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Updated: May 29, 2025
In Rome also he became intimate with the family of the rich Count Ankwicz, for whose daughter Eva he conceived an affection that is reflected in the passion of Jacek Soplica for the Pantler’s only child.
All this, to be sure, was from pride, in order not to debase the name of the Soplicas, in order not to lower myself before a magnate by a vain request and receive a refusal—for what gossip there would have been among the gentry, if they had known that I, Jacek—— “The Horeszkos refuse a wench to a Soplica! They serve me, Jacek, with black soup!
That Jacek provided money for Zosia’s education, and that he has assigned her a small yearly allowance, and has deigned to promise more, does not mean that he has bought her. Besides you both know, and it is pretty generally known too, that your generosity for us is not without its reasons; the Soplicas owe something to the family of the Horeszkos.”
You know that Jacek, my brother, Thaddeus’s father, is a strange man, whose intentions are hard to penetrate. He refuses to return home; God knows where he is hiding; he will not even let us inform his son that he is alive, and yet he continually gives us directions in regard to him. At first he wanted to send him to the legions; I was fearfully distressed.
The Warden, who was thoroughly familiar with the story of the Horeszkos, straightened out in his mind the whole tale, though it was sadly tangled, and could fill up the gaps in it; but the Judge entirely failed to understand many points. Both listened attentively, bending their heads forward; but Jacek spoke more and more slowly, and often interrupted himself.
With the character of this person the description of Jacek Soplica’s early years agrees as closely as his name. Yet one of that hated family he now made the hero of his greatest poem. By introducing him in the guise of Father Robak, repentant and striving to atone for past misdeeds through heroic service to his country, he infused into his poem a romantic charm.
So whoever dares to speak a word at any time to the family of the deceased Jacek of the offence that he long since atoned for, that man will be liable, as a penalty for such a taunt, to gravis notæ macula,195 according to the words of the statutes, which thus punish both militem and skartabell196 if he spread calumny against a citizen of the Commonwealth—and since general equality before the law has now been proclaimed, therefore Article 3 is likewise binding on townsfolk and serfs.197 This decree of the Marshal the Scribe will enter in the acts of the General Confederation, and the Apparitor will proclaim it.
Among the gentry there was one great roistering blade, a fighting bully, Jacek Soplica, who was called in jest the Wojewoda; in truth he was of great influence in the wojewodeship, for he had absolute authority over the whole family of the Soplicas and controlled their three hundred votes according to his will, although he himself possessed nothing except a little plot of ground, a sabre, and great mustaches that stretched from ear to ear.
Me, whom Radziwill had called ‘my dear’! Me, who, when I rode forth from my hamlet, had led with me a train more numerous than a prince’s! And when I drew my sabre, then many thousand sabres had glittered round about, striking terror to the lords’ castles,—But now the very children of the peasant boors laughed at me! So paltry had I quickly made myself in the eyes of men! Jacek Soplica!
Later, Mickiewicz threw back the time of his action to the autumn of 1811 and the spring of 1812; thus, by giving his poem a political background in the invasion of Russia by Napoleon, he transformed his village idyl into a national epic. The Monk Robak, or Jacek Soplica, and not his commonplace son Thaddeus, now became the real hero of the poem.
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