Without teasing our curious interest in her welfare she appealed to the tribune: “Your Manatitlan cousins, Novuotus, would scarcely feel satisfied with your interest in my behalf, if I should allow you to hold me silently exculpated from your abiding confidence in the wisdom that dictated our betrothal. As we are united, yet single, in the fulfillment of our marital alliance, I am anxiously desirous of having the affectionate sanction of their approbation, which could not be conceded if they thought me capable of participating otherwise than by form, in the cruel enactments of yesterday. In speaking, it is my wish to vindicate myself from voluntary conformity with the chivalric usages in which I engaged, as they were then, as they ever have been, sadly repugnant to my conceptions of love and affection, which vividly impress me with the reality of an existence independent of the body’s mortality. That your cousins may realize in what measure they are entitled to bestow upon me their lenity and sympathy, I will relate to them the cause that influenced my introduction to the guardianship of your people. Of my ancestral origin, I am certain that the events of yesterday will better inform you than I am able from my own knowledge. In my fourth year, when my perceptions were only advanced in the bud sufficient for impression, without enlisting the maturing aid of thoughtful judgment derived from comparison, my father, mother, and two brothers, became very sick with the plague, alike destructive to the Giga and Animalculan races. The harrowing scenes of bereavement daily recounted in my presence aroused impressions of fear for myself, and when my parents became sick, I added anxiety to my aunt’s responsibility, to whose sole charge we had been left by the servants and neighbors. One day, despairing and hopeless, my aunt had enfolded me in her arms, and while wofully lamenting threatened desolation from the death of my parents and brother, I was trying to solace her with endearments, my arms were around her neck, with my lips to her ear and face turned backward, when the door softly opened and my voice was stilled by the surprise of my eyes at the entrance of a very large and beautiful woman. [Here Idolisima fondly embraced, with caresses, the neck of the Doschessa of Romelia.] My silence and fixed attention attracted my aunt’s eyes to the door, and when she discovered the stranger, who appeared to be well known to her, she was much abashed that she had been surprised in useless lamentation. This made me gladly hope that the visitor was an angel sent to help us; so, growing bold with the feeling of hope, I gently withdrew myself from my aunt’s embrace and approached the stranger imploring her aid for my parents and brothers! In a moment I was in her arms; then I became so quickly changed, I no longer feared, for her voice and touch made me feel so secure that I was sure she came from heaven to help us. But I have since