250 JOURNAL. 



" account, who had a very dangerous fever. On the very day of the 

 " crisis of her illness, an officer from the senate arrived, demanding 

 " our eldest daughter. My husband went to the Director, represent- 

 " ing the wretched state of the family, and especially the delicate 

 " state of my Ana Maria. But he was told that it was an affair of 

 " state, and she must appear ; so I left Mariquita with her sisters, 

 " and set off with the officer to fetch my daughter. 



K We brought her to town ; she was taken before the senate, and 

 " there the letter written by Jose Miguel was shown her *, and she 

 " was desired to read it. She answered, that she did not know the 

 " cipher, and therefore could not. One of the court reminded her, 

 " that she had often used a cipher in her letters to her husband while 

 " he was imprisoned at Mendoza. She who, till then, had not heard 

 " her husband's name without convulsions, now seemed inspired with 

 " courage from above. ' Yes,' she said, ' we did occasionally write a 

 " line in cipher. Could we expose our intimate concerns to the 

 " strangers who, we knew, read our letters ere they reached us ? Or 

 " could we bear the coarse laugh of the guard-room, where they were 

 " read, at the effusions of our tenderness ? But when ye took from 

 " me the letters and papers of my martyred husband, ye took from 

 " me also the key of that cipher, and I know no other.' One of the 

 " senators, looking sternly at the beautiful girl, said, — ' Does Dona 

 " Ana Maria choose to have the words martyred husband inserted into 

 " the minutes of her examination ?' She answered, ' I have said, and 

 " I do say, martyred husband.'' The examiners then told her, that 

 " unless she read the letters in question to the council there assembled, 

 " she should be shut up in a convent. Her reply still was — ' I cannot, 

 " I know not the cipher. And if the letter were addressed to me, of 

 " which you have no proof, does another person's act in addressing 

 " me make me a criminal ? There are, alas ! other women, and other 

 " widows of my name and family, to whom it might well have been 



* This letter was really written to her, and treated not of schemes and purposes, so 

 much as hopes, for the subversion of the actual government. It was highly imprudent — 

 perhaps worse. 



