﻿FILIAL DEVOTION. 161 



struction, and those who were alike condemned to death, menaced 

 the poor child, in order to drive her from among them. Annette 

 bounded with light step towards her father, as she had been wont to 

 do in happier days, when awaiting his welcome voice, and throwing 

 her little arms around his neck, she waited to perish with the author 

 of her days. 



" O my child, my dearest child ! the cherished and only hope of 

 thy wretched mother, no\v on the eve of widowhood," exclaimed 

 her trembling and weeping father, " I command, I conjure thee to 

 go away." 



" No, papa, we will die together." 



This unexpected incident disconcerted the director of the massa- 

 cre. Perhaps he was himself a father, and the thought of his own 

 children might arise within him. Certain it is, that his ferocious 

 heart was softened ; he ordered the Creole away, and commanded 

 that he should be taken to prison with his child. Amid the rage of 

 civil discord, and the alternate ascendency of contending factions, a 

 brief respite was not unfrequently productive of the happiest conse- 

 quences. Such was the case in the present instance. The face of 

 affairs became changed ; the father was restored to his family, and 

 ceased not to speak with the tenderest emotion of his little daughter, 

 then only ten years of age. 



Many who heard the tale, in after years, pleased themselves with 

 thinking that the human heart is never completely insensible to the 

 voice of nature. But the contrary has been unhappily evinced in 

 those fearful tragedies which have so often disgraced its history, 

 in which the tears of suffering innocence have vainly sought for 

 sympathy and compassion. We cannot, therefore, attribute so won- 

 derful a deliverance to those innate principles of virtue and benevo- 

 lence, which are thought by some incapable of being totally eradi- 

 cated in the breast of even the most atrocious and sanguinary. We 

 must rather give to Him the glory, in whose hands are the hearts of 

 men ; and who, in preserving the life of a virtuous individual, has 

 permitted to all young people a beautiful and impressive instance 

 of the reward of filial devotion. 

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