'
"I have tried all my powers of persuasion to prevail on this charming
countess to visit our country. I have over and over again told her of
you, and described her to you; that you are near her own age (for
this lovely woman, though she has a son nearly twenty, is not more
than forty;) that you are as fond of your ordinary boy as she is of
her peerless one; that, in short, you and my father will receive her
and Thaddeus, and the palatine, with open arms and hearts, if they
will condescend to visit our humbler home at the end of the war. I
believe I have repeated my entreaties, both to the countess and my
friend, regularly every day since my arrival at Villanow, but always
with the same issue: she smiles and refuses; and Thaddeus 'shakes his
ambrosial curls' with a 'very god-like frown' of denial; I hope it is
self-denial, in compliment to his mother's cruel and unprovoked
negative.
"Before I proceed, I must give you some idea of the real appearance
of this palace. I recollect your having read a superficial account of
it in a few slight sketches of Poland which have been published in
England; but the pictures they exhibit are so faint, they hardly
resemble the original. Pray do not laugh at me, if I begin in the
usual descriptive style! You know there is only one way to describe
houses and lands and rivers; so no blame can be thrown on me for
taking the beaten path, where there is no other.
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