At my urgent entreaties he has seen a
physician, but I am quite sure the physic he received is safely stowed
away in a cupboard, according to an old custom he has. Once he opened
the mysterious receptacle and showed me a whole collection of bottles,
pill-boxes, and powders, saying: "For mercy's sake! this would kill
a strong man, let alone a sick one." Up to now, this quaint way of
looking upon medicine has not done him any harm, but I am troubled
about the future. Another reason for my unwillingness to go is my
aunt's plan of campaign. Of course she is anxious to see me married. I
do not know whether she has anything definite in view. God grant I
may be wrong; but she does not deny the intention. "About an eligible
_parti_ like you," she writes, "there will be at once a war of the
roses, you may be sure of that." I am tired and do not wish for any
war, and least of all to end it like Henry VII. by a marriage. On the
other hand,--I dare not tell my aunt, but may confess it to myself,--I
do not like Polish women. I am thirty-five, and like other men that
live much in society, I had my sentimental passages, among others,
with Polish women, and from these encounters I carried away the
impression that they are the most impossible and most wearying women
in the world. I do not know whether, generally speaking, they are more
virtuous than their French or Italian sisters; I only know that they
are more pathetic.
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