—“Ah! dear Countess!” she said to me one day, when she found me weeping at having made new discoveries of his evil dispositions, discoveries which almost every day afforded; “you know not yet, what a bad, bad man he is! Scarcely do I dare to tell it you; but that voice which I heard among my mother’s ravishers.... I am certain, _quite_ certain, that voice was Count Ethelbert’s—I had _then_ never heard it speak but so gently and so kindly.... But the first time that I heard him rage, I recollected it that instant. How could I have been deceived? Oh! I remember too well the terrible sound! But I have been silent till now, for I tremble when I but think of the cruel manner, in which he used me, when (while imploring him to take pity on my mother) I let fall, that I was sure of having heard his voice before.”— I was now better acquainted with the character of the man, whom I had once looked upon as an angel of light; and I recollected several hints of the old Seneschal, which seemed to imply a suspicion similar to that of Minna. Yet the fact appeared to me in a light too dreadful to admit of my giving it implicit confidence; and I judged it prudent to contradict it with my lips, though in my heart I could not help dreading, that the accusation was but too well-grounded. Alas! it was not long, before I was thoroughly convinced, that my husband was capable of many a deed, of which during the happy days of my love-sick delusion I would have asserted his innocence with an oath, and have suffered the weight of his guilt to have been charged upon my own conscience! Alas! it was not long, before I had but too much reason to confess, that there was no impossibility in his having been concerned in that perfidious act, which his innocent accuser had alleged against him. The persons, who had been the original means of bringing me acquainted with the Count of Carlsheim (an acquaintance which I already began to consider as a misfortune), the Abbot and Prior of Cloister-Curwald had been maintained in their rights by my good uncle; and under his powerful protection they lived in harmony with their monks from the time of my interference. However, no sooner had the jurisdiction of this monastery been made over by Count Venosta to my husband, than discontent and rebellion began to resume their influence over the younger monks, who felt themselves opprest by the restraints imposed on them by their virtuous superiors. Often did Abbot Christian, when I knelt before him in his confessional, return my confidence by an acknowledgment of his secret sorrows, and explain his melancholy forebodings of what would be his convent’s future fate, in a manner that touched me to the very heart. But I was myself too weak to assist the venerable man; my husband was deaf to my entreaties; and Count Venosta was at too great a distance to admit of any good effects being produced by my applying to him.