"Nay," said her sister. "If I had not a husband and child, for one half of what you say, I would join the ranks of the emperor." This decided the wavering resolution of Doña Maria. Her sister supplied her with a suit of clothes belonging to the husband, so Maria took the opportunity, as her father was going to Cachoeira, about forty leagues distant, to dispose of some cotton, to ride after him; not close enough to be seen, but sufficiently near for protection. When in sight of Cachoeira, she halted; and going a little way from the road, dressed herself in male attire. She entered the town on a Friday, and by the following Sunday she had enlisted in an artillery regiment, and had already mounted guard. She was, however, too slight for the heavy duties of an artilleryman; so she exchanged into an infantry corps, in which she remained till the close of the war. Her real sex was not even suspected till Almeida applied to the commanding officer of her regiment. In the summer of 1823 she was sent with despatches to Rio Janeiro, and there presented to Don Pedro, who gave her an ensign's commission and the Order of the Cross--the latter of which he himself placed upon her jacket. Maria Graham in her "Journal of a Voyage to Brazil," gives, as one of the illustrations, Maria de Jesus in her uniform. "Her dress," says this traveller, "is that of a soldier of one of the emperor's battalions, with the addition of a tartan kilt, which she told me she had adopted from a picture representing a Highlander, as the most feminine military dress. What would the Gordons and Macdonalds say to this? The 'garb of old Gaul' chosen as a womanish attire!" This lady further says that Maria, though clever, was almost totally uneducated; "she might have been a remarkable person. She is not particularly masculine in her appearance, and her manners are gentle and cheerful." * * * * * In a census of the population of St. Petersburg, published about 1829, there appears the following curious item:-- "SOLDIERS AND SUBALTERNS. Men. Women. Total. 46,076 9,975 56,051."