care of bringing up till she was six years old, and who, at that tender age, promised to be as fair as I now behold you?'
“ ‘I am the same,’ I replied. ‘My mother lies about a hundred yards from here, cut in pieces, and buried under a heap of dead bodies.’
“I then related to him all that had befallen me, and he in return acquainted me with all his adventures, and how he had been sent to the court of the King of Morocco by a Christian prince to conclude a treaty with that monarch; in consequence of which he was to be furnished with military stores, and ships to enable him to destroy the commerce of other Christian governments.
“ ‘I have executed my commission,’ said the eunuch; ‘I am going to take shipping at Ceuta, and I’ll take you along with me to Italy. Ma che sciagura d’essere senza coglioni!’
“I thanked him with tears of joy; but, instead of taking me with him into Italy, he carried me to Algiers, and sold me to the dey of that province. I had not been long a slave when the plague, which had made the tour of Africa, Asia, and Europe, broke out at Algiers with redoubled fury. You have seen an earthquake; but tell me, miss, had you ever the plague?”
“Never,” answered the young Baroness.
“If you ever had,” continued the old woman, “you would own an earthquake was a trifle to it. It is very common in Africa; I was seized with it. Figure to yourself the situation of the daughter of a pope, only fifteen years old, and who in less than three months had felt the miseries of poverty and slavery; had been ravished almost every day; had beheld her mother cut into four quarters; had experienced the scourges of famine and war, and was now dying of the plague at Algiers. I did not, however, die of it; but my eunuch, and the dey, and almost the whole seraglio of Algiers, were swept off.
“As soon as the first fury of this dreadful pestilence was over, a sale was made of the dey’s slaves. I was purchased by a merchant, who carried me to Tunis. This man sold me to another merchant, who sold me again to another at Tripoli; from Tripoli I was sold to Alexandria, from Alexandria to Smyrna, and from Smyrna to Constantinople. After many changes, I at length became the property of an aga of the janissaries, who, soon after I came into his possession, was ordered away to the defence of Azov, then besieged by the Russians.
“The aga being fond of women, took his whole seraglio with him, and lodged us in a small fort on Lake Maeotis, with two black eunuchs and twenty soldiers for our guard. Our army made a great slaughter among the Russians,
