This page has been validated.
The Shepherdess of the Alps.
17

a letter from him, (which afforded me great comfort,) it informed me, that on such a day, such an hour, I should find him in the valley, under the same oak where I had bid him farewell; that he should be alone, and desired to meet me unaccompanied, adding, that ho only lived for me. I saw nothing in his letter but his impatience to seo me; and that impatience was to me very flattering. I was exact to the appointment. Mr Oreston received me in the most tender manner. Ah! my dear Adelaide, said he, you would have it so. I have failed in my duty at tho most important crisis of my life. What I fearod is come to pass. The battle was given, my regiment charged, and performed wonders of valour, and I was not at its head. I am dishonoured for ever— lost without risk— I have but one saerifice more to make you, which I am come to consummate. At these words I pressed my dear husband in my arms. I felt my blood congeal in my shivering heart. I fainted dead away. Ho took that opportunity to perpetrato his design; and I was called to life again by the report of the fatal pistol that gave him his death. How can I paint the cruel situation in which I was left! it cannot bo deseribed. Theso tears, that must for ever flow; tho sighs which suffocate my voice, give but a faint idea of my distress. I passed the night over the bloody corpse, quite stupefied with grief. My first thoughts were, as soon as I was able, to bury it and my shame together. These hands dug his grave! I do not mean to move your compassionato heart - But the moment in which the earth was to separate me from that dear remains, was a thousand times moro dreadful than can be that which divides the body from the soul. Depressed with grief, deprived of food, my feeble hands were two days employed in performing this last sad duty; and I then formed a determined resolution, to remain in solitude till death unite us. Gnawing hunger preyed upon my vitals, and I thought myself criminal in preventing nature from supporting a life moro insupportable to me than death. I changed my dress for that of a simplo shepherdess, and I look upon this valley as my