How then was it possible, after all the bitter causes of complaint which Minna alledged against Count Donat, both on her own account, and on yours and her mother’s; how was it possible, that in spite of Donat’s unremitting enmity of which he daily gave fresh proofs, the noble Count of Homburg should have condescended to sue for peace at a time, when he was the strongest; and that he should even have confided so far in the honour of his enemy, as to trust himself and his lovely wife at the Castle of Sargans? In this transaction is not your hand perceptible, Urania? oh! you had not forgotten, that within those hated walls were immured two forsaken children, the destined victims of vice or of the grave. Your benevolent proposal of taking us under your care, which you laid before our father in our earliest childhood, was received by him in the same manner, with which he treats every thing tending to promote the interests of virtue; those frequent attempts, which you afterwards made to draw us within the circle of your power, proved without effect; and you now endeavoured through your friend the Countess of Homburg to snatch us from the precipice, on whose brink we stood. I am not unconscious, my kind protectress, how many artifices were tried in vain to entice us out of the precincts of the Castle of Sargans; how often during our childhood, now one emissary and now another strove to rescue us by force from the dominion of our worthless governess; how once the Retainers of the Convent of Zurich had actually succeeded in carrying us to some distance from the Castle, before we were overtaken and brought back to our paternal prison; and how when Count Donat complained of this outrage and demanded satisfaction of the Bishop, the good Priest returned him for answer, that he would do better to send his daughters of his own accord to be instructed by the Nuns in piety and virtue, than to retain them in the Castle of Sargans in order that they might be educated by his paramours, and become in time as worthless as their instructors. It is to you, dear mother, that we are indebted for all these endeavours to rescue us from ruin, and the visit of the Countess of Homburg was equally your work.