emba
betrayed his country; Oginski, the last of these great patriots, roused
Lithuania at the moment when Lesser Poland had laid down its arms.
Abandoned and fugitive, he escaped to Dantzig, and wandered for thirty
years over Europe and America, carrying in his heart the memory of his
country. The lovely Countess of Mnizeck languished and died of grief
with Poland. Dumouriez wept for this heroine, adored in a country
wherein he said the women are more men than the men. He brake his sword,
despairing for ever of this aristocracy without a people, bestowing on
it, as he quitted it, the name of _Asiatic Nation of Europe_.

VI.

He returned to Paris. The king and M. d'Argenson, to save appearances
with Russia and Prussia, threw him and Favier into the Bastille, and he
there passed a year in cursing the ingratitude of courts and the
weakness of kings, and recovered his natural energy in retreat and
study. The king changed his prison into exile to the citadel of Caen;
there Dumouriez found again, in a convent, the cousin he had loved.
Free, and weary of a monastic life, she became softened on again
beholding her former lover, and they were married. He was then appointed
commandant of Cherbourg, and his indefatigable mind contended with the
elements as if it were opposing men. He conceived the plan of fortifying
this harbour, which was to imprison a stormy sea in a granite basin, and
give the French navy a halting place in the channel. Here he passed
fifteen years in domestic life, much troubled by the ill humour and
ascetic devotion of his wife; in military studies constant, but without
application, and in the dissipation of the philosophic and voluptuous
society of his time.

The Revolution, which was drawing nigh, found him indifferent to its
principles, and prepared for its vicissitudes. The justness of his
penetration enabled him at a glance to measure the tendency of events.
He soon comprehended that a revolution in ideas must undermine
institutions, unless institutions modelled themselves on the new ideas.
He gave himself to the constitution without enthusiasm; he desired the
maintenance of the throne, had no faith in a republic, foresaw a change
in the dynasty; and was even accused of meditating it. The emigration,
by decimating the upper ranks of the army, left space for him, and he
was named general, by length of service. He preserved a firm and
well-devised conduct, equi-distant from the throne and the people,