,

"De Courcy was the younger son of an ancient and honorable family. My
sister's rank and fortune equalled his expectations, her beauty
gratified the pride of his connexions, and the endearing qualities of
her mind and heart won their entire approbation and regard. Their
marriage was solemnized; and never was there a day of greater happiness,
or one which opened more brilliant prospects for futurity. De Courcy
conveyed his bride immediately to a favorite estate, which he possessed
in Provence, whither I was permitted to accompany them; and six months
glided away, in the full enjoyment of that felicity which their romantic
hopes had anticipated. Winter approached, and your father was importuned
to visit the metropolis, and introduce his young and beautiful wife to
the gay and elevated station which she was expected to fill.

"Your mother, accustomed to retirement, and completely happy in the
participation of its rational pleasures, with one whose taste and
feelings harmonized entirely with her own, yielded, with secret
reluctance, to her husband's wishes, and exchanged that peaceful
retreat, for the brilliant, but heartless scenes of fashionable life.
The world was new to her, and no wonder if her unpractised eye was
dazzled by the splendor of its pageantry. She entered a magic circle,
and was borne round the ceaseless course with a rapidity which threw a
deceitful lustre on every object, and concealed the falseness of its
colors. She became the idol of a courtly throng; poets sung her praises,
and admirers sighed around her. Her heart remained uncorrupted by
flattery; but, young and inexperienced, buoyant with health and spirits,
no wonder that she yielded to the fascinations which surrounded her, or
that her thoughts reverted less frequently, and less fondly, to those
calm pleasures which had once constituted her only happiness. Her
affection for her husband was undiminished; but the world now claimed
that time and attention, which, in retirement, had been devoted to him;
and, engrossed by amusements, every intellectual pursuit was abandoned;
and domestic privacy, with its attendant sympathies and united
interests, was, at length, entirely banished.

"De Courcy, chagrined by a change, which his experience in life should
have enabled him to foresee, became melancholy and abstracted; he often
secluded himself from society, entrusting his wife to some other
protection, or, when induced to enter scenes which had become