A certain Princess Radziwil, with whom, on several occasions, I took an evening stroll along the Vistula near Warsaw, told me of an uncle of hers who had retired to his castle near Radom on his fiftieth birthday because he had sworn on his twenty-first birthday that he would do so. Friends who had thought he would not recall this oath after thirty years, or would simply ignore it, were therefore very surprised when on the day after his fiftieth birthday he spent the night in Radom and swore he would never leave Radom again. As the time apparently began to drag in Radom while he was waiting for his death, he shot himself on his fifty-first birthday. When I asked the princess why her uncle had acted in this way, she said her uncle had once said to her that having to live for fifty years in this world, without, when all’s said and done, being asked, is more than enough for any thoughtful man. Anyone who goes on living after that is either weak in the head or is a weak character.

Prince Potocki

PRINCE POTOCKI

A certain Prince Potocki, a nephew of the famous Potocki who wrote the Saragossa manuscript and in so doing ensured himself a permanent niche in world literature, is said to have closed all the shutters on his estate in the neighborhood of Kazimierz, one after the other and from top to bottom, and, after once more making sure that all the shutters in his castle were really shut, he apparently put a bullet through his head over a copy of Goethe’s Faust that was open at exactly the place where the Easter promenade comes to an end. The prince is said to have drawn a red line under the end of the Easter promenade before committing suicide and to have placed a question mark beneath it. In his will he expressed the wish that the shutters, which, as he expressly stated in the will, he had shut for thirty years, should not be opened until thirty years after his death. The Potocki family honored his wishes. Immediately after the Potockis had reopened the shutters, they sold the castle near Kazimierz.

Lec

LEC