Solution of the Polish question--War in the Crimea--Congress in Paris--Allocution of the Czar--1856--‘No dreams’--1860--February 25, 1861--Count Andrew Zamoyski--Prince Gortchakof--His death--General Souchozanett--The Marquis Wiélopolski--Vacillating policy of Russia--7th and 8th of April, 1861--A contested nationality--Horoldo--The procession--The Polish eagle--The elections--State of siege--15th and 16th of October--General Lambert--Exiles--Catholicism in Poland--The _Welicorus_--Poland and Russia THE STORY OF A SIBERIAN EXILE. INTRODUCTION. SIBERIA--ADVENTURES OF BENIOWSKI--MADAME FELINSKA--M. RUFIN PIOTROWSKI. There is an expression in use in Poland which surpasses all that human eloquence has ever employed to give intensity to despair; it consists of the words ‘_we never meet again_:’ and thus it is that any political exile, when about to depart for Siberia, takes leave of his family and of his friends; ‘_we never meet again!_’ for the only way in which an exile could find himself once more among those whom he loves would be for him to meet them in the same place of torment. The conviction is deep that they who are once transported to those regions of pain can quit them no more; that Siberia never relinquishes her prey. For nearly a century she has torn from Poland her most devoted women, her most generous sons. Back to those realms of snow and of blood fly the thoughts of every Pole who inquires into the past fortunes of his family; and when the poet dreams for his country a future which is all liberty and bliss, it is again Siberia which rears herself before his eyes, ready after victory itself still to demand her victims. It is a mysterious and dismal land!--a land ‘from which one returns no more,’ as the Polish peasants say, or, as Hamlet speaks of that other region which Siberia so fatally resembles, it is an ‘undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns.’ And yet now and then some one does come back. Sometimes at the accession of a Czar to the throne, an amnesty (which, however incomplete it may be, receives no less the surname of general) sends back to heart-broken families some of those who have not wholly succumbed to pain. At least, this did happen twice in one century; at the accession of Paul I. and of Alexander II.: the Emperor Nicholas never felt a similar weakness. In other cases, very rare ones, and therefore not hard to enumerate, entreaties and prayers backed by some distinguished protection have, after years of persevering efforts, obtained the return of the condemned exile. Finally, we have even seen, reappearing in the light, and among the living, those who, neither waiting nor hoping for an amnesty, whether general or particular, have found, in their own courage and in their own despair, a way of extricating themselves from their horrible fate; but such a phenomenon as this is not to be met with twice in any hundred years.