Countess of Carlsheim and Sargans.
I must begin, noble Lady, by requesting your pardon for having delayed so long to make known to you an history, which I thought would have more interest in the mouth of its heroine, than it could possibly receive from my unskilful pen. Fatal events (I grieve to say it) have for ever deprived you of that satisfaction; and you must either learn Adelaide’s adventures from me, or from no one.
Have not these few words already led you to guess the melancholy truth, which this letter is intended to break to you? Oh! that the painful task of being the first to inform you “that Adelaide is no more,” had been imposed upon another! Yet surely it is scarcely possible, that report should have been totally silent at Zurich, respecting events which have excited the attention of the whole German Empire.
Yet dry your tears, virtuous Urania! they who have lived in the world so long as we have done, should not grieve for the departure of our beloved-ones; the hope of speedily rejoining them in another world, never to be separated from them more, should console us under this temporary deprivation. Lament not, that you are prevented from shewing your gratitude to your generous deliverer; she will find the reward of her glorious deeds in Heaven; alas! she found none on earth!
Tell me, dear Adelaide, thou suffering Saint! Chaste martyr of the holiest love, say, with what feelings do you now enshrined in glory review the sorrows, which oppressed you in your mortal progress? Doubtless you review them not with such tears as obscure the eyes of your friend, while in this mournful hour of midnight solitude she retraces the transactions of your eventful life! Methinks I see your form radiant with light hover round me, and hear you with a smile bid me weep no more over afflictions, which now seem to yourself no longer deserving of a single tear!
You see, Urania, how difficult I find the task of beginning a narrative, which must rend open anew many an old and cruel wound; you see how anxiously I endeavour to delay the executing so painful a commission. But I gave you my promise! You shall be satisfied!—Permit me, however, to be as brief as possible, and to reserve the relation of minute particulars till the time, when I shall have an opportunity of explaining them to you in person.
That which I look upon as the first of our dear Adelaide’s misfortunes, was her being the daughter of Lucretia Malaspina. Lucretia (you already know but too well) was not lovely enough to bind Count Ethelbert’s heart in lasting fetters; nor did she possess that generous and almost Saint-like forbearance, with which Urania supported the misfortunes necessarily entailed upon the wife of such an husband. The discovery of an artifice, which her short-sighted policy had induced her to practice upon him, contributed to alienate Ethelbert’s affections, and to convert what already was indifference into the most positive aversion.
Lucretia’s wealth was a chief inducement with the Count of Carlsheim, when he offered her his hand. The birth of a son gave occasion to a discovery, that the estates believed to be her own absolute property were only held in trust for her eldest son, to whom they descended with the first breath of air that inflated his lungs. Within a year after Lucretia had been brought to bed for the first time, to Ethelbert’s infinite surprize he was summoned to surrender his wife’s estates to the guardians, appointed by her uncle’s will to take charge of them, till the new-born infant should arrive at years of discretion. Ethelbert’s rage was extreme; he was compelled to surrender the property, and in revenge was barbarous enough to tear the child from its mother’s arms, commit it to the care of strangers without informing her to whom, and then to abandon her with every expression of hatred and contempt. Lucretia bore this parting (dearly as she loved her incensed husband) with the more fortitude, from her secret consciousness that she nourished in her bosom another innocent creature, and from her fears that if Ethelbert were present at the time of her delivery, the new-born babe would be separated from her in the same manner, that she had been deprived of its brother. The same apprehension, on being brought to bed of twins, induced her to conceal the birth of one of them, in order that she might at least have the pleasure of seeing it grow up under her own eye, should Ethelbert’s vengeance induce him to deprive her of the other. Accident directed her choice, which fell upon Adelaide.
The event, however, proved her fears to have been for this time unfounded. At a distance from her, and totally engrossed by his own libertine pursuits, Ethelbert scarcely deigned to bestow upon her a single thought. Yet Lucretia’s partiality for her son Donat, which every day increased, prevented her from revealing the birth of his twin-sister, who would then have had a joint and equal right with him to those estates, of which at that period the death of his elder brother (while yet an infant) made him to be supposed the sole inheritor. Thus Adelaide grew up under her mother’s eyes, and was the play-mate of her brother, without having the least suspicion how nearly she was related to either of them. This was of inconceivable advantage to her in her early education. She believed herself to be a vassal’s daughter in that house, of which she ought to have shone as the joint-heiress; and as the youthful Donat enjoyed all the advantages of his rank, and made his dependents feel the whole weight of his influence, many a lesson of humility and patient suffering did Adelaide learn in her youth, which was of material service to her in the painful scenes, which she had afterwards to encounter. Donat ruled his mother with the most despotic authority; his resemblance to herself, that violence of passions which he possessed in common with her, and the docility with which he received her pernicious instructions had won Lucretia’s whole heart, and left no room in it for her neglected daughter; who thus was early afforded frequent opportunities of submitting to injustice, without being conscious that her treatment was unjust.
Lucretia had been wise enough to foresee, long before they arrived, that such events might very possibly happen, as actually did at length take place. With all her love for Ethelbert, she had discovered his faults sufficiently to make her take precautions for her own security; and she endeavoured to confine his actions by means, which though they still preserved her the title of his wife, were nevertheless insufficient to prevent her suffering the extreme of misery and disappointment.