lingering affair by defensive operations, and this will exhaust the French
patience. The lies of the Sardinian press, and indeed official accounts,
make it impossible to tell how far they have at the beginning suffered a
check. But I plainly perceive that, if something brilliant is not done, L.
N. will be shaken.

* * * * *

_From Count Zamoyski_

_Paris, May 28th_. May is passing and your plans are not yet realised; we
still await your arrival. Mme. Krasinska is leaving Paris for Warsaw, and
has charged me to forward you the enclosed, in which she gives you the
address of the person here who is ready to receive the papers you have
promised her, which both she and the friends of the deceased await with
lively interest.

Having written thus much on the matter in hand, Zamoyski turned again to
politics and the discussion at some length of the situation in Italy, out
of which many of the Poles fondly hoped their freedom was to come. The
English mistrust of Napoleon, he argued, was as injudicious as unfounded,
and could do nothing but harm by forcing France into the arms of Russia.
One of the many wild suggestions afloat at the time amounted to little less
than a complete remodelling of the map of Europe. Austria, deprived of her
Italian provinces, was to be compensated on the lower Danube; as a balance
to which, Russia was to occupy Constantinople, and, to mark her friendship
to France--who was entering on the war for an _idee_--would restore
freedom to Poland. And there were some who believed it. Zamoyski was
clearer-headed; but his mind also was warped by sense of wrong, and his
fancy was as wild as the other. If England, he urged, will not act in