This piece of meanness
did not surprise me, but it made me shrug up my shoulders, and
sent me to my cabinet to take the sum deficient from my own funds.
With this dowry my poor
soon found a suitable husband
in the person of one of her cousins, for whom I procured a
lucrative post under government. These worthy people have since
well repaid me by their grateful and devoted attachment for the
service I was enabled to render them. One individual of their
family was, however, far from resembling them either in goodness
of heart or generosity of sentiment--I allude to the brother of the
lady; that same brother who formerly supplied his sister with his
clothes, that she might visit the king unsuspected. Upon the
incarceration of the father the son succeeded him in his office
of , and acquired considerable credit at court;
yet, although in the daily habit of seeing the king, he neither
by word nor deed sought to obtain the deliverance of either his
parent or sister. On the contrary, he suffered the former to
perish in a dungeon, and allowed the latter to languish in one
during more than seventeen years, and in all probability she
would have ended her days without receiving the slightest mark
of his recollection of his unfortunate relative. I know no trait
of base selfishness more truly revolting than the one I have
just related.
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