The count considering himself the benefactor of his country, could not help feeling mortified when his enviers and calumniators used this very circumstance to accuse him of the blackest crimes, and the most atrocious injustice. To this ingratitude he opposed nothing but calm indignation, and a contempt which was perhaps too magnanimous; for if a nobleman always preserves silence, calumny and falsehood will be more readily believed by the foolish and those who have no character to lose. If he could not prevail on himself to meet his opponents and to relate the circumstance in detail, he felt himself quite disarmed on discovering how much he was misunderstood in his family, and by the being who was nearest to his heart. He had married late in life, and his wife having a few days before presented him with a son, was still confined to her room. In her present weak state he could not dispute or urge with any force the justice of his proceedings, when she reproached him with the cruelty he had exercised towards these poor innocent men, who rather deserved his compassion than such hard persecution. When on leaving her chamber some old cousins told him the same thing in plainer terms, he could no longer suppress his rage, and his replies were so wrathful, his curses so vehement, the gestures of the irritated man so superhuman, that the old prattling women lost their composure and almost swooned. To prevent his sick wife from learning all this, he immediately sent them by main force to another of his estates and then rode to a solitary part of the mountains, partly to divert his thoughts and strengthen himself by the sublime aspect of nature, and partly to resume the pursuit of the gipsies. But what was his astonishment when he learned from his ranger that those noblemen who, in conjunction with him, had undertaken the war against these vagabonds had dispersed and retired to their seats without giving him notice!