tion to
ensure their fidelity and safety; beside which the preacher was as cautious
and prudent, as he was cruel. His victims lived under the strictest rules
and laws, which either entirely imprisoned them within the Tuileries, or
let them out in such numbers, and under such leaders, as precluded the
possibility of controversy. There was one among them however whom I
resolved to save; she had been known to us in happier days; Idris had loved
her; and her excellent nature made it peculiarly lamentable that she should
be sacrificed by this merciless cannibal of souls.

This man had between two and three hundred persons enlisted under his
banners. More than half of them were women; there were about fifty children
of all ages; and not more than eighty men. They were mostly drawn from that
which, when such distinctions existed, was denominated the lower rank of
society. The exceptions consisted of a few high-born females, who,
panic-struck, and tamed by sorrow, had joined him. Among these was one,
young, lovely, and enthusiastic, whose very goodness made her a more easy
victim. I have mentioned her before: Juliet, the youngest daughter, and now
sole relic of the ducal house of L---. There are some beings, whom fate
seems to select on whom to pour, in unmeasured portion, the vials of her
wrath, and whom she bathes even to the lips in misery. Such a one was the
ill-starred Juliet. She had lost her indulgent parents, her brothers and
sisters, companions of her youth; in one fell swoop they had been carried
off from her. Yet she had again dared to call herself happy; united to her
admirer, to him who possessed and filled her whole heart, she yielded to
the lethean powers of love, and knew and felt only his life and presence.
At the very time when with keen delight she welcomed the tokens of
maternity, this sole prop of her life failed, her husband died of the
plague. For a time she had been lulled in insanity; the birth of her child
restored her to the cruel reality of things, but gave her at the same time
an object for whom to preserve at once life and reason. Every friend and
relative had died off, and she was reduced to solitude and penury; deep
melancholy and angry impatience distorted her judgment, so that she could
not persuade herself to disclose her distress to us. When she heard of the
plan of universal emigration, she resolved to remain behind with her
child, and alone in wide England to live or die, as fate might decree