"Hear me, for my time is short now in this world," said the poor woman, known by the name of Magdalena. "I will not tell thee how I listened to the voice of the serpent, and how I fell. My pride in my fatal beauty was my pitfall. All that the honied words of passion and persuasion could effect was used to lure me on to my destruction--and at last I fled with my seducer. I knew not then, I swear to thee, Karl--God knows how bitterly it costs the mother to reveal her shame to her own son; but bitter if it be, she accepts is as an expiation, and she will not deceive him--I swear to thee, I knew not then that thy father had fallen in that unhappy night, and had fallen by the hand of him whom I madly followed. It was long after that the news reached me, and had nearly driven me distracted. The same tale told me, but falsely, the death of my first-born--my Karl. Remorse had long since tortured my heart. I was not happy with the lover of my choice--I never had been happy with him; but now the stings of my conscience became too strong to bear. Tormented by my bitter self-reproaches, I decided upon quitting my seducer, who had long proved cold and heartless. But I had borne him a child--a daughter; and to quit my offspring, the only child left to me, was agony; to take it with me, to bear it away to partake a life of poverty and wretchedness, was still greater agony to the mother's mind. The great man who was its father--for he was of noble rank, and highly placed--when he found me determined to leave him and the world for ever--and he saw me part from him, the heartless one, without regret--offered to adopt my darling infant as his legitimate child; to bring it up to all the honours, wealth, and consideration of the world; to ensure it that earthly happiness the mother's heart yearned to give it. But, as I have told thee, he was cold and worldly-minded, and he exacted from me an oath--a cruel oath--that I never should own my child again--that I never should address it as my offspring--that I never should utter the word 'daughter,' never hear the cry of 'mother' from its lips. He would not that his daughter, the noble Fraulein, should be brought to shame, by being acknowledged as the offspring of a peasant wife. All I desired was the welfare--the happiness--of my child.