lity
to resist a sentiment so deep and so true, she could not have been
expected to preserve her mental and moral balance. At war with herself,
she could not give to others that feeling of peace which was not her
own. It was only later, when united at last with the man of her
choice, that she developed those uncommon gifts of mind and heart which
compelled the respect and admiration even of our foes. Meeting with calm
fortitude the cruel trials of a life reflecting all the national
and social misfortunes of the community, she realized the highest
conceptions of duty as a wife, a mother, and a patriot, sharing
the exile of her husband and representing nobly the ideal of Polish
womanhood. Our uncle Nicholas was not a man very accessible to feelings
of affection. Apart from his worship for Napoleon the Great, he loved
really, I believe, only three people in the world: his mother--your
great-grandmother, whom you have seen but cannot possibly remember; his
brother, our father, in whose house he lived for so many years; and
of all of us, his nephews and nieces grown up around him, your mother
alone. The modest, lovable qualities of the youngest sister he did not
seem able to see. It was I who felt most profoundly this unexpected
stroke of death falling upon the family less than a year after I had
become its head. It was terribly unexpected. Driving home one wintry
afternoon to keep me company in our empty house, where I had to remain
permanently administering the estate and at tending to the complicated
affairs--(the girls took it in turn week and week about)--driving, as
I said, from the house of the Countess Tekla Potocka, where our invalid
mother was staying then to be near a doctor, they lost the road and got
stuck in a snow drift. She was alone with the coachman and old Valery,
the personal servant of our late father. Impatient of delay while they
were trying to dig themselves out, she jumped out of the sledge and went
to look for the road herself. All this happened in '51, not ten miles
from the house in which we are sitting now.

"The road was soon found, but snow had begun to fall thickly again, and
they were four more hours getting home. Both the men took off their
sheepskin lined greatcoats and used all their own rugs to wrap her up
against the cold, notwithstanding her protests, positive orders, and
even struggles, as Valery afterward related to me. 'How could I,' he
remonstrated with her, 'go to meet the blessed