"I only want to ask whether you follow this art as a profession?"
"Yes."
"Then I shall be glad if you can furnish me with six such drawings
every week."
"Certainly," replied Thaddeus, pleased with the probability thus
securing something towards the support of his friend.
"Then bring me another half-dozen next Monday."
Thaddeus promised, and with a relieved mind took his way homeward.
Who is there in England, I repeat, who does not remember the
dreadfully protracted winter of 1794, when the whole country lay
buried in a thick ice which seemed eternal? Over that ice, and
through those snows, the venerable General Butzou had begged his way
from Harwich to London. He rested at night under the shelter of some
shed or outhouse, and cooled his feverish thirst with a little water
taken from under the broken ice which locked up the springs. The
effect of this was a painful rheumatism, which fixed itself in his
limbs, and soon rendered them nearly useless.
Two or three weeks passed over the heads of the general and his young
protector, Thaddeus cheering the old man with his smiles, and he, in
return, imparting the only pleasure to him which his melancholy heart
could receive--the conviction that his attentions and affection were
productive of comfort.
In the exercise of these duties, the count not only found his health
gradually recover its tone, but his mind became more tranquil, and
less prone to those sudden floods of regret which were rapidly
sapping his life.
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