Page:The genius - Carl Grosse tr Joseph Trapp 1796.djvu/166

 basely led astray. But I escaped from the monsters, in the most dangerous moment, and just as they thought to have entirely secured my person, I fled to this foreign land, with no other property than your portrait and a few rings and other jewels. Their produce was more than enough to purchase this humble cottage, a little garden, a meadow, and some live stock, which has hitherto served for my support, and which these hands, whose whiteness and softness you will no more have reason to admire, have done their best to procure."

—"Formerly, Elmira, these hands were the witnesses of your beauty, but they are now dearer to me as the signs of your virtue. Even at the altar I did not embrace them so fervently as I now do."

At these, words my faithful Alfonso who, to leave us undisturbed, had passed the whole night in an adjacent penthouse to take care of our horses, entered the room, and with tears of sincere gladness bedewed the hands of his recovered mistress, who received his homage with suitable benignity.