I confess, the Abbot helped to give your advice effect, by preaching to me such endless sermons about _justice_. What then, my good Conrad? the conferring happiness on those perfidious hypocrites by whom my confidence has been so cruelly abused, this sacrifice which but to think upon makes all my long-inflicted wounds bleed afresh, all this would be nothing more than an every-day performance of a positive duty? Is this the way to estimate one of the most difficult tasks of self-victory that ever was prescribed to the heart of a woman? Agitated as are my present feelings, I dare not trust myself to be much alone. I seek every where for subjects of amusement, but find every where ennui. You, my kind friend, are at a distance, and my epistolary communication with Conrad, to which I have been so long accustomed, has for the present ceased entirely. Yet the good Abbot, to whom I am already under such obligations, is also in _this_ instance the cause of my looking forward to some future means of rescuing myself from this state of tedious indolence. In hopes of leading him away from a topic, which I am at present unwilling to discuss, I reminded him of the antient histories of the Counts of Carlsheim and Sargans; and I requested him to make them the subject of his future correspondence—you know, the old man is generally delighted to find an opportunity of talking over such matters; but just now he is too much offended with me, and too much occupied with a different business, to permit himself to be lured away from his point by this little artifice. He has coldly referred me for information to the Abbess of Zurich; and the want of other amusement has actually induced me to apply to her on this subject, which, when I first took it up, was merely a pretence for relieving myself from the pressure of Conrad’s too urgent solicitations. The Abbess as yet has only given me distant hopes that my curiosity shall be indulged; but by dint of repeated petitions, I trust I shall persuade her to communicate to me these “important and remarkable writings,” as the Abbess calls them. Should I succeed, I shall not fail, oh! most learned of all knights of the present day! to lay whatever seems worthy of attention before your philosophical eyes. _Sigisbert, Bishop of Coira, to the Abbot Conrad._