This article looks at the characters and types of narration in Michał Czajkowski's Dziwne życia Polaków i Polek [ Strange Lives of Poles and Polish Women]. Published in 1865, the book is a collection of biographical essays recounting in vivid detail the real-life stories of Polish noblemen from the Ukraine caught in the power games of the Ottoman and the Russian Empire in the early 19th-century. Czajkowski makes no direct references to Cervantes, but at one point calls his bunch knight errants, insisting that Poland produced more of them than any country in the world. Elsewhere he counterpoints earthy realism and (mock)epic decorum, fact and literary invention ('dzieje bajeczne') because they both make up the life of Antoni Iliński vel Iskender Pasha. Inspired by Joachim Lelewel's 1820 comparative study Historyczna paralela Hiszpanii z Polską w wieku XVI, XVII, XVIII [ A Historical Parallel between Spain and Poland in the 16th, 17th, and 18th Century] the article tries to trace such covert links or echoes of Cervantes in Czajkowski's handling of his maverick heroes.