this last work of his feelings on this side of the great chasm which separates us from the strange, the obscure, - and the terrible beyond, he knew not; but the twilight at length put a stop to his task, and he sat in that half waking, half sleep, which so often succeeds violent emotion. He was aroused by a voice singing a little Styrian air under his casement. There was something in the sound which so touchingly contrasted with his forlorn condition, that for the first time he burst into tears. But he was to be touched still more keenly. The song ceased, and he heard another voice speaking to the minstrel. He knew it at the instant he would have known it at the extremity of the earth. It was the voice of Carolina Cobentzel. There are some conceptions which are absolutely indescribable by language. They crowd the mind with sensations of which it is itself unable to distinguish either the effect or the cause. The mind seems for the moment transported from the frame, into a new state of being: all is rapturous, tender, wild; yet all is confused. Carlo, for the time, forgot his cell, his misfortunes, the strange fatality which turned every thing for him into evil. He was again free, again in the pursuit of glory, again listening to the exquisite accents of Carolina's story. He saw, in all the darkness of his rude and melancholy den, the matchless features of a countenance which was to him like a spell. She was his world; all the rest was nothing. This delirium, the delightful illusion of the heart awaking the fancy, at length subsided, and he began to think that all was a dream; but the voices commenced again. The moon had risen over the forest in her glory, and he heard one of Schiller's noble hymns to The Night, sung to the accompaniment of a tasteful and practised hand. The harp had scarcely ceased its chords, when a note from his casement was sent floating on the air. Whether it was ever to reach its address was doubtful; but it contained his "dying request" to know by what chance the only being for whom the earth was still dear to him had come within the fortress; and his hope that "she, at least, would judge him incapable of dishonour." The serenity of the evening was a faithless representative of the night that followed. Before Carlo closed his casement, where he lingered, lost in sweet and bitter thoughts, till the moon went down, heavy gusts an. nounced a storm; streaks of distant lightning tinged the clouds in the west, and the faint yet incessant roar of the thunder, told him that the tempest was busy among the crests of the Vosges. But it was probably to be his last night, and, to prepare his mind to act decorously on his last day, he threw himself upon the mattress and tried to sleep. But he had that on his spirit which banishes sleep; and his memory traced nothing but the brilliant loveliness of Carolina, and heard nothing but the silver tones of her voice. The storm had, by this time, crossed the Rhine, and was rolling over the forest country. The bellowings of the blast were tremendous; and the lightnings showed every corner of his dungeon with fearful distinctness. Yet in one of the pauses he conceived that other sounds reached his ear: he listened; there evidently were feet moving on the roof of the tower. As his eye turned to the casement, he now saw a heavy rope swinging across it, and in another moment a figure of a man, visible by a flash. He was totally without resource. To force open the grating was as impossible as to burst the door. But nothing could be plainer than that the enemy were in league with some traitors in the garrison; and it occurred to him, that some of the workmen employed in repairing the fortifications might have come to their labours before daylight. But, on touching his repeater, its little bell struck three. This was too early for honest employment, and he listened again. The rope descended, and he observed that a large open barrel was attached to it. His ear, sharpened by suspicion, too, heard low voices at the foot of the tower. He now glanced at the forest, and a glimpse of the lightning showed him a compact body of troops fixed closely under a cluster of the superb elms, which lined the road to the gate of the fortress. The rope began to move upwards again, and from the slowness of its motion it evidently bore a heavy burden. All these circumstances conspired to prove that some treachery was on foot, and that the troops whom he had seen were intended to take the garrison by ! surprise. There was evidently no time to be lost. The door of the tower was bolted and barred, and all hope of arousing the fortress in that quarter vain: it was beyond calculation that, if they were suffered to make their way good to the tower, they must be masters of the bastion below, which gave them direct entrance into the body of the place. The fortress was evidently unprepared for this midnight assault; not a sound was heard, not a sentinel challenged. A French battalion, once let in, would evidently take the whole garrison in their beds. All feelings but those of soldiership were forgotten in this crisis, and he felt his frame breathless, from the anxiety to discover some means of arousing the devoted governor and his people. He recollected that a sentinel had been stationed during the day at the foot of his stair, air, and to him he cried out, with all the exertion of a remarkably sonorous voice. But the storm was too loud for him, or the sentinel was stupified with his pipe, which morning, noon, and night, alike finds in the yellow-haired lips of this most smoke-dried of all nations. No man who has not experienced some such dilemma, can have an adequate conception of the fever to which anxiety may be wrought. Carlo utterly forgot how indifferent all this, and the world along with it, might be to him within the next twenty-four hours: he even forgot how much better his chance of existence might be, by falling into the hands of a French battalion than of a German judge-advocate. Every thing was forgotten but that the fortress was on the point of being surprised, and that Carolina Cobentzel was among its inmates, and exposed to the horrors of such scenes. Still, what was to be done? He felt along the walls of his apartment, as if he could have opened some fissure in them, and struggled into the open air. He again struck violently on the door. It was as massive as iron, and as inexorable. He rushed, for the tenth time, to the grating. Every instant was now big with fate. He saw the troops below emerging from their shelter, and evidently preparing to take advantage of the work of their comrades above. He flung himself in utter exhaustion, and with a pang like an icebolt through his heart, upon the floor, and covered NO. CCXCV, VOL, XLVII. On He his head with his hands, that he might shut out the horrid sounds of the assault, if possible. As he bowed his burning forehead to the ground, it struck upon something that glittered in the lightning: it was the knife which had carved his melancholy meal, and which, from having fallen under the table, had been forgotten by the old grenadier, whose orders were to leave nothing that had an edge within reach of his prisoner. Carlo caught it up with an involuntary exclamation of joy. He sprang to the casement, the rope was again slowly moving upwards, and, by the tardiness of its motion, it evidently carried a heavier burden than before. glancing down he saw two shakos ascending. He thrust his arm out to its full length, between the bars, and made a cut at the rope. He heard a cry, but the blow had been ineffectual; the windlass still creaked above. made a second blow, and one half of the rope instantly flew up, the other went down with its cargo, and a crash and a yell told him the fate of the unlucky experimentalists. He next heard the sentinel on the adjoining bastion challenge and fire. The relief which he experienced in that moment, was like waking from the pressure of some overwhelming disease. He breathed freely once more: he knew that the garrison was, at least, awake. The patrol of the night soon came hurrying along the ramparts: his door was unlocked, and the officer ordered his apartment to be examined. Their first alarm was thus directed to himself, and his supposed dexterity in making his escape from justice. This difficulty settled, the patrol were about to move forward when Carlo told the officer what he had seen. But the gallant captain, a sullen coxcomb, and angry at being called from the comforts of his guard-house only to be drenched to the skin, turned a contemptuous glance upon him: all would have been lost but for the coming up of the old adjutant, who halted the patrol until he heard the story. His presence at the interviews of the governor with Carlo had given him an opinion of the prisoner's sagacity, which was not to be shaken by the scowl of a half-sleepy captain, only eager to get back to his bottle. The adjutant was a soldier, and had heard of French contrivances before. He returned into the chamber-saw for himself the movement of shakos and the glitter of bayonets under the trees -was satisfied that it was no affair to be dreamed over, and despatched the intelligence to the governor's quarters. But Carlo had by this time come out upon the rampart, and he heard sounds which convinced him that some portion of the enemy had already made their way within the place. 2 т " I must make the rounds within fifteen minutes, and report to the governor," said the adjutant, with military precision. "Give me but five of those minutes, and as many of the guard, and I shall ascertain the point," said Carlo, almost with a look of supplication. "Well, then, I shall go with you," and the model of discipline strode onward. The German finances are never in the most brilliant order, and if the honest Margraves and Serene Highnesses have enough for the routine of their little courts, the most monotonous little specimens of live machinery on the globe-an allowance sufficient to keep up an orchestra-for every German in existence is either a blower of the trombone, or longs to be a blower of it; and if the revenue can be stretched out so far as to include the sustenance of a pack of wild-boar hounds and hunters, and a cellar of hock to wash down the dust of the summer's day sun, all the longings of sovereignty are satisfied. It is not to be a matter of astonishment, therefore, that the German frontier has never offered more resistance to a French invasion, than the twigs of a hamper of apples would do to the assaults of a legion of hungry schoolboys. To patch fortifications was the last employment to which the kreutzers and rixdollars were ever regarded as applicable; and there were more breaches than gates in every fortress from the Netherlands to Hungary. Erlach-Glaringen had shared only the common fate, and nothing but the Gallic love of stratagem had tempted them to the circuitous trouble of bribing some knave of the garrison, when their chance would have been better by a dash in noonday. But we have no time for detail. This night was not destined to add to the laurels of the grande nation. The patrol, in winding its way among the ruins and repairs of the works, found the unlucky hero who had made his solitary way by the windlass to the roof of the tower, and had been scared from his position by the tremendous tintimarre which Carlo had raised. A German bayonet was already at his breast, and his history would have been shortened but for his throwing himself, as if by instinct, at the knees of the only one of the party who would have thought of turning his life to any purpose. It struck the quick thought of the young son of Italy that he might lay a trap for the cunning of the enemy in turn; and he ordered the prisoner to follow him. He was promptly obeyed, and the whole party proceeded to the sallyport. Carlo had now obtained over his German comrades that sort of ascendancy which, in awkward times, is so readily conceded to whoever will take the perilous part of the affair upon himself. The view beyond the moat was certainly the reverse of satisfactory; for the occasional flashes, which still burst from the clouds as they swept along, almost touching the ground, showed a deep mass of caps and bayonets already in the glacis, and evidently waiting only for the first opportunity to push across. The adjutant prepared to draw up his little patrol, and give them a grand discharge. He was dragged back by his companion. "Fly to the governor's quarters," whispered Carlo, "and leave me to manage in your absence. Awake the old general, and tell him that, if we are not the most unlucky dogs on earth, we shall have a handsome exhibition for the morning's parade. I pledge myself for a battalion at the least." The adjutant flew; it was the first time that glory had cast a single ray on his dreary course of a quarter of a century: the prospect of promotion made him a new man, and if it had been but daylight, the whole garrison would have been in amazement at the rapidity with which he threaded the streets, rushed over the bodies of sleeping aids-de-camp and orderlies in the governor's house, and stood at the bedside of the great functionary himself, to tell him, as Hector's ghost told the Trojan hero, that he had better abandon dreaming for a while, and think of beating the enemy. The heavy tramp of the garrison was no sooner heard, than Sebastiani distinguished; and that he had added determined to try Italian dexterity against French craft. With a pistolat 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 I was he who could first get within the arch that led back again. But this I was instantly choked up by the fugitives the rest had no chance for their lives but by throwing down their I muskets, which they did with all possible unanimity. i 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 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 ofthe 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 arrived 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 mi sion?" "Not I," answered Walstein, "um |