This was some comfort, although fine weather would have been greater. The gale continued; and the next morning we thought that we descried land on the lee beam. The following night we were certain of our conjectures having been correct, for the vessel was thrown on shore, and in a few minutes went to pieces. I had the good fortune to save myself upon a part of the wreck, and lay half-dead upon the beach until the morning. When the day broke, I looked around me: there were the fragments of the vessel strewed upon the beach, or tossed in mockery by the surge; and close to me lay the dead body of the lady, whose sanctity the captain had assured us would be a safeguard to us all. I then turned from the beach to look at the inland country, and perceived, to my astonishment, that I was not three miles from my native city, Marseilles. This was a horrid discovery; for I knew that I should receive no mercy, and could not proceed a mile without being recognised. What to do was now the subject of my thoughts; and at last, as I viewed the body of the dead lady, it occurred to me that I might pass myself off for her. I stripped it of its outer garment, and having then hauled my own clothes upon the corpse, and covered it over with sea-weed, I dressed myself in the religious habit which she had worn, and sat down awaiting the arrival of the people, which I knew must soon take place. I was then without a symptom of beard; and, from the hardship and ill-treatment which I had received on board of the Genoese, was thin and sallow in the face. It was easy in a nun's dress to mistake me for a woman of thirty-five years of age, who had been secluded in a cloister. In the pockets of her clothes I found letters, which gave me the necessary clue to my story, and I resolved to pass myself off as La Soeur Eustasie, rather than be put in prison, or run through the body. I had scarcely time to finish reading these documents, when a party, attracted by the fragments on the beach, came up to me. I narrated the loss of the vessel, the death of the whole crew, my name and condition, my having come over at the request of the bishop to assume the guidance of the convent of St Therese; and added, that I had called upon the Virgin in my distress, who had come to my aid, and floated me on shore with as much care and comfort as if I had been reposing on cushions of down. The report was spread and credited; for the circumstance of a helpless woman being the sole survivor of a whole crew was miracle enough in itself.