Page:The genius - Carl Grosse tr Joseph Trapp 1796.djvu/185

 ment, where I was put into a warm and well-perfumed bed. Decency made the greater part of my visitors retire, leaving only two women who staid with me, till I had quite recovered.

"They then congratulated me on my deliverance, and praised God for having made them the instruments of his divine benefit.

—"Thank Heaven with us, my Lady," began one of them, "for having been rescued from hands at once cruel and perfidious, to fall into ours."

—"What cruel and perfidious hands do you mean?" returned I with astonishment.

—"Those of your pretended lover, Don Carlos de Grandez."

—"Hold thy calumnious tongue, wretched creature," interrupted I, "and distil not thy poison on a name I adore!"

—"Not so warm, my Lady," replied she quite coolly; "it will only require a few days to convert you to our opinion. We all are members of a society, who make it their duty to relieve the suffering and the wretched, and to obliterate, if possible, the very re-