"But how shall I account for my being here? How shall I allay your
surprise and displeasure on seeing that this letter is dated from
Warsaw? I know that I have acted against the wish of my father in
visiting one of the countries he proscribes. I know that I have
disobeyed your commands in ever having at any period of my life taken
up arms without an indispensable necessity; and I have nothing to
allege in my defence. I fell in the way of temptation, and I yielded
to it. I really cannot enumerate all the things which induced me to
volunteer with my Russian friends; suffice it to say that I did so,
and that we were defeated by the Poles at Zielime; and as Heaven has
rather rewarded your prayers than punished my imprudence, I trust you
will do the same, and pardon an indiscretion I vow never to repeat.

"Notwithstanding all this, I must have lost my life through my folly,
had I not been preserved, even in the moment when death was pending
over me, by a young officer with whose family I now am. The very
sound of their title will create your respect; for we of the
patrician order have a strange tenacity in our belief that virtue is
hereditary, and in this instance our creed is duly honored. Their
patronymic is Sobieski; the family which bears it is the only
remaining posterity of the great monarch of that name; and the count,
who is at its head, is Palatine of Masovia, which, next to the
throne, is the first dignity in the state. He is one of the warmest
champions of his country's rights; and though born to command, has so
far transgressed the golden adage of despots, 'Ignorance and
subjection,' that throughout his territories every man is taught to
worship his God with his heart as well as with his knees. The
understandings of his peasants are opened to all useful knowledge. He
does not put books of science and speculation into their hands, to