treme reluctance, to relinquish the hopes he had indulged of passing his life with a lady he so truly loved and esteemed; but the sacred commands he had received, with the insurmountable difficulties that impeded such a union from ever taking place, obliged him to take this method of conveying to me the information, in compassion to both our feelings. As he must ever be interested in my happiness, he had taken care to leave four hundred crowns in his writing desk, which he hoped would be a sum sufficient to convey me to my father, or support me in the hamlet until his arrival."
Such were the cruel contents of this horrid letter, so deeply imprinted in my memory, never to be erased. The moment I regained my senses, I called for the messenger. No such person was to be found.—While the servant came to me, he had taken the opportunity to disappear. My cruel destiny now unfolded itself at once. I had no witness to my marriage; my certificate had been basely stolen by the most inhuman
