It turned out the cathedral had in its possession in capital from offerings by the pious a total amount of 48,000 Polish zlotys. This capital was invested in private land, and a certain sum was borrowed from the Dubno kahal, upon which the annual interest amounted to 3,337 Polish zlotys. Meanwhile, my expenses were great: church maintenance, four vicars’ salaries, the organist, the cantor, et caetera.
The chapter, meanwhile, was modestly funded, with a variety of donations in the amount of 10,300 bringing in an annual income of 721 Polish zlotys. In addition, from the village donated by Prince Sanguszko, there was an additional income of 700 Polish zlotys, but the proprietor of the village, Zwiniacz, did not, for a period of three years, pay any interest on the 4,000 zlotys he had borrowed. The amount donated by a certain officer by the name of Piotr remained in the hands of Canon Zawadzki, who neither invested it, nor gave any tithe of it, and the same was the case with the sum of 2,000 Polish zlotys that remained in the hands of Canon Rabczewski. In sum, the chaos was great, though I made haste to organize it all.
You are in the best position to appreciate how much I have accomplished, my dear friend. You have visited us, and you have seen it with your own eyes. I’m now completing the construction of the chapel, and these drastic expenses have exhausted my purse for the time being, but things are moving in the right direction, which is why I am asking you, my trusted confidant, for support, for some 15,000 zlotys, which I would pay back immediately after Easter. I have worked to encourage the generosity of the faithful, which at Eastertime will no doubt yield its fruits. For instance, Jan Olszański, the chamberlain of S?uck, put 20,000 zlotys into his property at Brusi?ow, allotting half the interest of it to the cathedral, and the other half to the increase of the quantity of missionaries. G??bocki, the cupbearer of Brac?aw, donated 10,000 zlotys to the establishment of a new canonry and to an altar for the cathedral and gave 2,000 zlotys for the seminary.
I’m including all this information because I’m doing a good business here and want to assure you that your loan will be repaid. In the meantime, I have entered into some unfortunate dealings with the ?ytomierz Jews, and in their impudence, they truly know no limits, thus I would require the loan as soon as possible. It is astonishing that within our Commonwealth these Jews may so flagrantly break with law and good custom. Not for nothing did Popes Clement VIII, Innocent III, Gregory XIII, and Alexander III keep on ordering the burning of their Talmuds, and yet when we wanted to do the same thing here, not only had we no support, but the secular authorities even opposed us.
It’s an odd thing that the Tatars, the Aryans, and the Hussites were all expelled, and yet somehow no one thinks to get rid of the Jews, although they are the ones bleeding us dry. Abroad they even have a saying about us: Polonia est paradisus Judaeorum . . .
Of the presbytery in Firlejów and the sinful pastor living in it
This autumn is like a piece of embroidery done by invisible needles, thinks El?bieta Dru?backa, riding in a large britchka on loan from the starosta. Deep bronzes in plowed furrows and a brighter streak of dried earth in the fields, and pitch-black branches, to which the most stubborn leaves are still clinging, pied splotches. And there remain blades of grass that are succulent and green, as if they have forgotten it’s the end of October, and that it freezes at night.
The road is straight as an arrow and runs along the river. On the left side, a sandy ravine, the ground ragged from some long-ago catastrophe. You can see peasants’ carts going down over that yellow sand. Restless clouds float across the sky; one minute it’s gray and gloomy, the next a piqued sun bursts out from behind the clouds, everything on the ground suddenly becoming alarmingly distinct, sharp.
Dru?backa misses her daughter, who is currently expecting her fifth child, and she thinks that in reality she ought to be with her now, not on some new peregrination in some foreign country with an eccentric castellan’s wife, and certainly not going off to see some jack-of-all-trades priest. But on the other hand, Dru?backa lives to be transported. You might think—but you’d be wrong—that being a poet is a sedentary profession, nearer to a garden than a public house, suitable for a homebody.
The priest is awaiting her at the gate. He grabs the horse’s harness as if he’s been unable to think of anything other than this visit, and immediately taking his visitor’s arm, he guides her to the garden by the house.