But a few minutes had passed, after the auramentee had reached his hotel, before he was summoned to the house of his Italian _protégés_. On our arrival we found the mother in the height of the febrile stage of the plague’s accession, but calm and resigned in thought, although impressed with a premonition of the disease’s fatality, which with our knowledge we felt that it was impossible to avert, still we suggested remedies for transient relief. With the morning’s dawn, after soothing the anxious fears of her children, she expressed to them her desire to converse with the auramentee alone. Notwithstanding the unusual nature of the request, it was cheerfully complied with. She then related to him the cause of her husband’s estrangement and desertion, affirming that her sole object in following him was for his rescue from self-inflicted wretchedness, as she had brought with her a feeling of fatality, that warned her that her own and children’s days were numbered. This feeling had been confirmed in her mind by the strange sympathy which had been shown in her behalf, as the source of her sorrows was only known to an appreciative few. We used all our powers of persuasion to induce a more hopeful mood, by endeavoring to convince her that she was yielding to superstitious feelings unworthy of the courage which had sustained her through the trials of desertion, and her long search which had been continued in a manner humiliating to the affectionate pride of a mother in behalf of her children, exhorting her to bear up bravely until she had achieved the object of her mission. With a wailing sigh, quickly suppressed, she averted her face, while with choked utterance, scarcely raised above a whisper, she despairingly murmured, “I have seen him.”