Such was in fact the condition of Pultova. He was, in Warsaw, a merchant of great wealth and respectability. When his countrymen rose in their resistance, he received a military commission, and distinguished himself alike by his wisdom and bravery. In the fierce battles that raged around the walls of the city before its fall, he seemed almost too reckless of life, and in several instances hewed his way, at the head of his followers, into the very bosom of the Russian camp. He became an object of admiration to his countrymen, and of equal hatred to the Russians. When Warsaw fell, his punishment was proportioned to the magnitude of his offence. He was entirely stripped of his estates, and perpetual banishment was his sentence. It is not easy to conceive of a situation more deplorable than his, at Tobolsk. The friends that he had there, like himself, were generally oppressed with poverty. Some shunned him, for fear of drawing down the vengeance of the government; for the chief officer of the citadel was of course a spy, who kept a vigilant watch over the people: and there are few persons, reduced to servitude and poverty, who do not learn to cower beneath the suspicious eye of authority. What could Pultova do? Here was no scope for his mercantile talents, even if he had the means of giving them exercise. His principles would not allow him to join the bands of men, who, driven to desperation by their hard fate, took to the highway, and plundered those whom they could master. Nor could he, like too many of his fellow-sufferers, drown his senses in drunkenness. Could he go to the mines, and in deep pits, away from the light of heaven, work for three or four cents a day, and that too in companionship with convicts and criminals of the lowest and most debased character? Could he go forth to the fields and labor for his subsistence, where the wages of a man trained to toil, were hardly sufficient for subsistence? These were the questions which the poor exile had occasion to revolve in his mind; and after his son and daughter joined him, and the few dollars he had brought with him were nearly exhausted, it became necessary that he should decide upon some course of action. Nor were these considerations those alone which occupied his mind. He had also to reflect upon the degradation of his country--the ruin of those hopes of liberty which had been indulged--the wreck of his personal fortunes--and the exchange, in his own case, of independence for poverty.