The New-York Weekly Magazine, or Miscellaneous Repository: Forming an Interesting Collection of Original and Select Literary Productions in Prose and Verse
General
The New-York Weekly Magazine, or Miscellaneous Repository: Forming an Interesting Collection of Original and Select Literary Productions in Prose and Verse
American periodicals
It was broad day-light when they came to set us at liberty, and inform
us, that Dourlinski was at leisure and wished to see us. We accordingly
presented ourselves before him with great confidence; and we were
introduced to a man of about sixty years of age, whose reception was
blunt, and whose manners were repulsive. He demanded who we were. “My
brother and myself,” replied I, “belong to Count Pulaski. My master has
entrusted me with a secret commission to you. My brother accompanies me
on another account. Before I explain, I must be in private, for I am
charged not to speak but to you alone.”
“It is very well,” replies Dourlinski: “your brother may retire, and you
also,” addressing himself to his servants; “begone! As to him (pointing
to a person who was his confident), he must remain, and you may speak
any thing before him.”
“Pulaski has sent me.”--------“I see very well that he has sent you,”
says the palatine, interrupting me----“to demand of you--”
“What?”--------“news of his daughter.”--“News of his daughter! Did
Pulaski say so?”--------“Yes my lord, he said that his daughter was
here.”---I perceived that Dourlinski instantly grew pale; he then looked
towards his confident, and surveyed me for some time in silence.
“You astonish me,” rejoins he at length. “In confiding a secret of this
importance to you, it necessarily follows that your master must have
been very imprudent.”
“No more than you, my lord, for have not you also a confident? Grandees
would be much to be pitied if they could not rely upon any of their
domestics. Pulaski has charged me to inform you, that Lovsinski has
already searched through a great part of Poland, and that he will
undoubtedly visit these cantons.”
“If he dares to come here,” replies he with great vivacity, “I will
provide a lodging for him, which he shall inhabit for some time. Do you
know this Lovsinski?”
“I have seen him at my master’s house in Warsaw.”--“They say he is
handsome?”
“He is well made, and about my size.”
“His person?---is prepossessing; it is--------”
“He is a wretch,” adds he, interrupting me in a great passion------“O
that he were but to fall into my hands!”
“My lord, they say that he is brave---”
“He! I will wager any sum of money that he is only calculated to seduce
women!---O that he would but fall into my hands!” Then, assuming a less
ferocious tone, he continued thus. “It is a long time since Pulaski
wrote to me---where is he at present?”
“My lord, I have precise orders not to answer that question: all that I
dare to say is, that he has the strongest reasons for neither
discovering the place of his retreat, nor writing to any person, and
that he will soon come and explain them to you in person.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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