Alarmed at our escape, the robbers in their haste to overtake us, had neglected to visit the cottage. In consequence, the soldiers found the two waiting-women unhurt, and buried in the same deathlike slumber which had overpowered their mistress. There was nobody else found in the cottage, except a child not above four years old, which the soldiers brought away with them. We were busying ourselves with conjectures respecting the birth of this little unfortunate, when Marguerite rushed into the room with the baby in her arms. She fell at the feet of the officer who was making us this report, and blessed him a thousand times for the preservation of her child.

When the first burst of maternal tenderness was over, I besought her to declare, by what means she had been united to a man whose principles seemed so totally discordant with her own. She bent her eyes downwards, and wiped a few tears from her cheek.

“Gentlemen,” said she after a silence of some minutes, “I would request a favour of you: you have a right to know on whom you confer an obligation. I will not therefore stifle a confession which covers me with shame; but permit me to comprise it in as few words as possible.

“I was born in Strasbourg of respectable parents; their names I must at present conceal: my father still lives, and deserves not to be involved in my infamy; if you grant my request, you shall be informed of my family name. A villain made himself master of my affections, and to follow him I quitted my father’s house. Yet though my passions overpowered my virtue, I sank not into that degeneracy of vice, but too commonly the lot of women who make the first false step. I loved my seducer; dearly loved him! I was true to his bed; this baby, and the youth who warned you, my lord baron, of your lady’s danger, are the pledges of our affection. Even at this moment I lament his loss, though ’tis to him that I owe all the miseries of my existence.