with him before he could repeat his thrust, I cut his throat from ear to ear, and then made for the shore as fast as I could.  As I swam remarkably well, I had no great difficulty in reaching it.  As soon as I landed, I looked back, and observing that the English boats were towing our vessel out I made all the haste I could to the fort, which was close at hand.  There I was hospitably received, and we sat up till past midnight, drinking, smoking, and abusing the English.

The next morning, a felucca anchored to procure some water, and, as she was proceeding to Toulon, I requested a passage.  We sailed with a fine breeze; but a heavy gale came on, which tossed us about for many days, and the master of the vessel had no idea to where she had been driven.  He consoled us, however, by asserting that we could never go to the bottom, as there was a lady of great sanctity passenger in the cabin, who had been sent for to assume the office of lady abbess of a convent near Marseilles, and whom the saints would indubitably preserve.

This was some comfort, although fine weather would have been greater.  The gale continued; and the next morning we thought that we descried land on the lee beam.  The following night we were certain of our conjectures having been correct, for the vessel was thrown on shore, and in a few minutes went to pieces.  I had the good fortune to save myself upon a part of the wreck, and lay half-dead upon the beach until the morning.  When the day broke, I looked around me:  there were the fragments of the vessel strewed upon the beach, or tossed in mockery by the surge; and close to me lay the dead body of the lady, whose sanctity the captain had assured us would be a safeguard to us all.  I then turned from the beach to look at the inland country, and perceived, to my astonishment, that I was not three miles from my native city, Marseilles.  This was a horrid discovery; for I knew that I should receive no mercy, and could not proceed a mile without being recognised.  What to do was now the subject of my thoughts; and at last, as I viewed the body of the dead lady, it occurred to me that I might pass myself off for her.

I stripped it of its outer garment, and having then hauled my own clothes upon the corpse, and covered it over with sea-weed, I dressed myself in the religious habit which she had worn, and sat down awaiting the arrival of the people, which I knew must soon take place.  I was then without a symptom of beard; and, from the hardship and ill-treatment which I had received on board of the Genoese, was thin and sallow in the face.  It was easy in a nun’s dress to mistake me for a woman of thirty-five years of age, who had been secluded in a cloister.  In the pockets of her clothes I found letters, which gave me the necessary clue to my story, and I resolved to pass myself off as La Soeur Eustasie, rather than be put in prison, or run through the body.