Zaosie, neighbouring Novogrudok, is extensively described in the text. The author recalls the origin of the name, which is related to the Lithuanian Rus' and denotes a settlement with several houses inhabited by petty gentry. The manors in Zaosie belonged to, among others, the Chmielewski, Terajewicz and Mickiewicz families. The text is followed by a detailed description of the Mickiewicz house. In addition, next to the text, there is a short note about Mickiewicz's Novogrudok (Source: Tygodnik Illustrowany, Warsaw 1883, Series 4, T:1, pp. 219, 222, 224, after: Digital Library of the University of Łódź).

A modernised reading of the text.

ZAOSIE

Having recently found in the interesting article "Mickiewicz in Nowogródek", published in Tygodnik ilustrowany [Illustrated Weekly], an inaccuracy in the description of a place I know - as a native of Nowogródek and a neighbour of Zaoś for thirty years, moreover, having once been close to the Stypułkowski family and therefore aware of what the author is probably talking about from hearsay - I feel it my duty to rectify this inaccuracy. This is all the more so because at a time when the country is turning with every passing day more and more curiously towards the locality which gave us the great bard, and when more than one writer, sketching his life today, is attempting to give us a picture of these places as a faithful background against which his character is to appear - it is right and timely to clear up any erroneous imprints and replace the uncertain with the certain, until a few, the last witnesses of times gone by, have disappeared. I count myself among them.

They began with a name. Zaosie, five miles from Novogrudok, one mile from Lorodyszcze, and eight wooners from the once parish church of Stwolowicz, is named not after a village, as the author of the article states, but after the area. The name neighbourhood is used in Lithuanian Kusia to denote any settlement "made up of a number of houses inhabited by small (parochial) gentry". It differs from a village inhabited by peasants in that while in the case of the peasants the cottages (usually hen houses) are built in a row, along a common street, the houses of the nobility in the area are, with rare exceptions, scattered loosely, at a greater or lesser distance from the main road, as if they were separate farmsteads; their houses, with larger windows, usually have chimneys, and sometimes a porch at the entrance. That is why they are usually called: Zubkov area, Mikulicze area, Przewloką area and so on. The inhabitants are called: the surrounding gentry. (Pan Tadeusz, Explanations.) The Zaosie region consists of several such manors.

The first, on the side of Novogrudok and Lorodyszcze, belonged to the Chmielewskis and was the most impressive; it had several cottages and an inn; the second, half a mile away, belonged to the Trajevichis; the third, owned by the Mickiewiczes and then the Stypułkowskis, had two or three serfs, just off the road. I have not heard of the two-name name Zaosie-Koldychev. In my memory, it was simply called Zaosieni. On the other hand, Koldyczew, a manor and village by the lake of the same name, a good half a mile from Zaosie, had nothing to do with Zaosie, and until 1840 was more or less in the hands of Filipowicz, after whom it passed to Zuliewski, and after him it was given to the Szalewicz family, and has remained in their hands until now.

As for the dwelling house, whose modest present state and scarcity in Mr N. Only's drawing the author of the article counts as evidence that our Adam was not born in it - this, disregarding the groundlessness of other evidence on which he bases his doubt, such as the state of the atmosphere, the inconvenience of the journey, etc., but nevertheless overlooking the misleading and unsupportive nature of the story, and leaving aside any misunderstanding of the baptismal certificate, the significance of which has recently been explained to us in an extensive study by the Rev. Jan Sieniieński, I should say that the house in question is not the one in which Basil Mickiewicz, and later the Stypułkowski family, lived. It was erected not long ago by the present owner, who used for its construction material the remains of an old house which was much larger and more comfortable. Although he built it on the same site, he did it hereby and in a different shape as regards the walls and roof.

He kept a view of the old nanny in his notes and readily gave it to the "Weekly" for copying. All that remains of the old surroundings is the historic lamus, untouched by the tooth of time (apart from the roof, which was covered with shingles), the lamus that served as accommodation for Adam and his brothers during the summer holidays, and whose view was faithfully depicted in pencil by Mr N. Only. And the beautiful grove behind the garden, the old pines and oaks, which sheltered the frothed chapel stump on Żarnowa Góra (Babula "Tukaj"), disappeared. The layout of the house was next. From the porch, having entered the hallway, a door to the right led to a room with two windows at the front. This was a playroom and also a dining room. From this room, one door, opposite the entrance, led to a corner room, called the guest room, which was also a playroom, with two windows, i.e. from the front and from above Żarnów - and this is where our Adam was probably born; the other door to the left led to the bedroom. Beyond the bedroom was a small room, and beyond that a medicine cabinet.

From the vestibule, directly from the entrance, a door led into a second hallway where there was a kitchen, pantry and exit to the garden. From the hallway to the left, there was a door to a large chamber, next to which there was a room called chamber in Lithuania, where married noblemen usually slept and their belongings were kept. So it was a comfortable and prosperous nobleman's house. I remember the whole arrangement well, as I used to visit it when I was a child, when the Stypułkowski family lived there, and later, when Dr Ignacy Zan moved in around 1840, after his marriage. Tomasz, Ignacy's brother, also stayed there for some time after his return from Siberia.

As for the topographical side, the Mickiewicz residence in Zaosie, situated in the lowlands, on the extension of vast meadows, pastures and marshes of the Koldychev Lake on one side, and at the foot of the hills stretching southwards on the other, is sheltered by the Żarnowa mountain, largely overgrown with forest. On the eastern side, apart from the garden, the grove, and the road going to Bartnik, Wolna, and Mira, there are hills of cultivated fields, shaded here and there by clumps of pine or deciduous groves.From the north, on the side of the Chmielewskis' manor, passing the cemetery on the edge of a pine forest, the Novogrudok road meanders, with which the road from Skrobov, Tracevich, Tukanovich and Kiryn converges, to Stvolovichi, famous until recently for its magnificent church with a Loretto chapel, which used to draw crowds on the annual feasts of X. Maria. P. Maria usually attracted crowds of pilgrims.

To this village probably refer the words at the beginning of the 1st book of Pan Tadeusz: 1 at once I could go on foot to Thy threshold shrines - for a returned life to thank God. From the west-northern side there are wide meadows stretching to the Koldychev moors, known for hunting waterfowl. Beyond the Żarnowa mountain, by a couple of versts, in the plain under the grove, on the Mielachowicz side, one can see the Biała farm. It belonged to Sosnowski, behind whom was one of Mickiewicz's cousins, Kornelia Stypułkowska, the same one whom he recalls so warmly in his letters. She told me, bedridden for a long time with impotence, about his excursions with his brothers to their grove for mushroom-picking and about the tricks that little Adaś played on them.

Of these three sisters, Kornelia, Józefa, who died in her youth in maidenhood, and S. Skoratowiczowa, the latter is the only one left alive. Therefore, from what I have here, I can see that there was no lack of groves and forests in this area, which the author of the article spared for Zaoś. On the contrary, there was a lack of them in Mickiewicz's time near Novogrudok, as the mention of Mendog's grove near the parish church, as poetic licence, should not be taken seriously. The overgrowth which stretches from the foot of the castle hill towards Brecian and Lutovka (not Litvatka, as it was erroneously printed) for a couple of lightning miles, although it testifies that there was once an oak forest there, dotted with prehistoric graves - nevertheless it cannot be called a forest or a grove from time immemorial.

The first and the closest forest on the way from Novogrudok to Zaosie starts in Ilnilitsa, about five miles from the town, a forest of ancient oaks, shady, deaf and thickly lined. And it is this Ilnilica and this dark forest, full of quagmires, scrapes and meltwater, that Mickiewicz mentions. There is no other Ilnilica on the entire road to Zaosia, nor in its vicinity. And I know this road, as I travelled along it for thirty years. In my memoirs from the banks of the Nemunas and the Nemunas (1), published in Lviv in the following year, I deliberately expanded on a description of the countryside along the road along which, in the early days of his life, on his first out-of-town excursions, the young Adam travelled to Zaosia. I believe that readers will not be indifferent to this detail; who does not know how every journey, leading to a change of places and views, stimulates thought, gives it wings and influences the imagination, not to mention the imagination of a young man like Adam.

There was no shortage of food for his imagination in Zaosie either. There was no lack of shadows of ancient groves, no vast meadows, no fields painted with various crops - gilded with tussocks and barley, not even a cemetery and the ruins of a chapel - and above all this quiet, idyllic nature, so charming to the youthful soul. There is no doubt that the enchanting and majestic views of Novogrudok must have influenced young Adam's disposition, and it was probably there, in the midst of these beautiful images of nature, enrobed in a halo of legends and history, that his imagination, struck by their extraordinary beauty, first tried to fly its wings. But it is also fair to assume that the quiet, modest retreat of Zaoś, located in an area where everything contributed to the creation of a truly rural picture - sank deeply into his soul and remained for him a source of memories and material that was to be enough for him.

It was there, first of all, among the mysterious shadows of the forest, among the quiet spring evenings and the winds of autumn, in the circle of a warm family, that his soul undoubtedly listened for the first time to the mysterious whisper of nature, known only to its chosen ones, and for the first time felt the pulse of his native land. It was probably also there that the brilliant colours of his palette began to form, from which he was to take the colours for his masterful paintings of nature, the memory of which, strengthened by longing, has always remained faithful to him. No doubt thinking of Zaosie, many years later he wrote this beautiful poem: My tears were shed, pure and lashing, On my idyllic and angelic childhood, On my youthful and cloudy, On my difficult age, the age of disaster, My tears were shed, pure and lashing...

In conclusion, I have the opportunity to share with my readers news of a detail, little or not at all known, from Mickiewicz's last moments in Paris. I draw this from a note, kindly granted to me, entitled "Z teki wspomnień" ["From the portfolio of recollections"] by Mrs Walentyna Moroszkiewieżowa, née Trojanowska, well-known for her work in the literary field and in the teaching profession, who in 1855, while living at the Hotel Lambert in Paris with Princess Jadwiga, née lir. Zamojska, Leon Sapicżyna, attended an official dinner given by Duke Adam Czartoryski on the eve of Mickiewicz's departure for the East. At this dinner was a company composed of military and civilian eminences of France and Poland. Here is what this highly respected lady says:

"...Mickiewicz sat thoughtful for a long time. Such moments of concentration within himself were already usual for him. When I told him that in this salon Duchess Zencida Wolkońska was reading to us from French translations of her friend's works, he received this pleasant news with a sad smile and again fell into a statuesque reverie...'.

At the end of the dinner, toasts were proposed. They celebrated the foreign guests and their own - the hope of a happy future... Finally, a faint bottle of centenary Hungarian wine was served, brought to the prince governor by lir. Tytus Działyński, and tiny glasses were poured. Then the aged host, despite being eighty-five years old, rose crisply from the chair in which he had first been seated, and turning towards Mickiewicz with a glass in his hand, amidst the solemn silence, spoke in a strong voice:

"Druhu Adam! into your hands I place this goblet of a hundred-year-old eel. May it remind us of our stay on native soil, of Polish customs and of our youth!". "Mickiewicz, at the beginning of the prince's words, rose calmly - all rose also, and the poet, taking the glass in his hand, spoke thus: "Accept, dear prince, my former curator, thanks for your gracious remembrance of me. Fulfil this cup in memory of your native land. For me, however, this old coals of youth brings to mind nothing. I was born and creatively triumphed where no wine was known, and if drunk, only Polish honey! "All turned flatteringly towards the speaker, and in all hearts, besides adoration for the excellent poet, there remained an appreciation of the modesty of the taller man."