When o'er the deep, scarce heard, the zephyr strays,

'Midst the cool tam'rinds indolently plays,

Nor from the orange shakes its od'rous flower:

But, ah! since Love has all my heart possess'd,

That desolated heart what sorrows tear!

Disturb'd and wild as ocean's troubled breast,

When the hoarse tempest of the night is there

Yet my complaining spirit asks no rest;

This bleeding bosom cherishes despair.

"The tender and sacred duties which nature imposed, became a source of additional happiness to those affectionate mothers, whose mutual friendship acquired new strength at the sight of their children, alike the offspring of unhappy love. They delighted to place their infants together in the same bath, to nurse them in the same cradle, and sometimes changed the maternal bosom at which they received nourishment, as if to blend with the ties of friendship that instinctive affection which this act produces.

'My friend,' cried Madame de la Tour, 'we shall each of us have two children, and each of our children will have two mothers.' As two buds which remain on two trees of the same kind, after the tempest has broken all their branches, produce more delicious fruit, if each, separated from the maternal stem, be grafted on the neighbouring tree; so those two children, deprived of all other support, imbibed sentiments more tender than those of son and daughter, brother and sister, when exchanged at the breast of those who had given them birth. While they were yet in their cradle, their mothers talked of their marriage; and this prospect of conjugal felicity, with which they soothed their own cares, often called forth the tears of bitter regret. The misfortunes of one mother had arisen from having neglected marriage, those of the other from having submitted to its laws: one had been made unhappy by attempting to raise herself above her humble condition of life, the other by descending from her rank. But they found consolation in reflecting that their more fortunate children, far from the cruel prejudices of Europe, those prejudices which poison the most precious sources 

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