of my attention, may in the future
seem futile and unworthy of having excited so much interest. What will a
sensible, sober-minded reader think of all the strange fancies passing
through my brain, and the wild dreams of my imagination? But let us now
return to the genealogy of my family.

[Here follows the chronological enumeration of the Krasinski family,
which we omit, as its interest is purely local, and can hence be neither
amusing nor instructive to readers not of Polish origin. The Diary thus
continues:]

Stanislaus Krasinski, starost of Nowemiasto, of Prasnysz, and of Uyscie,
is my father; and Angelica Humiecka, daughter of the celebrated palatine
of Podolia, my mother: but this branch of the Krasinskis will be extinct
at their death, for to my great sorrow I have no brother. We are four,
and all girls, Barbara, myself, Sophia, and Mary. The members of our
little court often tell me I am the prettiest, but that I do not
believe. We have received the education befitting our position as young
and noble ladies, in short, as starostines.

We are all well grown, and have been taught to hold ourselves as
straight as reeds; we are in excellent health, fair, fresh, and rosy. We
have a governess, who is charged with the care of us; we call her
madame; and when she has laced us, our waists might be spanned, as the
saying is, between one's four fingers.

Madame has taught us to courtesy easily and gracefully, and to behave
ourselves properly in the saloon; we seat ourselves on the edge of our
chairs, with our eyes fixed upon the ground, and our arms modestly
crossed.

Every one believes that we are quite ignorant, and cannot count beyond
three; they fancy, too, that we do not know how to walk, and are always
as quiet as mummies. What would they say could they see us running and
jumping in the fine summer mornings? Ah! then we make up for all this
tedious restraint; we are so joyful when our parents permit us to walk
in the woods: then we leave our frizzed hair, stays, and our high-heeled
shoes all behind us, and run about in our morning dresses like crazy
girls; we climb the mountains, and poor madame, who thinks it her duty
to follow us, soon loses her breath, halts with weary limbs, and can
neither run after us, nor call us back.

My two younger sisters and myself have never been far from our own
castle. Our longest journeys have been a visit to our aunt, the
palatiness Malachowska, who lives at Konskie, and to the