an ample provision. Alas! the happiness I then enjoyed but rendered the misery I afterwards experienced more acute; for recollected joys always sharpen the arrows of affliction.
"The first interruption my happiness received was by the death of the Countess, which happened when I was about eighteen; the grief I felt for her loss was such as an affectionate son must have felt for a tender mother, but, though poignant, it was faint to that experienced by the Count; nobly, however, he tried to check his own feelings, in order to appease those of his daughter and mine: his efforts in time succeeded; but, alas! scarcely were we beginning to regain some degree of tranquillity ere he was taken from us to that blessedness his whole life proved him deserving of. Smothered grief undermined his constitution, and in three months after the death of his lady he was re-united to her in those regions where they could never more be separated.
