The story
On the quai d'Orléans, on the Île Saint-Louis in the middle of the Seine, stands a library founded in 1838 by Polish exiles, part of the wave of emigrants who reached France after the failed November Uprising against Russian rule in 1830 and 1831. It is primarily a library and archive of the Polish emigration, but it is also home to three small museums.
One is devoted to Adam Mickiewicz, Poland's great Romantic poet, who lived in Paris and taught at the Collège de France. His son Władysław created the museum in 1903. The Chopin salon recalls the composer who came to Paris in 1831 and stayed until his death, with portraits of him and his circle, letters and manuscripts. The third room shows the sculpture and painting of Bolesław Biegas, a Polish Symbolist who worked in Paris.
Among the library's pictures is a small canvas by the French painter Horace Vernet, The Polish Prometheus, painted in 1831 while the uprising was being crushed. A dead Polish soldier in a white uniform lies on the ground beside his sabre, and a black eagle standing for Russia, wearing the Russian Order of Saint Andrew, sits on his chest. It was given to the library in 1950.
