"Well, I grant it. I understood from you and Brinicki that you were leading me against a set of violent, discontented men of rank, who, in proportion as each was inflated with his own personal pride, despised all of their own order who did not agree with them, and, coalescing together under the name of freedom, were introducing anarchy throughout a country which Catharine would graciously have protected. All this I find to be in error. But both of you may have been misled: the count by partiality and you by misrepresentation; therefore I do not perceive why you should be in such a terror. The wisest man in the world may see through bad lights; and why should you think my father would never pardon you for having been so unlucky? "Yet to dispel your dread of such tidings ruining you with Sir Robert, I will not be the first to tell him of our quixoting. Only remember, my good sir,--though, to oblige you, I withhold my letters to my mother, and when I arrive in England shall lock up my lips from mentioning Poland,--that positively, I will not be mute one day longer than that in which my father presents you with the living of Somerset; then you will be independent of his displeasure, and I may, and will, declare my everlasting gratitude to this illustrious family. "I am half mad when I think of leaving them. I must now tear myself from this mansion of comfort and affection, to wander with you in some rumbling old barouche 'over brake and through briar!' Well, patience! Another such upset to your friends of the Neva, and with 'victory perched like an eagle on their laurelled brows,' I may have some chance of wooing the Sobieskis to the banks of the Thames. At present, I have not sufficient hope to keep me in good-humor. "Meet me this day week at Dantzic: I shall there embark for England. You had best not bring the foreign servants with you; they might blab. Discharge them at St. Petersburg, and hire a courier for yourself, whom we may drop at the seaport. "I have the honor to remain, "Dear sir, "Your most obedient servant, PEMBROKE SOMERSET. "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."