Written by the Abbess of St. Mary’s, and addressed to Urania Venosta, Countess of Carlsheim and Sargans. I must begin, noble Lady, by requesting your pardon for having delayed so long to make known to you an history, which I thought would have more interest in the mouth of its heroine, than it could possibly receive from my unskilful pen. Fatal events (I grieve to say it) have for ever deprived you of that satisfaction; and you must either learn Adelaide’s adventures from me, or from no one. Have not these few words already led you to guess the melancholy truth, which this letter is intended to break to you? Oh! that the painful task of being the first to inform you “that Adelaide is no more,” had been imposed upon another! Yet surely it is scarcely possible, that report should have been totally silent at Zurich, respecting events which have excited the attention of the whole German Empire. Yet dry your tears, virtuous Urania! they who have lived in the world so long as we have done, should not grieve for the departure of our beloved-ones; the hope of speedily rejoining them in another world, never to be separated from them more, should console us under this temporary deprivation. Lament not, that you are prevented from shewing your gratitude to your generous deliverer; she will find the reward of her glorious deeds in Heaven; alas! she found none on earth! Tell me, dear Adelaide, thou suffering Saint! Chaste martyr of the holiest love, say, with what feelings do you now enshrined in glory review the sorrows, which oppressed you in your mortal progress? Doubtless you review them not with such tears as obscure the eyes of your friend, while in this mournful hour of midnight solitude she retraces the transactions of your eventful life! Methinks I see your form radiant with light hover round me, and hear you with a smile bid me weep no more over afflictions, which now seem to yourself no longer deserving of a single tear! You see, Urania, how difficult I find the task of beginning a narrative, which must rend open anew many an old and cruel wound; you see how anxiously I endeavour to delay the executing so painful a commission. But I gave you my promise! You shall be satisfied!—Permit me, however, to be as brief as possible, and to reserve the relation of minute particulars till the time, when I shall have an opportunity of explaining them to you in person.