It’s true, I have found a few more detached leaves, and the last page or two; but these only serve to augment a curiosity, which would have remained totally unsatisfied, if I had suffered the labour of examining the moth-eaten parchments to overcome my perseverance. I have now no reason to regret the trouble which I gave myself, since I owe to it the possession of several other manuscripts, relating to persons and circumstances already mentioned by Urania. The memoirs of Minna of Homburg and of Lucretia Malaspina are both lost; but I have found much respecting the two Ladies of Sargans, to whom Urania’s narrative is addrest; much too respecting the noble and ill-fated Adelaide; as also several letters written by the latter, one of which seems to supply tolerably well the chasm in Urania’s memoirs. As soon as I succeed in decyphering them (which, thanks to the dust and the moths, is no easy task) I will not fail to impart to you their contents. You will ask me, what impression the perusal of this history has made on my heart. Ah! my dear brother, it is but too certain, that the unfortunate are apt to find their own resemblance every where! At first, how little similar do the fortunes of Urania and myself appear! and yet how easily might it have happened, that we should have both been sisters united in the same misfortune! Might not Henry of Montfort, (whose loss has cost me so many tears,) in spite of his fair exterior, have proved at heart as great a monster, as Ethelbert of Carlsheim proved in spite of _his_? May not the prayers, with which I solicited Heaven to grant me Henry’s hand, have pleaded for that, whose possession would have proved to me the bitterest curse of Heaven? Eternal Providence! never more will I murmur that you denied me a request, whose consequences were known to you far better than to myself. I besought you to bestow on me a blessing; you granted it by withholding that, which if conferred on me would perhaps have made me miserable for ever. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _Adelaide of the Beacon-Tower to Urania Venosta._ Oh! tell me, unhappy wife of my unhappy father; you, whom I would so gladly call my mother, had not she to whom Nature bade me give that valued name, compelled me to blend with it no ideas but those of pain and terror; you, whom I already love, and whose future affection I wish so anxiously to obtain; oh! tell me, Urania, was it but a dream, or have I indeed found at length the friend and sister whom I sought so long in vain, and whose counsels and whose comfort my tortured heart needs so greatly? Yet alas! what avails it that we have met? Already are we separated, as I feared we should be, and separated (as I _now_ fear) for ever! Yet, much as I grieve for what I lose myself by this event, still more do I grieve to think, that what _you_ lose is greater!