Page:The genius - Carl Grosse tr Joseph Trapp 1796.djvu/196

 fant, and the sickly state of my health, bid me stay in this lonely retreat, where I am writing this history for his information. To send it to Spain would be folly, as the manuscript would share the same fate as the many letters I have written to him already. Two years longer will I wait, to see, if by some unforeseen accident, none of my correspondence will fall into his hands, and make him fly to cheer the melancholy which warps the decline of hapless days—should this last hope, like so many others, be frustrated—or should death snatch me from this world, before the expiration of the limited term—I hereby solemnly conjure the municipal officers of this place, to give all the publicity they can to these memoirs, in the journals and news-papers of France and Spain, in order that my dear husband, Don Carlos de Grandez, may learn these details so interesting to his honor, his peace and happiness."

These are the posthumous remains of the history of my beloved, faithful and never to be forgotten Elmira. How wonderful are the turns of human fate! How much reason did not