Thaddeus shut his eyes on the scene.
"Oh, my country! my country!" exclaimed he; "what are my personal
griefs to thine? It is your afflictions that barb me to the heart!
Look there," cried he to the soldiers, pointing to the miserable
spectacles before him; "look there, and carry vengeance into the
breasts of their destroyers. Let Praga be the last act of this
tragedy."
"Unhappy young man! unfortunate country! It was indeed the last act of
a tragedy to which all Europe were spectators--a tragedy which the
nations witnessed without one attempt to stop or to delay its
dreadful catastrophe! Oh, how must virtue be lost when it is no
longer a matter of policy even to assume it." [Footnote: To answer
this, we must remember that Europe was then no longer what she was a
century before. Almost all her nations had turned from the doctrines
of "sound things," and more or less drank deeply of the cup of
infidelity, drugged for them by the flattering sophistries of
Voltaire. The draught was inebriation, and the wild consequences
burst asunder the responsibilities of man to man. The selfish
principle ruled, and balance of justice was then seen only aloft in
the heavens!]
After a long march through a dark and dismal night, the morning began
to break; and Thaddeus found himself on the southern side of that
little river which divides the territories of Sobieski from the woods
of Kobylka.
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