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"That is true, Your Excellency the Chamberlain. I remember myself

what was once told me when I was a little child; I remember,

though I was not ten years old at the time, how I saw at our

house the late Sapieha, lieutenant of a regiment of cuirassiers,

who later was Court Marshal of the Kingdom, and finally died as

Grand Chancellor of Lithuania, at the age of one hundred and ten

years; when Jan III. Sobieski was king, he had served in the

Vienna campaign under the command of the hetman Jablonowski. So

this Chancellor related that just at the moment when King Jan

III. was mounting his horse, when the papal nuncio had blest him

for the journey, and the Austrian ambassador was kissing his foot

as he handed him the stirrup (the ambassador was named Count

Wilczek), the King cried: 'See what is going on in Heaven!' They

beheld that over their heads was advancing a comet by the same

path that the armies of Mahomet had taken, from the east to the

west.