my honour. I cannot conceive what devil has made me go astray--_me who have always been so careful on such occasions_. As yet all is quiet, and none know of it but you and Euriphon. Were it but time to undertake any thing--but alas! it is the fourth month. Those damned priests too--for the action is so criminally accounted by them, and scandalises the blood. This makes the utmost efforts and the most desperate measures absolutely necessary." It will throw some light on this transaction if we read a letter from Spartacus to Cato about this time. "One thing more, my dearest friend--Would it be agreeable to you to have me for a brother-in-law? If this should be agreeable, and if it can be brought about without prejudice to my honour, as I hope it may, I am not without hopes that the connection may take place. But in the mean time keep it a secret, and only give me permission to enter into correspondence on the subject with the good lady, to whom I beg you will offer my respectful compliments, and I will explain myself more fully to you by word of mouth, and tell you my whole situation. But I repeat it--the thing must be gone about with address and caution. I would not for all the world deceive a person who certainly has not deserved so of me." What interpretation can be put on this? Cato seems to be brother to the poor woman--he was unwittingly to furnish the drugs, and he was to be dealt with about consenting to a marriage, which could not be altogether agreeable to him, since it required a dispensation, she being already the sister-in-law of Weishaupt, either the sister of his former wife, or the widow of a deceased brother. Or perhaps Spartacus really wishes to marry Cato's sister, a different person from the poor woman in the straw; and he conceals this adventure from his trusty friend Cato, till he sees what becomes of it. The child may perhaps be got rid of, and then Spartacus is a free man. There is a letter to Cato, thanking him for his friendship in the affair of the child--but it gives no light. I meet with another account, that the sister of Zwack threw herself from the top of a tower, and beat out her brains. But it is not said that it was an only sister; if it was, the probability is, that Spartacus had paid his addresses to her, and succeeded, and that the subsequent affair of his marriage with his sister-in-law, or something worse, broke her heart. This seems the best account of the matter. For Hertel (Marius) writes to Zwack in November 1782: "Spartacus is this day gone home, but has left his sister-in-law pregnant behind (this is from Bassus Hoff). About the new year he hopes to be made merry by a ----, who will be before all kings and princes--a young Spartacus. The Pope also will respect him, and legitimate him before the time."