Apropos to German romance. I met with a striking instance of it even in my short and rapid journey across part of the country. A lady of birth and rank, who had been _dame d'honneur_ in the court of a sovereign princess, (a princess by the way of very equivocal reputation,) on the death of a lover, to whom she had been betrothed, devoted herself thenceforth to the service of the sick in the hospitals; she could not enter a religious order, being a Protestant, but she fulfilled all the offices of a vowed Sister of Charity. When she applied to the physician for leave to attend the hospital at ----, he used every endeavour to dissuade her from her undertaking--all in vain! Then he tried to disgust her by imposing, in the first instance, duties the most fearful and revolting to a delicate woman; she stood this test, and persisted. It is now five years since I saw her; perhaps she may by this time be tired of her charitable, or rather her romantic, self-devotion.
No, _that_ she is not. I know to whom you allude. She follows steadily and quietly the same pious vocation in which she has persevered for fifteen years, and in which she seems resolved to die.
Now, in return for your story, though I knew it all before, I will tell you another; but lest you should suspect me of absolute invention and romancing, I must tell you how I came by it.