"You are now, my Thaddeus, at the early age of nineteen, going to
engage the enemies of your country. Ere I resign my greatest comfort
to the casualties of war; ere I part with you, perhaps forever, I
would inform you who your father really was--that father whose
existence you have hardly known and whose name you have never heard.
You believe yourself an orphan, your mother a widow; but, alas! I
have now to tell you that you were made fatherless by the perfidy of
man, not by the dispensation of Heaven.
"Twenty-three years ago, I accompanied my father in a tour through
Germany and Italy. Grief for the death of my mother had impaired his
health, and the physicians ordered him to reside in a warmer climate;
accordingly we fixed ourselves near the Arno. During several visits
to Florence, my father met in that city with a young Englishman of
the name of Sackville. These frequent meetings opened into intimacy,
and he was invited to our villa.
"Mr. Sackville was not only the most interesting man I had ever seen,
but the most accomplished, and his heart seemed the seat of every
graceful feeling. He was the first man for whose society I felt a
lively preference. I used to smile at this strange delight, or
sometimes weep; for the emotions which agitated me were undefinable,
but they were enchanting, and unheedingly I gave them indulgence. The
hours which we passed together in the interchange of reciprocal
sentiments, the kind beaming of his looks, the thousand sighs that he
breathed, the half-uttered sentences, all conspired to rob me of
myself.
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