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Page:Julian Niemcewicz - Notes of my Captivity in Russia.djvu/80

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52
ITINERARY OF THE PRISONERS.

A few years before, neither of us foresaw that we should ever meet under circumstances so melancholy. She wanted to dress my wound, but knowing that she was enceinte, I did not allow it. She brought me a complete bed, of which I took only two pillows and some sheets, and offered me money, but, being a prisoner, I was less in want of it than herself, and begged of her not to insist upon that point. Though the officers were always present at our conversation, we still talked enough of our family and our affairs. Mons. Dunin was a handsome man, and, what is still more, a good husband; her children, the one six, and the other four years old, were beautiful as angels. Having spent the rest of the day together, we separated, alas! perhaps for ever. Two days after her departure, my cousin Stanislaus wrote to me, addressing the letter to Chruszczew's care, and informing me that my brothers had fled, and that, in the terror and general havoc, he was not able to borrow more than fifty ducats, which he sent me. He promised, besides, to en-