Page:Julian Niemcewicz - Notes of my Captivity in Russia.djvu/160

132 increased, the greater chance had those gentlemen of becoming their proprietors, and I am convinced that it was in conformity with their advice that Catherine, entangled in their intrigues, with feelings blunted and a mind weakened by age, definitively decided upon the partition of the little that remained of Poland, an act as unjust and atrocious in itself, as it was impolitic for her empire; an act, however, uncommonly agreeable to her favourites, who, being gorged with rapine and robbery, were thus insured, under the guarantee of two other great European powers, against any future event. As to myself, I have not, at least in this circumstance, had to reproach myself with the ruin of any of my countrymen, but I have since learned that there was a person who acted quite differently. And why should I not name him here? It is, perhaps, equally just and agreeable to pay tribute to truth, and to expose hypocrisy and vice. The name of that man is Deboli. Descended from a respectable French family, established, at least, for two centuries in Poland, he