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 realised 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 round 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 attending 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 Potochka, where our invalid mother was
staying then to be near a doctor, they lost the road and got stuck in a
snowdrift. 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 great-coats and used all their
own rugs to wrap her up against the cold, notwithstanding her protests,
positive orders and even struggles, as Valery afterwards related to me.
'How could I,' he remonstrated with her, 'go to meet the blessed soul
of my late master if I let any harm come to