"When at St. Helena, I believe I informed you I went from Cardigan to Havre-de-Grace, as a common sailor; I there determined to seek a sister, endeared to me by misfortune as well as the ties of blood; and accordingly directed my steps to Rennes; my whole wealth consisting in the clothes I wore, which were those I obtained by exchange from a lad near Harwich, and the wages arising from my voyage. This little stock, however, was insufficient to bear my expenses, and the last day I travelled without money or food; but hope impelled me forward, and on my arrival at Rennes, I inquired my way to the Convent of St. Ursule. My appearance there was too mean to gain me access to the Abbess, or even procure me a civil answer to the question I asked, whether Louise were living, and residing in the Convent? The portress disclaimed all knowledge of the circumstance--or the child I alluded to, and finally closed the grate to my face. "Thus repulsed, I slowly turned from the gate, and directed my steps to an humble _auberge_, where I threw myself on a bench in the yard, in a state of mind painfully depressed. The hope I had indulged to a most sanguine degree of finding Louise, and being acknowledged by her as a brother, and which had cheered me on my journey, and soothed me in my moments of sadness, was thus completely destroyed; nor had I then the least clue to guide me to her. "Was my sister dead? I asked myself--or had I been deceived? "The question led to events long since past; busy memory, in vivid colours, brought to view each circumstance which had progressively involved me in a state of wretchedness, and made me feel with maddening exaggeration a fate I thought unmerited. I was indeed driven by a power I could not oppose, from kindred, friends, and fortune--a wanderer on a foreign shore, without even the means of procuring a single meal to satisfy the wants of nature.--The only prospect before me, was beggary! "The idea was too much--my passions, long restrained, with a violence not to be controlled, o'erburst the bounds of reason; franticly I called for death; cursed the hour that gave me to the arms of my parents; and bade the earth open and bury me for ever in her bosom! "What inconsistencies I was guilty of, I cannot say; I was unconscious of observation--of all around me!--and such ascendancy did my madness at last attain, that I thought I heard the voice of my father in the breeze, chiding me for living in a world, where I had lost every prospect of happiness.