or—in short, that there was not the remotest
symptom of poison.

So, instead of the pleasure-loving multitude
obtaining a spectacle and a fate, the whirling
sword of the executioner and the falling head
were exchanged for perpetual imprisonment,
and the handsome, wealthy widow of forty
was sent to spend the remainder of her days
in the fortress of Glatz.

Here she assumed a new character. Her
part of the interesting woman of fashion
was played out; she had become interesting
beyond her wish, and fate had now
assigned her another part,—to defend her
life and reputation. There was a call to
develope her powers of fortitude and of intellect,
and she embraced it; not only before the
tribunal of justice, but in her whole conduct
through the thirty long years which she continued
a prisoner.

No sooner had she entered on her quarters
in the prison of Glatz, than she set about
writing an elaborate defence of herself. In
her room, which was the best the fortress
afforded to its captives, and which she was
allowed to furnish according to her pleasure,
she placed a little table under the narrow
window in the massy wall, and arranged upon
it everything that was necessary for literary
labour. She was surrounded by books: not
only for refreshment of her mind, but for
laborious research and instruction. In this
defence at which she laboured, for she was by
no means satisfied with that of her paid advocates,
she now discovered the uncommon
abilities with which she was endowed. If any
one had ever entertained a doubt of her
powers of reasoning and calculation, of the
clearness of her foresight, and the acuteness
of her penetration, that doubt was here at
once dispelled in the most convincing manner.
She proved herself so profoundly vast in
the law, that she now struck her legal
advisers with astonishment, as she had done the
judges on her trial. Her defence, which was
addressed to her relatives, presented her in
the new character of a masterly writer and
legal scholar. This defence is still extant,
and no defence of a murderer, not even that
of Eugene Aram, is a more striking specimen
of talent and of well-assumed virtue and
virtuous indignation.

"Scarcely," she says, "can I call to mind,
without the overthrow of my understanding
and the utter prostration of my whole being,
the accusation of being the murderer of my
husband and my aunt. My innermost soul
becomes worked with terror at the recollection
of the moment when I was seized with
all the horrors of death by the opened graves
of my beloved relatives; when surrounded
by all the pangs of a deadly cruelty, and
pursued by the furies of a thousand-tongued
imprecations, I heard myself cursed as the
destroyer of those who sank so safely to
slumber in my arms. Had Providence then
heard the sole wish of my heart, the
sole voice of my super-human anguish, that
moment would have annihilated my life and
my sufferings, and yet have flung the light of
the sun on all the evidences of my innocence,
which now, however, is made plain by other
means.

"In vain have I been for ten long months
pursued, martyred, broken to pieces, crushed
in soul and body by the reproach of that
shamefully horrible crime, and exposed to all
the contempt and malice of the public. In
vain have the graves of my loved ones been
opened, the repose of the dead violated, and
proceedings taken in the first capital of
Europe, in this age of knowledge and humanity,
under the eyes of the most amiable
and kind-hearted of kings, that have no
example, and with posterity will have no
credence. In vain have I, unhappy one, been
represented by inhuman writers as a monster
and a terrible warning; in vain have I been
painted, in the blackest and the most venomous
of colours, as a lesson to my own, and
a dark eternal memory to after times; in
vain have I been a thousand times murdered
and tortured,—the highest authorities,
the clearest evidence, pronounce me guiltless."

In the prison she was allowed a female
companion, and was often visited by distinguished
strangers, whom so far from shrinking
from, she was ever eager to see, never
failing to describe her misfortunes in vivid
colours, to assert her innocence, and intreat
their exertions for her liberation. Many of
these, however, thought that the lot of the
poisoner who rustled in silk and satin over
the floors of the fortress—compared with
that of other convicts, who for some rude
deed done in a moment of passion laboured
in heavy chains, welded to carts, or with
iron horns projecting above their brows,
sweltered in deep pits—had nothing in it of
a severity which warranted an appeal to
royal mercy.

But, in her seventieth year, the royal
mercy reached her. She was liberated from
prison, but restricted for the remainder of
her life to the city and fortress of Glatz.
Here she once more played the part, not of a
poisoner, but of an innocent woman and an
aristocratic lady. She again opened a handsome
house, and gave entertainments; and
they were frequented! Nay, such was her
vanity, that she used every diligence to draw
illustrious strangers into her circle. An
anecdote is related on undoubted authority,
which is characteristic. At one of her
suppers, a lady sitting near her actually started,
as she saw some white powder on a salad
which was handed to her. Madame Ursinus
observed it, and said, smiling, "Don't be
alarmed, my dear, it is not arsenic."

Another anecdote is not less amusing.
Immediately after quitting her prison, she
invited a large company to coffee. An invitation
to coffee by the poisoner, as she was
called in Glatz by old and young, was a