"Here, also, I only followed the impulse of my own feelings. Love for one of them led me accidentally to the scene of his misery. Love for the individual taught me to understand and pity the sorrows of his companions. Ordinary crimes would have terrified me and filled me with horror. I should have been as little inclined to aid in reforming a debased man as a base woman, but at that time the prisoners were principally political criminals. The idea for which most of them had struggled and erred, to which my father and my dead lover were martyrs, was necessarily sacred to my heart; and although I admit that it may have been erroneous,--even pernicious in the extremes and manner in which they strove to establish it,--I could neither condemn nor abhor those who had suffered for the same conviction to which my father had sacrificed himself. At first I employed my efforts only in behalf of the political prisoners. An accident, however, made me acquainted with a--as people usually say--'common murderer'; and I found in him a weak-minded, but thoroughly noble man, who had been driven by the force of circumstances to do what is recognized among all nations, not only as a right, but a duty; he punished the tempter of his betrothed bride!" She paused a moment, while again a deep blush suffused her face. Ottilie, too, blushed slightly, and murmured, "I know the particulars of the occurrence." "That convinced me," continued Cornelia, "how many good and evil powers can exist in the broad breast of a man at the same time,--how mighty the impulses often are to commit crimes which arise in his life; and from that moment I went into the cells of all who justified this view." "And were there many of them?" asked Ottilie. "No, your Highness. With the exception of the political prisoners, at the utmost only or five among a hundred and twelve; but these few were sufficient to confirm my assertion." "And among a hundred female convicts, would you not perhaps find four or five deserving of your sympathy?"