and no letters or intelligence respecting my father, I all at once entertained an idea of his death.
Despondency then took fast hold of me.—I was a prisoner for life, sacrificed by the basest and most avaricious of mankind. Madness and despair worked me to a kind of frenzy; and one day, after a fit of gloomy recollection, I rose in a hurry, flew to the apartment of the Abbess, and insisted, in very peremptory terms, upon being liberated;—bid her, at her peril, detain a wife forced into confinement, and the daughter of an officer who would soon demand me from her hands. She appeared terrified at the state of my mind, tried to sooth, to reason with me; but finding I grew quite outrageous, she called for assistance: I fought like a tiger with three of the nuns; but being overpowered by numbers, I was carried speechless and senseless to an apartment used as a prison, when any of the boarders deserved punishment.
Here I was left alone upon a miserable bed, with some bread and water for my sup-
