--Never can any point be redeemed from the crown without a vast
effusion of blood, and the endangering such calamities on the country,
that the relief would be as bad as the disease. Upon the whole,
therefore, I cannot think Patkul in the wrong for attempting to maintain
the liberty of his country, tho' I do for entering into the service of
the avowed enemy of his master.
It is that, I believe, resumed the other, that the king chiefly resents:
his majesty is too just to condemn a man for maintaining the principles
he was bred in, however they may disagree with his own; but to become
his enemy, to enlist himself in the service of those who aim at the
destruction of his lawful prince, is certainly a treason of the
blackest dye.
As they were in this discourse, colonel Poniatosky came in, and hearing
they were speaking of Patkul,--I have just now, said he, received a
letter from one of my friends in Saxony concerning that general, which
deeply affects me, not for his own, but for the sake of a lady, to whom,
after a long series of disappointments, he was just going to be married,
when Augustus, against the law of nations, made him a prisoner.
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