I must now close this long epistle, by wishing you patience to endure your present difficulties, and recommending you to look forward to better times, which I hope are at no great distance.
Emmeline of Sargans to Urania Venosta.
I once possest a beloved companion, who was dear to me as myself; Amalberga was her name. She was my sister; but the bonds, which nature had formed between us, were slight in comparison, with those of affection; an affection which I should have felt for her, had I been a princess, and Amalberga a peasant’s daughter. It seems to me as if whole years had elapsed, since we were separated; and yet all circumstances, and particularly the unremitting activity which is still exercised in pursuit of the fugitive, combine to assure me, that only a few months have crept away since her disappearance.
You desired, dear mother, to see the history of the poor persecuted girls traced by my pen; I now send you the produce of several sleepless nights, for the night is the only time which I am permitted to call my own. I suspect, you foresaw that the harshness of my jailors would ere long interrupt my personal intercourse with you, and that this was the motive, which induced you to advise my having recourse to my pen.
Count Donat suffered his daughters to grow up under his roof in total ignorance of what was owing to themselves and to others. He believed, that he had troubled himself about us quite sufficiently in making us over to the superintendance of a young governess, whose beauty and whose levity were her sole recommendations to favour. It was clearly her interest totally to neglect the heiresses of Carlsheim and Sargans, in order that after our removal from the world she might entirely engross the attentions of our childless father, a considerable portion of whose inheritance she doubted not being able to secure to herself.
In what regarded our persons, this neglect did us no detriment. In spite of want and oppression of every kind, the natural strength of our constitutions carried us through all difficulties, and we daily increased in bloom and stature: but the health of our minds was seriously shaken. No principles of virtue were inculcated; no one explained to us the difference between vice and virtue; and surrounded as we were on all sides by the worst examples, we already began to contract the bad habits of our despicable associates.
Our father’s enemies were almost as many, as there were noblemen whose domains bordered upon his own. Not one was there amongst their number, who had not been offended by him either personally or indirectly: but of them all his most dangerous and deadly foe was Count Lodowick of Homburg, the husband of that Minna of Mayenfield, for whom your history has taught me to feel such unbounded love and admiration.
How then was it possible, after all the bitter causes of complaint which Minna alledged against Count Donat, both on her own account, and on yours and her mother’s; how was it possible, that in spite of Donat’s unremitting enmity of which he daily gave fresh proofs, the noble Count of Homburg should have condescended to sue for peace at a time, when he was the strongest; and that he should even have confided so far in the honour of his enemy, as to trust himself and his lovely wife at the Castle of Sargans?
In this transaction is not your hand perceptible, Urania? oh! you had not forgotten, that within those hated walls were immured two forsaken children, the destined victims of vice or of the grave. Your benevolent proposal of taking us under your care, which you laid before our father in our earliest childhood, was received by him in the same manner, with which he treats every thing tending to promote the interests of virtue; those frequent attempts, which you afterwards made to draw us within the circle of your power, proved without effect; and you now endeavoured through your friend the Countess of Homburg to snatch us from the precipice, on whose brink we stood. I am not unconscious, my kind protectress, how many artifices were tried in vain to entice us out of the precincts of the Castle of Sargans; how often during our childhood, now one emissary and now another strove to rescue us by force from the dominion of our worthless governess; how once the Retainers of the Convent of Zurich had actually succeeded in carrying us to some distance from the Castle, before we were overtaken and brought back to our paternal prison; and how when Count Donat complained of this outrage and demanded satisfaction of the Bishop, the good Priest returned him for answer, that he would do better to send his daughters of his own accord to be instructed by the Nuns in piety and virtue, than to retain them in the Castle of Sargans in order that they might be educated by his paramours, and become in time as worthless as their instructors. It is to you, dear mother, that we are indebted for all these endeavours to rescue us from ruin, and the visit of the Countess of Homburg was equally your work.
This interview between Count Lodowick and my father possest the merit of at least wearing the appearance of friendly inclinations: whether it was the means of inducing them to live on better terms in future, than had hitherto been the case, I cannot pretend to decide: but it is certain, that the Countess did not neglect the object, which had induced her to enter once more the hated Castle of Sargans. Immediately on her arrival she requested, that my sister and myself might form the society of her daughter, whom she had brought with her. Count Donat could not in common decency refuse her this mark of attention. Therefore during the few weeks that Count Lodowick’s family resided at Sargans, we were seldom out of the company of the Countess and her daughter, from both of whom we received a thousand undeserved testimonies of interest and attachment.