'
"Well, I grant it. I understood from you and Brinicki that you were
leading me against a set of violent, discontented men of rank, who,
in proportion as each was inflated with his own personal pride,
despised all of their own order who did not agree with them, and,
coalescing together under the name of freedom, were introducing
anarchy throughout a country which Catharine would graciously have
protected. All this I find to be in error. But both of you may have
been misled: the count by partiality and you by misrepresentation;
therefore I do not perceive why you should be in such a terror. The
wisest man in the world may see through bad lights; and why should
you think my father would never pardon you for having been so
unlucky?
"Yet to dispel your dread of such tidings ruining you with Sir
Robert, I will not be the first to tell him of our quixoting. Only
remember, my good sir,--though, to oblige you, I withhold my letters
to my mother, and when I arrive in England shall lock up my lips from
mentioning Poland,--that positively, I will not be mute one day
longer than that in which my father presents you with the living of
Somerset; then you will be independent of his displeasure, and I may,
and will, declare my everlasting gratitude to this illustrious
family.
"I am half mad when I think of leaving them. I must now tear myself
from this mansion of comfort and affection, to wander with you in
some rumbling old barouche 'over brake and through briar!' Well,
patience! Another such upset to your friends of the Neva, and with
'victory perched like an eagle on their laurelled brows,' I may have
some chance of wooing the Sobieskis to the banks of the Thames.
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