Читать книгу Thaddeus of Warsaw - Jane Porter - Страница 24

"VILLANOW, September, 1792."

When Somerset joined his friends at supper, and imparted to them the commands of his father, an immediate change was produced in the spirits of the party. During the lamentations of the ladies and the murmurs of the young men, the countess tried to dispel the effects of the information by addressing Pembroke with a smile, and saying, "But we hope that you have seen enough at Villanow to tempt you back again at no very distant period? Tell Lady Somerset you have left a second mother in Poland, who will long to receive another visit from her adopted son."

"Yes, my dear madam," returned he; "and I shall hope, before a very distant period, to see those two kind mothers united as intimately by friendship as they are in my heart."

Thaddeus listened with a saddened countenance. He had not been accustomed to the thought of a long separation, and when he met it now, he hardly knew how to proportion his uneasiness to the privation. Hope and all the hilarities of youth flushed in his soul; his features continually glowed with animation, whilst the gay beaming of his eyes ever answered to the smile on his lips. Hence the slightest veering of his mind was perceptible to the countess, who, turning round, saw him leaning thoughtfully in his chair, whilst Pembroke, with increasing vehemence, was running through various invectives against the hastiness of his recall.

"Come, come, Thaddeus!" cried she; "let us think no more of this parting until it arrives. You know that anticipation of evil is the death of happiness; and it will be a kind of suicide should we destroy the hours we may yet enjoy together in vain complainings that they are so soon to terminate."

A little exhortation from the countess, and a maternal kiss which she imprinted on his cheek, restored him to cheerfulness, and the evening passed more pleasantly than it had portended.

Much as the palatine esteemed Pembroke Somerset, his mind was too deeply absorbed in the condition of the kingdom to attend to less considerable cares. He beheld his country, even on the verge of destruction, awaiting with firmness the approach of the earthquake which threatened to ingulf it in the neighboring nations. He saw the storm lowering; but he determined, whilst there remained one spot of vantage ground above the general wreck, that Poland should yet have a name and a defender. These thoughts possessed him; these plans engaged him; and he had not leisure to regret pleasure when he was struggling for existence.

The empress continued to pour her armies into the heart of the kingdom. The King of Prussia, boldly flying from his treaties, marched to bid her colors a conqueror's welcome; and the Emperor of Germany, following the example of so great a prince, did not blush to show that his word was equally contemptible.

Dispatches daily arrived of the villages being laid waste; that neither age, sex, nor situation shielded the unfortunate inhabitants, and that all the frontier provinces were in flames.

The Diet was called, [Footnote: The constitutional Diet of Poland nearly answers in principle to the British three estates in Parliament—King, Lords, and Commons.] and the debates agitated with the anxiety of men who were met to decide on their dearest interests. The bosom of the benevolent Stanislaus bled at the dreadful picture of his people's sufferings, and hardly able to restrain his tears, he answered the animated exordiums of Sobieski for resistance to the last with an appeal immediately to his heart.

"What is it that you urge me to do, my lord?" said he. "Was it not to secure the happiness of my subjects that I labored? and finding my designs impracticable, what advantage would it be to them should I pertinaciously oppose their small numbers to the accumulated array of two empires, and of a king almost as powerful as either. What is my kingdom but the comfort of my people? What will it avail me to see them fall around me, man by man, and the few who remain bending in speechless sorrow over their graves? Such a sight would break my heart. Poland without its people would be a desert, and I a hermit rather than a king."

In vain the palatine combated these arguments, showing the vain quiet such a peace might afford, by declaring it could only be temporary. In vain he told his majesty that he would purchase safety for the present race at the vast expense of not only the liberty of posterity, but of its probity and happiness.

"However you disguise slavery," cried he, "it is slavery still. Its chains, though wreathed with roses, not only fasten on the body but rivet on the mind. They bend it from the loftiest virtue to a debasement beneath calculation. They disgrace honor; they trample upon justice. They transform the legions of Rome into a band of singers. They prostrate the sons of Athens and of Sparta at the feet of cowards. They make man abjure his birth right, bind himself to another's will, and give that into a tyrant's hands which he received as a deposit from Heaven—his reason, his conscience, and his soul. Think on this, and then, if you can, subjugate Poland to her enemies."

Stanislaus, weakened by years and subdued by disappointment, now retained no higher wish than to save his subjects from immediate outrage. He did not answer the palatine, but with streaming eyes bent over the table, and annulled the glorious constitution of 1791. Then with emotions hardly short of agony, he signed an order presented by a plenipotentiary from the combined powers, which directed Prince Poniatowski to deliver the army under his command into the hands of General Brinicki.

As the king put his signature to these papers, Sobieski, who had strenuously withstood each decision, started from his chair, bowed to his sovereign, and in silence left the apartment. Several noblemen followed him.

These pacific measures did not meet with better treatment from without. When they were noised abroad, an alarming commotion arose among the inhabitants of Warsaw, and nearly four thousand men of the first families in the kingdom assembled themselves in the park of Villanow, and with tumultuous eagerness declared their resolution to resist the invaders of their country to their last gasp. The Prince Sapieha, Kosciusko, and Sobieski, with the sage Dombrowski, were the first who took this oath of fidelity to Poland; and they administered it to Thaddeus, who, kneeling down, inwardly invoked Heaven to aid him, as he swore to fulfil his trust.

In the midst of these momentous affairs, Pembroke Somerset bade adieu to his Polish friends, and set sail with his governor from Dantzic for England.