Endowed with rare sagacity, a straightforward and firm nature, and ever solicitous of the advice of Victoria, Marion's government was marked with wisdom. The army grew ever more attached to him, and gave him signal proof of its loyalty and admiration up to the day, exactly two months after his acclamation, when he, in turn, fell the victim of another horrible crime. I must narrate to you, my son, the circumstances of this second crime. It is intimately connected, as you will discover, with the bloody plot that drew in its vortex all whom I loved and venerated, leaving you motherless, me a widower, and Victoria desolate. Two months had elapsed since the fatal night when my wife Ellen, Victorin and his son lost their lives. The sight of my house became insupportable to me; too many were the cruel recollections that clustered around it. Victoria induced me to move to her house with Sampso, who took your mother's place with you. "Here I am, all alone in the world, separated from my son and grandson to the end of my days," said my foster-sister to me. "You know, Schanvoch, all the affection of my life was centered upon those two beings, so dear to my heart. Do not leave me alone. Come, you, your son and Sampso, come and stay with me. You will aid me thereby to bear the burden of my grief." At first I hesitated to accept Victoria's offer. Due to a shocking fatality, I was the slayer of her son. True enough, she knew that, despite the enormity of Victorin's outrage, I would have spared his life, had I recognized him. She was aware of and saw the grief that the involuntary and yet legitimate homicide caused me. Nevertheless, and horrid was the recollection thereof to her, I had killed her son. I feared--despite all her protestations, and despite her warmly expressed desire that I move to her house--that my presence, however much wished for during the first loneliness of her bereavement, might become cruel and burdensome to her. Finally I yielded. Often did Sampso, in later years, say to me: "Alas, Schanvoch, it was only after I saw how tenderly you always spoke of Victorin to his mother, who, in turn, spoke to you of my poor sister Ellen in the touching terms that she did, that I, together with all those who knew us, understood and admired what at first seemed impossible--the intimacy of you and Victoria, the two survivors of those victims of a cruel fatality!"