The Abbess bestowed upon me a few hours every day in that closet, where the portraits of the Ladies of Sargans had first attracted my attention to those models of virtue and patient suffering: her account of them did not greatly vary from that, which I had already obtained. I confess, that where-ever a clerical person would have appeared in rather an odious light, whether it was a Monk or a Nun, a Bishop or an Abbess, the good lady never failed to soften matters and wrap the transgressors up carefully in the veil of mystery; but those examples of misfortune and heroic self-command, which appeared so peculiarly applicable to myself, she confirmed most fully, and exactly as I had read them: nor can I decide, whether they made most impression on me while reading them alone and for the first time by the glimmerings of a midnight lamp, or when they were pronounced by the lips of this holy woman, this earthly saint, whose head within a few short years (too soon alas! for those who like me know her worth) will be crowned with wreaths of celestial glory. Though scarcely in the autumn of her life, the excellent Abbess already stands upon the brink of her grave. A slow consumption insensibly destroys her noble powers, and the repetition of these adventures was a real sacrifice which she made to friendship. Her present state adds weight to her testimony. Think you, Oswald, that so near the transit from time to eternity, she would waste away her hours in relating tales, which she knew to be mere fabrications?—Impossible! No! oh, no! What I have read, is true! The venerable Urania, on whose image my eye rests with such soft melancholy, and thou too, poor Adelaide, whose bitter fate beguiled me so often of my tears! you both once lived and suffered, you both once thought and acted, exactly as I have read and believed; and these examples of heroic patience, under afflictions far heavier than mine, shall serve _me_ as guides in the conduct, which it now becomes me to pursue. But for thee, generous Helen! for thee whose fortune so thoroughly resembles my own, from this moment thou shalt be the model, after which I will form my whole heart and character; and when my resolution staggers under the weight of human weakness, to thy portrait will I turn my eyes for comfort and support. My brother, I am convinced beyond the power of doubting, that Helen herself, and no other, was the authoress of the concluding manuscript. Every page of it betrays marks of an interest, which none but an actor in the tale could be capable of feeling; and oh! how much has this persuasion increased in my eyes the value of the writing!