you, and described her to you; that you are near her own age (for
this lovely woman, though she has a son nearly twenty, is not more
than forty;) that you are as fond of your ordinary boy as she is of
her peerless one; that, in short, you and my father will receive her
and Thaddeus, and the palatine, with open arms and hearts, if they
will condescend to visit our humbler home at the end of the war. I
believe I have repeated my entreaties, both to the countess and my
friend, regularly every day since my arrival at Villanow, but always
with the same issue: she smiles and refuses; and Thaddeus 'shakes his
ambrosial curls' with a 'very god-like frown' of denial; I hope it is
self-denial, in compliment to his mother's cruel and unprovoked
negative.

"Before I proceed, I must give you some idea of the real appearance
of this palace. I recollect your having read a superficial account of
it in a few slight sketches of Poland which have been published in
England; but the pictures they exhibit are so faint, they hardly
resemble the original. Pray do not laugh at me, if I begin in the
usual descriptive style! You know there is only one way to describe
houses and lands and rivers; so no blame can be thrown on me for
taking the beaten path, where there is no other. To commence:--

"When we left Zielime, and advanced into the province of Masovia, the
country around Praga rose at every step in fresh beauty. The
numberless chains of gently swelling hills which encompass it on each
side of the Vistula were in some parts checkered with corn fields,
meadows, and green pastures covered with sheep, whose soft bleatings
thrilled in my ears and transported my senses into new regions, so
different was my charmed and tranquillized mind from the tossing
anxieties attendant on the horrors I had recently witnessed. Surely