“If my uncle will not abide by the settlement, he has only to cancel it, and give me back my lands. But to take possession of my estates, and give me nothing in return, is really too unjust, and I cannot believe my uncle will let me die of hunger. It would be infamous if, with the immense fortune I possess, I were reduced to poverty by so cruel an injustice, notwithstanding every law to the contrary. God grant that I may escape the clutches of Silvestrowicz[101] with a sufficient income to be a burden to no one! But where is my uncle? Can I despatch any one to him, to explain my position and the ill-will of Silvestrowicz? I shall find myself without a _sol_,[102] and then what shall I do? tell me. But how could it be possible for my uncle to rob me so completely, without my obtaining any redress? It is only in this country that such a thing could take place. I am indeed very unhappy, but I am so affected by your absence that it prevents my dwelling upon my other griefs, which, at this moment, are but a minor part of my sorrows. Good-bye, Vincent; love me, for your love is all I have left.” The Count had just arrived in Poland, but seemed in no hurry to return to Ukrania. He wrote to Hélène that his own business kept him away from her, but that she had nothing to fear from the influences she had mentioned in a former letter. “I am greatly relieved,” she answers, “to hear at last that you are in Poland, and to know that I have nothing to fear from the _Krajczy_; his wife, his daughter, and his sons are all intimate friends of MM. de Ligne, and I dreaded lest he might meddle with our affairs. As for myself, I consider the engagement which bound us to have been a fatal error, seeing we were so young, and that our only fitness consisted in a mere similarity of birth and fortune. To you alone I have given my pledge, my real love, the most chaste and sacred of all ties.” A short time after Hélène had fresh cause for anxiety. “Fancy,” she writes to the Count, “I have read in the _Gazette de Hambourg_ that Prince Charles is about to return to the Russian army by Léopol; he must therefore pass by Niemirow, or at least quite near it. I assure you that your Cossacks are barely a sufficient protection to reassure a coward like myself.”[103] But the Prince passed through without troubling himself about her. At last the Count announced his arrival. “How my heart beats,” writes Hélène, “when I think that the moment is drawing near which will bring you back to me. I am so taken up by your return that whether you have successfully or unsuccessfully settled my business is a question which does not interest me as it would at any other time. I count the minutes, and can only speculate on the hour at which you started, and the hour at which you may arrive, and it seems to me as though I had centuries to wait.