Stories for Pleasure and Edification

His weak health sank under the burden of debauchery; a poisoned fever seized him, and the most shameful illness In the moralizing literature of the late 18th century, a "shameful illness" (schändlichste Krankheit) almost always refers to a venereal disease, serving as a warning against "excessive" lifestyles., the inevitable consequence of dissipation, delivered him into the arms of death.

What imagination would be descriptive enough to depict Adelaide’s sorrows as she, stretched out upon the corpse of her father, felt the grief of a tender soul. A flood of tears rushed down Adelaide’s cheeks, and had the Deity not made the Angel of Death deaf to the pleas of mortals, he would have returned her father to Adelaide.

Her blonde hair lay scattered upon her breast, her hands reached toward the heavens, and sighs heaved her innocent bosom, which was flooded by a stream of tears.

Thus, during roaring thunderstorms, the rainwater rushes down from the cliff and drowns the lilies in the meadows.