,
beside the grave of her beloved. She had hidden herself in one of the many
empty habitations of London; it was she who rescued my Idris on the fatal
twentieth of November, though my immediate danger, and the subsequent
illness of Idris, caused us to forget our hapless friend. This circumstance
had however brought her again in contact with her fellow-creatures; a
slight illness of her infant, proved to her that she was still bound to
humanity by an indestructible tie; to preserve this little creature's life
became the object of her being, and she joined the first division of
migrants who went over to Paris.
She became an easy prey to the methodist; her sensibility and acute fears
rendered her accessible to every impulse; her love for her child made her
eager to cling to the merest straw held out to save him. Her mind, once
unstrung, and now tuned by roughest inharmonious hands, made her credulous:
beautiful as fabled goddess, with voice of unrivalled sweetness, burning
with new lighted enthusiasm, she became a stedfast proselyte, and powerful
auxiliary to the leader of the elect. I had remarked her in the crowd, on
the day we met on the Place Vendome; and, recollecting suddenly her
providential rescue of my lost one, on the night of the twentieth of
November, I reproached myself for my neglect and ingratitude, and felt
impelled to leave no means that I could adopt untried, to recall her to her
better self, and rescue her from the fangs of the hypocrite destroyer.
I will not, at this period of my story, record the artifices I used to
penetrate the asylum of the Tuileries, or give what would be a tedious
account of my stratagems, disappointments, and perseverance. I at last
succeeded in entering these walls, and roamed its halls and corridors in
eager hope to find my selected convert. In the evening I contrived to
mingle unobserved with the congregation, which assembled in the chapel to
listen to the crafty and eloquent harangue of their prophet. I saw Juliet
near him. Her dark eyes, fearfully impressed with the restless glare of
madness, were fixed on him; she held her infant, not yet a year old, in her
arms; and care of it alone could distract her attention from the words to
which she eagerly listened. After the sermon was over, the congregation
dispersed; all quitted the chapel except she whom I sought; her babe had
fallen asleep; so she placed it on a cushion, and sat on the floor beside,
watching its tranquil slum
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