recent loss rouses my despair to madness! oh thou, my tender friend, whose remembrance rends my heart, listen to me! I feel that the last breath of life is about to leave me-a short, short space, and I shall follow thee into the depths of the cave, whither thou hast preceded me. I am not de ceived a chance, conformable to my wishes, presents me with the means of terminating my unhappy fate.'

"At that instant, I recollected the fatal dose, which I had till then forgotten. I drew out the phial which contained it-I looked at it, but my heart revolted at the idea of self-destruction-I laid it down, and remained in suspense. The ideas of the long punishment, which awaited me in the hateful abode in which I was to pass my days, again revived my disgust at life, which appeared to me as a death, every moment that I existed. The spectre of Despair stalked before me-I again seized. the phial, and put it to my lips-I still felt, all through me, a movement of nature, which

which revolted at the act-I got the better of it, and, closing my eyes, I swallowed, with precipitation, the fatal beverage.

It is all over then,' said I death has planted its arrow in my bosom. Nothing remains but to write a note, which may reveal the cause of my despair, and become a monument of caution to those mothers, who would hereafter force the inclination of their daughters.'

"I had inclosed the phial in the case of an étui, in the room of a smelling-bottle, which it before contained. The étui also contained a silver pen. The blank leaf of a prayer-book served me for paper; but I still wanted ink. I made use of a pin to wound myself in my left arm, and, with the stream, I traced out these words:

'Groan, blind and unna

tural mother! Tremble, ye barbarous ministers of her guilty rage! Theresia has just ended her days by poison. It is she herself

who

who has prepared the mortal beverage, but you only have pushed her on to this act of desperation.'

"I had scarcely finished,

the door of my cell open. the note in my bosom.

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before I heard

I instantly hid

What are you

doing?' cried a nun, who made her appearance. Nothing,', replied I, with spirit leave me to myself.' This is of a piece with your usual impertinence,' said she, as she retired- but you shall hear from me this evening. Leave us alone to reduce you yet to your proper senses.'

"At this threat I was almost suffocated with indignation. I fell into frightful convulsions, which terminated in a cold shivering. I attributed my condition to the first effects of the poison, when I began to grow weak and drowsy. Although extremely agitated the instant before, yet I soon became motionless. I felt my sight disordered,

disordered, my respiration hard, and my limbs stiffened: I could no longer keep open my eyelids, and I imagined I was about to sleep the sleep of death: but the end has proved, that the poison had not been sufficiently strong to destroy me, or even to leave any sensible effect; which, as I have already said, I attribute to the preventive caution of the humane apothecary who sold it to me. It is impossible for me to relate to you what followed this rash act; I cannot even guess how, after having, as I supposed I must have, been wrapped in my dress of a novice, put into a coffin, and immured in the cemetery of the convent, I have been found in the deepest cave of the Castle of Vistulof."

"Nor I either," replied the officer of police-" this adventure astonishes me the more, as the Convent of Female Penitents is nearly two leagues distant from the Castle of Vistulof, and it must have been almost impossible to have made such a translation,

translation, without having been seenBut I will leave nothing undone, to fathom the bottom of this shocking mystery."

CHAP. XIII.

THERESIA had not been able to go through this moving story, without being interrupted several times by tears and sobs. The wife of the police officer had not refrained from a sympathetic overflowing of the eyes, and had conceived a degree of tenderness for this unfortunate female. She endeavoured to console her to the utmost of her power, whilst her hus <<band was gone to give in to the magistrates the account which he had just taken down,

and

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