156 A JACOBITE EXILE

probably depend upon outside influences and circumstances
over which you have no control whatever. I have no fear
that it will be a failure. If our party in Poland triumph,
or if our army here advances, or if Augustus, finding his
position hopeless, leaves the country, the good people of
Warsaw will join their voices to those of the majority. If
matters go the other way, you may be sure that they will
not risk imprisonment, confiscation, and perhaps death, by
getting up a revolt on their own account. The king will
be perfectly aware of this, and will not expect impossibil-
ities, and there is really no occasion whatever for you to
worry yourself on that ground.”

Upon calling upon Count Piper the next morning Charlie
found that, as the colonel had told him, his mission was a
general one.

“Tt will be your duty,” the minister said, “to have inter-
views with as many of the foreign traders and Jews in
Warsaw as you can, only going to those to whom you have
some sort of introduction from the persons you may first
meet, or who are, as far as you can learn from the report
of others, ill disposed towards the Saxon party. Here is a
letter, stating to all whom it may concern that you are in the
confidence of the King of Sweden, and are authorized to
represent him. In the first place, you can point out to
those you see that, should the present situation continue, it
will bring grievous evils upon Poland. Proclamations have
already been spread broadcast over the country, saying that
the king has no quarrel with the people of Poland, but, as
their sovereign has without the slightest provocation em-
barked on a war, he must fight against him and his Saxon
troops until they are driven from the country. This you
will repeat, and will urge that it will be infinitely better
that Poland herself should cast out the man who has
embroiled her with Sweden, than that the country should
be the scene of a long and sanguinary struggle, in which