CHAPTER XXXVII.
"Calumny is the pastime of little minds, and the venomed shaft of
base ones."
The first week of the count's confinement was rendered in some degree
tolerable by the daily visits of Mrs. Robson, who, having brought his
drawing materials, enabled him, through the means of the always
punctual printseller, to purchase some civility from the brutal and
hardened people who were his keepers. After the good woman had
performed her diurnal kindness, Thaddeus did not suffer his eyes to
turn one moment on the dismal loneliness of his abject prison, but
took up his pencil to accomplish its daily task, and when done, he
opened some one of his books, which had also been brought to him, and
so sought to beguile his almost hopeless hours,--hopeless with regard
to any human hope of ever re-passing those incarcerating walls. For
who was there but those who had put him there who could now know even
of his existence?
The elasticity and pressing enterprise of soul inherent in worth
renders; no calamity so difficult to be borne as that which betters
its best years and most active virtues under the lock of any
captivity. Thaddeus felt this benumbing effect in every pulse of his
ardent and energetic heart. He retraced all that he had been. He
looked on what he was. Though he had reaped glory when a boy, his
"noon of manhood," his evening sun, was to waste its light and set in
an English prison.
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