If example be necessary to prove this, I'll give you a story, my child, told us by a grave, tho' sometimes a romancing, historian.
'Matilda was married very young to a Neapolitan nobleman of the first quality, and found herself a widow and a mother at the age of fifteen.
As she stood one day caressing her infant son in the open window of an apartment, which hung over the river Volturna, the child, with a sudden spring, leaped from her arms into the flood below, and disappeared in a moment.

The mother, struck with instant surprize, and making all effort to save him, plunged in after; but, far from being able to assist the infant, she herself with great difficulty escaped to the opposite shore, just when some French soldiers were plundering the country on that side, who immediately made her their prisoner.
'As the war was then carried on between the French and Italians with the utmost inhumanity, they were going at once to perpetrate those two extremes, suggested by appetite and cruelty.

This base resolution, however, was opposed by a young officer, who, tho' their retreat required the utmost expedition, placed her behind him, and brought her in safety to his native city.

Her beauty at first caught his eye, her merit soon after his heart.

They were married; he rose to the highest posts; they lived long together, and were happy.