her rights.  But the more she shrank from the suffering, the more did she proclaim how severe it had been, and consequently how noble the self-conquest.  Yet, as her weakness increased, so did her terror; until I besought her to take comfort, assuring her that, in case any attempt should be made to force her out again to public exposure, I would kill the man who came to execute the order—­that we would all die together—­and there would be a common end to her injuries and her fears.  She was reassured by what I told her of my belief that no future attempt would be made upon her.  She slept more tranquilly—­but her fever increased; and slowly she slept away into the everlasting sleep which knows of no to-morrow.

“Here came a crisis in my fate.  Should I stay and attempt to protect my sisters?  But, alas! what power had I to do so among our enemies?  Rachael and I consulted; and many a scheme we planned.  Even while we consulted, and the very night after my mother had been committed to the Jewish burying ground, came an officer, bearing an order for me to repair to Vienna.  Some officer in the French army, having watched the transaction respecting my parents, was filled with shame and grief.  He wrote a statement of the whole to an Austrian officer of rank, my father’s friend, who obtained from the emperor an order, claiming me as a page of his own, and an officer in the household service.  O heavens! what a neglect that it did not include my sisters!  However, the next best thing was that I should use my influence at the imperial court to get them passed to Vienna.  This I did, to the utmost of my power.  But seven months elapsed before I saw the emperor.  If my applications ever met his eye he might readily suppose that your city, my friend, was as safe a place as another for my sisters.  Nor did I myself know all its dangers.  At length, with the emperor’s leave of absence, I returned.  And what did I find?  Eight months had passed, and the faithful Rachael had died.  The poor sisters, clinging together, but now utterly bereft of friends, knew not which way to turn.  In this abandonment they fell into the insidious hands of the ruffian jailer.  My eldest sister, Berenice, the stateliest and noblest of beauties, had attracted this ruffian’s admiration while she was in the prison with her mother.  And when I returned to your city, armed with the imperial passports for all, I found that Berenice had died in the villain’s custody; nor could I obtain anything beyond a legal certificate of her death.  And, finally, the blooming, laughing Mariamne, she also had died—­and of affliction for the loss of her sister.  You, my friend, had been absent upon your travels during the calamitous history I have recited.  You had seen neither my father nor my mother.  But you came in time to take under your protection, from the abhorred wretch the jailer, my little broken-hearted Mariamne.  And when sometimes you fancied that you had seen me under other circumstances, in her it was, my dear friend, and in her features that you saw mine.