was no sooner heard, than Sebastiani determined to try Italian dexterity against French craft. With a pistol at the ear of his prisoner, he marched him to the edge of the moat, and ordered him to give the signal concerted with his countrymen, and let down the drawbridge. The French instantly plunged forward, rushed over the bridge, and, entering the open sally. port, were in the fortress. But then the condition of things was suddenly changed. As they poured, in the confusion of a crowd, from the gate, they saw the garrison drawn up before them. A heavy volley from a crescent of a thousand muskets was their first salutation. Their attempt to answer this by the scattered fire of men stumbling in the dark over all kinds of obstacles, only brought on them the flanking fire of a couple of six-pounders. The whole affair was palpably a coup manqué, and happy was he who could first get within the arch that led back again. But this was instantly choked up by the fugitives the rest had no chance for their lives but by throwing down their muskets, which they did with all possible unanimity.

The business was over just as the first pale streaks of dawn gave light enough to show the grey coats and sallow visages of the Frenchmen; they were marched to the custody of the casemates, where they and their disasters were hid from the light of day, and where, in less than five minutes, they were, to a man, making their soup, smoking their cigars, scoffing at "la Fortune," and promising their yellow-whiskered guard that Jourdan, or Moreau, or somebody or other, would capture the fortress, carry off the garrison, and let the imprisoned braves forth again to a course of glory!

But where was Carlo? Nowhere to be found. Bastion, tower, and even moat, were searched for him, in vain. "Les absens ont toujours tort" is a maxim true in most parts of the world, but universally true on the Continent. After a hunt of a day or two for him in the forest, it was quietly settled that he was unquestionably playing some of those tricks which had fallen under the cognizance of the Archduke; that his story of the tower was nothing but a new instance of that invention for which he was so

distinguished; and that he had added to all his other malepractices the heinousness of daring to mystify MajorGeneral von Sharlheim, even to the point of putting an Austrian fortress, governor and all, into the hands of the republicans.

The conclusion was ruinous to the unfortunate refugé, but consolatory to the honour of the mustachioed heroes of the governor's staff. There of course could be no hesitation in adopting it; and it must be owned that the idea received some plausibility from the circumstance, that the French leader of the night's misadventure happened to be the identical colonel whom Carlo had taken prisoner on the skirts of Jourdan's army. The colonel had found it easy to make his escape in the bustle of the campaign, had returned to his general, was now chef-de-brigade, and was conveying, with all possible speed, a detachment to take possession of the defiles of the forest towards the Rhine. His quick eye had informed him of the dilapidated state of the fortress as he passed; every German fortress had a little band of French deserters among its garrison, frequently sent for the express purpose; and the colonel, with the rapid calculation of his country, thought that a coupde-main, by their help, would at once be the easiest thing in the world, make the prettiest despatch in the Parisian journals, and make him a general of division. A quarter of an hour was to put him in possession of the place, half an hour to write his despatch, an hour to make his toilet and receive the ladies of the garrison to a dejeuner; and then he was to march and complete his commission.

But this was not to be; and the colonel taken prisoner with his best battalion, the rest making their way full speed through the mountains, and his expedition shattered to fragments, was still the man of Paris. "Cependant," was his remark to his circle of officers, "puisque nous sommes ici, je tacherai de m'amuser cause des autres." No advice could be more instinctively taken; every man twirled his finger, turned a pirouette, and determined to be happy on the spot.

The history of Carlo's disappearance is brief. In the confusion of the morning he had been trampled down by the flying enemy, and flung into the moat; it had fortunately been filled by

the tempest, and he thus escaped finishing his career in the undisturbed slough of half a century. Swimming across, he found himself completely beyond the reach of the governor and his drum-head court-martial. And it must be acknowledged that his first feeling was one of no slight comfort from the reflection. His share in the triumph of the fortress was still far from being a valid plea; for from the point where he had climbed, the action within the walls seemed to be going on with unabated fury. All that he could see was smoke, and all that he could hear was discharges of cannon and small arms. But a few minutes settled the question, and a crowd of the French jumping into the water, covered the surface of the ditch, and began scrambling up the counterscarp. There was now no place for the sole of his foot, and he fled along with the mass of fugitives. The forest was their common shelter for the day and night following; and Carlo more than once debated the propriety of forgetting Europe and its follies, old and young, and travelling to the antipodes.

But the fortress contained a magnet towards which his feelings vibrated; and in that fever of anxiety to which suspense may be wrought where the imagination and the heart are at once concerned, he lingered within the forest, at one time ready to brave death and throw himself at the feet of his enslaver, and at another upbraiding himself for the indecision which held him still in those unprofitable chains. Every night that fell on his uneasy pillow found him making the magna. nimous resolve that it should be the last of his sojourning in Germany; every morning found him climbing some height from which he might have a distant view of the brown ramparts and gilded steeples of that spot which enshrined the goddess of his idola try.

One evening, as he was taking his tasteless meal in a little inn of the Westerthal, he was startled by the sound of a horse tramp, and a loud voice at the door. Life was irksome to him, but to give it up to the tender mercies of a discipline-loving commandant was not among his purposes; and his first intention was to rush into the woods. But his landlord, who had already taken some interest in his gen

tleness and his melancholy, told him that the new arrival was merely an officer with despatches; and placed him in a chamber from which he might see without being seen.

His alarms were soon quieted. The stranger was the adjutant, with vexation in every feature of his wiry visage, and weariness in every limb of his inflexible frame. He had arrived in a post-carriage, of whose freight he formed the smallest portion; the rest being a heap of bandboxes and portmanteaus, worthy of the establishment of an electress or an opera-dancer. The adjutant's exclamations and interjections as he looked on those pasteboard associates of his travels, and the sulkiness with which he answered every question put to him by the landlord, for the usual roadside purpose of hearing all the news, showed palpably enough, that, whether diplomacy or discipline were the object, the traveller was more than usually out of hu

mour.

Carlo, though conscious of the peril of discovery, was on the point of breaking in upon the vexed official, to hear the slightest tidings of the fortress; but the arrival of a second stranger taught him prudence, and he continued unobserved to inspect the state of affairs in the grand salon of the little inn.

Nothing could be more opportune than this arrival. It was an officer who had left Erlach but a few hours before.

He had evidently come in great haste, from the tired state of his horses, and the eagerness with which he flung off cloak and sabre. The tardy style in which supper generally makes its appearance in a native inn, gave occasion to a good deal of that military eloquence which is the reverse of courtly; and nothing could be more undeniable, even when the supper ar rived at last, than that they both sat down to it in exceedingly ill temper with the times.

"Pleasant work this, Walstein," said the adjutant, "to be sent, en courier, to Vienna for a frolic of the old governor. His capture of those French scamperers has made him half a Frenchman already, and I was to enjoy the fruits of it. Can you conceive the object of my miz

sion ?"

"Not I," answered Walstein, “ um

less it were to bring him a wife, or a riband of Maria Theresa. Yet, seventy years are no great recommendation to think of the one, and, as to the riband, no one gets things of that kind, unless he acts as valet to some of the maids of honour, and is rewarded for keeping the secrets of their toilet."

"Well, then, I was commissioned," said the adjutant, "to purchase for his excellency, from the magazin of Madame Vaurien, marchande des modes of the Imperial household, a fancy dress in which the general is to figure."

"Capital!" laughed Walstein; "I hope you chose something peculiarly brilliant. The gay septuagenaire merits a better fate than to be thrust into the wig and gown of your Venetian senators, or the scarlet breeches and Kevenhuller hat of an original prince of the holy Roman empire. Nothing is worthy of him but an amorous Grand Turk or an Arcadian shepherd. But what did you bring, after all?"

"The choice might have puzzled a wiser man-milliner than I ever expect to be," was the adjutant's reply. "But all trouble was saved me by the Lady Cobentzel, who, after turning over all the costumes of the Vienna balls for the last winter, settled the point in her own way."

"In the name of all the Graces, what was it?" asked the captain. "Was it Crusader or Cossack, Turk or Troubadour? So-it was the lady's doing. Well, so is every thing among us. Have you the heart to owe her an immortal grudge for your journey? She is certainly a remarkably handsome creature, does what she pleases with the general, and is fairly the commandant of the garrison."

"Yes," said the adjutant, filling a bumper of Rhenish with a contempla tive air, and tossing it off with a sigh profound enough to startle the echoes of the old room. "She is a handsome creature! But if ever general was broke by a court-martial for being fooled by a pair of eyes, Von Sharlheim's chance would be but little before the Aulic Council."

"Jealous, by Jove!" exclaimed Walstein, "What! has she melted you? I should have thought as soon of her melting the metal horses on the Linsingen arch at Ratisbon. Come, here's a bumper to her victory!" He

followed the proposal with quick

action.

The adjutant had neither denial to offer, nor defence to make, in which case the best thing to do is to say nothing. He was accordingly as dumb as one of the metal horses. But his countenance showed signs of rising choler. The laugher changed his tone.

"Well, well, let that pass," said the captain: "the lady has as fine a pair of eyes as any that ever set a man's bosom on fire; and no blame can attach to your thinking so; but have no hostility to the general on her account. All the little surmises which made the gossip of the garrison, have turned out like other garrison gossip; the whole was moonshine. It happens that she is the general's niece; some count, or margrave, or emperor, for any thing that I can tell, had been offered to her as a husband. She thought proper to decline the honour. Her lordly relatives thought that she was a rebel to the glories of her pedigree, and insisted on the match. She refused still more steadily. threatened to get an imperial order to send her to a convent, until she should have the sense to be happy in their own way. I know none of the details further than that she instantly took wing from the family cage. Not one of their High Mightinesses could find out where, for their souls. time, Von Sharlheim was appointed to the command of Erlach. His niece had fled to his seat on the borders of the Tyrol, where, as she could now remain no longer, she followed him to the fortress, and there her beauty, gaiety, and wit, have done as much mischief as Helen did within the walls of Troy."

They

In the mean

Not a word of the dialogue escaped the keen ears of Sebastiani. He would have listened, if it had continued for the twenty-four hours. He could not help indulging himself with the fond conception, that her sudden abhorrence of marriage was in some degree connected with his memory. But then came the cloud that is so seldom far off from the sunshine of the heart. He was then too humble for her rank but what was he now?—a fugitive, and from a prison; extinguished as a soldier, lost to society, and now flying from the face of man. It was with a double pang that he felt how fully his

k;

story must now be known by Carolina; and with what disdain she must revert to his recollection. But the dialogue again caught his ear. The table had been reinforced with a couple of bottles, and even the frigid tongue of the adjutant was warmed into unusual fluency. Woman, war, and wine, the three grand topics of soldiership, began to run their course through his brain.

"As to Vienna," said he, tossing off a bumper, "there are not three heads in the Aulic Council that are worth the powder in their curls; they plan campaigns over their toilets in the morning, and fight battles over their coffee cups at night. An army of Savoyards and their monkeys might make somewhat more noise perhaps ; but they would certainly not do less execution."

"But the Archduke!" interposed the captain; "he is good for something. Kray has the good Hungarian blood in him; and Matensleben is a first-rate officer of grenadiers."

"Yes, all tolerable in their way. But this let me tell you as my particular friend, that if preferment were not so slow in our service, and I had worn the aiguillette at the head of a handsome column of 30,000 men six months ago, we should not now have a Frenchman on this side of the Rhine." The adjutant then began to describe his manoeuvres, according to the prescribed fashion of spilling a glass of wine on the table, and demolishing battalions with a wet finger. But this species of campaigning was evidently too familiar to the captain to keep him a patient spectator of the triumph; and rescuing another glass, which was on the point of representing the course of the Rhine with a pitched battle on its banks, he rose and resumed his cloak and sabre.

Walstein cast on the startled discoverer a glance of his keen eye.

"The truth is, adjutant," said he, "that no one living would suspect you of being a month older than this coxcomb, chef as he is. But you are

sure to have your revenge. The fair Carolina Cobentzel is as certain to jilt him as nature has made him an Adonis in his own eyes, and an ape in ours. I strongly suspect that her even suffering his attentions, has a deeper object than the vanity of a pretty woman, and that she has been making some arrangement with him for the escape of that showy and very mysterious gentleman, Sebastiani, into France. The fact is, that if the surmises of the governor, to which I may add those of the garrison, be right, that very plausible personage has completely mystified every man of us. The story of the night attack remains still to be cleared up.

Whether his giving the alarm was honesty, remains to be proved; the strong probability being, that he gave it only when he saw discovery at hand, and that it was much more intended to warn those without than those within. His escape in the mêlée, his being totally unheard of ever since, and the extraordinary favour which the Frenchman enjoys with the governor's niece, all help us to the conclusion that we have all been very dexterously duped, and all deserve very much to be laughed at."

Carlo was on the point of bursting from his retreat, and flinging defiance in the face of his accuser. But another word stopped him.

"Do you think," said the lovestricken adjutant, in a tone of melancholy, which made the captain bury his laughter in his handkerchief,

"do you think, from what you have observed in my absence, that the affair between this puppy and the Lady Cobentzel will come to any thing?" "To a quarrel, undoubtedly, the moment you return," said Walstein. "He could have no chance until you were gone. The lady may have had taste enough to promenade, waltz, and so forth, with him while you were out of sight; but the moment you present yourself before her again, all is over with Monsieur le Chef-de-brigade."

"Then she has permitted his attentions?" said the adjutant, with a jealous brow, while a pang shot through the heart of the concealed listener. But both were to be further tortured; for Walstein's amusement at the idea of the iron adjutant's being the slave of the tender passion, was too keen to be easily given up.

-as

"Why, of course," said he, "every woman permits every attention that she can get, whether in barrack or ball-room; and all Frenchmen are popular with the sex, from being as much like themselves as possible,— light as a feather, and as fond as a pigeon, for the time, and as hard as flint, and as easily fitted to all hands as a silk glove, when the time is over. I have been in Paris in my day, and know them a little. When young, the Frenchman has the sentiments of a girl of seventeen; when old, he has the wisdom of a dowager of seventy. He is thus female all his life, notwith. standing pantaloons and mustachios. And as like produces like in every quarter of the globe, the Frenchman, from the cradle to the grave, is always of danglers the most successful."

"Confound the whole generation!" exclaimed the angry admirer." He will run off with her before she knows what she is about. I must have a shot at his brains."

Impossible, my dear sir!" was the reply ; ́“ nature has forbid that catastrophe just five-and-twenty years. But if you wish to disarm him of his spells, you have only to lame him, and the waltz is lost to him and love for ever; or knock out one of his front teeth, and it will be a perfect security that he smiles no more."

The clock of a neighbouring village sullenly pealed midnight. The adjutant started up, was astonished at his having lingered so late, and ordered his carriage and bandboxes to the door. Walstein assisted to pack the heartbroken hero among his piles of finery, and contrived, during the operation, to make a pencil sketch of him for the amusement of the garrison on his return. All was now ready.

"Farewell, adjutant," said he; " if you are shot for being too late, remember not to lay your death at my door. It is the first confidence that I have had those ten years, and such a confession was essential to my undergoing the detestable supper of these places; and now fly. I give you fair warning that unless you go over the ground at a gallop you will be too late for the governor. The ball takes place immediately, and another moment's delay will deprive the world of the delight of seeing the oldest performer of Amadis de Gaul in Ĝermany."

The adjutant ordered the gallop, and the carriage flew off among the pines. Walstein mounted his horse, and gave him the spur on the road to Manheim. Carlo emerged from his retreat; torn by conflicting emotions, sometimes indignant with himself for having condescended to hear so much, sometimes stung with anxiety to have heard more. The night was magnificent, the moon in her pomp ; all was calm, forest and sky. The contrast between the glorious tranquillity of nature, and the feverish disturbance of the single and obscure individual who walked among those scenes of beauty and majesty, now and then struck him with something like shame, for suffering any thing human to agitate him. But philosophy is a poor consoler after all. His honour stained, his hopes blasted, his life an actual object of pursuit, and above all, his disgrace in the eyes of the Lady Cobentzel, came like gusts to shake the quietness of his mind. He felt in that night thoughts keen, rapid, and scorching, that shot across his mind like streams of lightning.