His manner gave us confidence and gaiety, and we soon became attached to the kind-hearted Prelate. We were in truth but simple country-girls, quite unacquainted with the manners of the great world, and only wise enough to be sensible of our deficiency. Accustomed to be treated with nothing but severity, Count Herman’s gentleness delighted us; and his protection encouraged us to enter willingly into those societies, where it was his pleasure that we should be introduced. The Count of Werdenberg is quite a different kind of person from his predecessors, the old Bishops of Coira. When I recollect the portraits of the venerable Adelfried-Herbert, and of the pious Thomas of Planta, such as I saw them in your closet; and when I compare their austere and mortified countenances with that of the penetrating, the polished, the gallant, the martial Herman of Werdenberg; when too I reflect how different their simple Priest’s habit appeared from the glittering and costly robes, in which our Cousin appeared when we were unexpectedly presented to him for the first time, though the day was not a festival; when I think on all these things, my dear mother, I can scarcely persuade myself, that he and the originals of your pictures ever have belonged to the same profession. The manners of the Bishop’s court were entirely new to us, but were not the less pleasing. Certainly, our father must have been little aware of the nature of the place, whither he had sent us for shelter; or else it must have been the most bitter hatred against his daughters, which induced him to make us first acquainted with the pleasures of the world, in order that the recollection of the enchanting scenes which they were now witnessing, and the hopeless desire of witnessing them again, might make the cloister for which he destined them seem doubly hateful. Everything here appeared new to us; not merely the amusements which offered themselves every day to our enjoyment, but the discovery which was made to us in a very few hours after our arrival, that we were beautiful. —“Beautiful?” said I to Amalberga; “How could it possibly happen, that we should not have found this out long ago?—It is true, I always thought, there was something uncommonly pleasing in your countenance, my dear sister; but still your features were too much like my own, for me ever to have suspected them of being beautiful.”— We consulted Amabel on this important point. She assured us with that simplicity which was natural to her, that we did not appear beautiful to _her_, for that on the banks of the Lake of Thun (where she was born) the blooming charms of the village damsels were far superior to ours, at least as far as she could give an opinion; a confession, which we heard her make without feeling the slightest displeasure.