Stopping a moment at the boundary-gate of the Harrowby
domains,--the property of a disgraceful owner of a name that might
have been his, had not his nobler mother preserved to him that of
Sobieski,--he stretched out his arms to the heavens, over which a
bleak north-west wind was suddenly collecting dark and spreading
clouds, and exclaimed, in earnest supplication, "Oh, righteous Power
of Mercy! in thy chastening, grant me fortitude to bear with
resignation to thy will the miseries I may yet have to encounter,
Ah!" added he, his heart melting as the images presented themselves
even as visions to his soul, "teach me to forget what I have been.
Teach me to forget that on this dreadful October night twelve months
ago I clasped the dying body of my revered grandfather in these
arms!"
He could not speak further. Leaning his pale face against the gate,
he remained for a few minutes dissolved in all a son's sorrow; then,
recovering himself by a sudden start, he proceeded with hurried steps
through the further extending meadows until they conducted him by a
short village-lane into the high road.
It was on the 10th of October, 1795, that the Count Sobieski
commenced this lonely and melancholy journey. It was the 10th of
October in the preceding year that he found the veteran palatine
bleeding to death in the midst of a heap of slain. The coincidence of
his renewed banishment and present consequent mental sufferings with
those of that fatal period powerfully affected him, recalling, in the
vivid colors of an actual existence, scenes and griefs which the
numerous successive events he had passed through had considerably
toned down into dream-like shades.
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