and beyond timid sheep bleated around the booths, or gave suck to their lambs under the shade of the wagons. Our two gentlemen had no sooner arrived, than they were surrounded by dealers, with whom they had business to transact, and treating me as an old acquaintance, they had abandoned the young lady to my protection. The hotel, at which we had put up, was noisy and crowded. As an inducement to leave it for awhile, proposed a pilgrimage to the leper's tower. After having consented with eager earnestness, and while we were en route, she inquired of me who the leper was? I promised her that she should soon know, and having entered a bookseller's shop, I bought M. De Maistre's story. We then directed our steps toward the rural enclosure where rises the old tower which he has immortalized. And when we had visited it, we repaired to the neighboring meadow, to seek some shady spot, where we could sit and read our book. We found some leafy oak trees, and some boulders not far off, perhaps the very same on which the leper, having seen the young woman recline her head on the bosom of her bridegroom, felt his heart tremble and his soul stagger, beneath a frightful burthen of despair. My young companion having been brought up by the sisters of the Sacred Heart, had read scarcely any books, except those which treated of religious subjects. She now listened, for the first time, to a work at once grave and interesting, written in a style full of emotion and eloquence; now gently penetrating the heart, now agitating it, and causing it to thrill with compassion. At first calm, and almost lost in abstraction, she attentively regarded the tower, the mountains, the valley, until, captivated more and more by the interest of the narrative, she evinced a sort of surprise, which was insensibly followed by the enchanting emotion of a mind which becomes for the first time susceptible to the charm of poetry. Her countenance sparkled with pleasure. As we perused those sombre pages which described the bitter sufferings of the leper, her eyes filled with tears; and when I came to the place where the poor wretch's sister is about to be taken from him, she begged me to proceed no further. I then closed the book, and presenting it to her, in order that she might finish the story at her leisure, I begged her to keep the little volume as a memorial of myself. She willingly assented, blushing, however, as she did so. In fact, we had begun to feel in common, to experience the same emotions; our hearts had secretly drawn near to each other, so that the ingenuous pleasantry of the preceding evening had, with this young girl, already begun to give place to the modest restraint of sentiment. We returned to the hotel. The two gentlemen, entirely absorbed in business, were eagerly despatching their affairs, so as to close them and return. They hardly observed that a great change had come over the young girl. For my part, I was so thoroughly convinced of the error which I had just imprudently committed, in disturbing the calm that had reigned in her heart, and opening poetry to its reception, at the very moment when she was about to contract the most holy, but the most prosaic of engagements, that I felt some degree of compunction at what I had done. It was true, that I could not now remedy the evil, but I might increase it by continuing to travel as her companion, which I desired to do, with a degree of eagerness that told me there was already something culpable in the wish. Summing up all my resolution, therefore, in order to resist the affectionate solicitations of the father and brother, and the timid but earnest entreaties of their companion, I separated from them, after thanking them for the kind reception I had met with. I remained at Aoste, experiencing, in the midst of the crowd around me, a bitter feeling of solitude, and heart-sick melancholy, which I went to nourish in the very spot where, in the morning, we had sat beneath the oak trees. The next day, and for some days afterwards, I continued in a state of abstraction, that allowed me to feel but little curiosity respecting the districts or the cities which I had come to visit. I passed through Ivrée very early in the morning, and it required a strong effort on my part to forbear spending at least a few hours there. The streets were deserted, the Doire scarcely as yet lighted up by the first faint gleams of the early dawn, and still it seemed to me that that district was the pleasantest in Italy, and that city the only one in which I should have liked to spend my days. I felt an inclination to walk through it. While passing along, I saw several hotels, and paused before each, uncertain whether it was the residence of my young friend, who was probably slumbering at that hour, or perhaps thinking of the emotions she had experienced on the preceding evening, and the young man who, if he had not been the object, had at least been the occasion of them. As I had forgotten myself in these successive halts, my coachman, whom I had commanded to be in attendance at the farther extremity of the city, drove back to call me. I followed, the vehicle rolled on, and as the pavement of the last street ceased to resound beneath the wheels, I experienced a feeling of inexpressible sadness. Still, in the course of a few weeks this pre-occupation imperceptibly disappeared, and the ardent passion that I had carried away with me, changed into a tender recollection. I visited Genoa, Florence, Rome, Naples, and when it became necessary to think of returning, I decided on crossing the Alps by way of the Simplon; for my heart, being now free, no longer turned towards Ivrée, and I should have feared, in re-passing through it, to dissipate a remembrance so full of purity, tenderness and freshness. On my arrival at Geneva last autumn, I went, according to custom, to visit my aunt Sarah. I have spoken of her above, in connexion with my cousin Ernest's duel. My aunt Sarah lives in the country; which, in the environs of the city, means a little garden, separated by a wall from the little gardens adjacent. This little garden possesses the advantage of a swing, and a pump that never fails except in dry weather: at the northeast corner my cousin Ernest has made an artificial mountain, on which he has constructed a Chinese pavilion, painted green, commanding a fine view of the tax offices and the fortifications of the city. My aunt Sarah is an excellent lady, now somewhat advanced in years, having experienced, through the whole course of her life, only one misfortune, that of having lost her husband, forty years ago, after three months of unmixed happiness, as she herself artlessly confessed. Six months after that catastrophe, she gave birth to a posthumous son, in whom all her affections were centered. This son was my cousin Ernest, whom she brought up as a fond mother, who had been a governess in her youth, might be expected to bring up an only son, and he, too, a posthumous child. In his childish years, methods of order, habits of propriety, and lessons in self-restraint; afterwards, to educate the heart, sentences, verses, examples of morality, vice punished, and virtue rewarded; still later, to form the understanding, the rules of politeness, and the art of conversation; in early adolescence, gloves, small talk, a frock coat, the habit of turning the toes out, and similar matters; later still,-nothing. At fifteen, my cousin Ernest was a complete, perfect, model man-the joy of his mother, and the delight, too, of certain jovial and dissipated comrades, whose manners my aunt held in the utmost abhorrence. My cousin Ernest, still eccentric and posthumous, is now a confirmed bachelor; prim and precise, he cultivates his violets, waters his tulips, and goes every day to the city, at eight in summer and seven in the winter, to borrow the newspaper after the general perusal, and to exchange with the librarian the first volume of ⚫the novel that my aunt is reading for the second. If the road is damp, he carries overshoes; if dusty, he encases his shoes in yellow skin; if the rain falls, or the barometer is threatening, he takes his seat in the omnibus. It is strange, that although I belong to the army, am of quick temper, and extremely punctilious on the point of honor, I have never yet been engaged in a duel. My cousin Ernest spends his days in the society of good old ladies; he goes little into company, or public assemblies; he is of a mild disposition; he is unique, posthumous, and fate had determined that he should have his affair of honor. The fact is, that his habits are to my cousin Ernest what passions are to others; and the right of being en route at eight o'clock, when he has taken the eight o'clock omnibus, is as sacred in his eyes as the right of singing the Marseillaise, or smoking in a countess's face, is, with certain hot-headed revolutionary characters. Now it happened that one day, just as my cousin was taking his seat in the eight o'clock omnibus, the driver, at the request of a young stranger, consented to delay his departure a few minutes, to allow a lady whom this young stranger expected, time to arrive. This distressed my cousin, who saw in it the germ of a general derangement of the whole ceremony of his daily life. The clock struck a quarter past; this annoyed my cousin, who imagined that this young lady was destined to become the cause of a continuous series of irregularities, one recochetting on another, and terminating in the disarrangement of his dinner hour, his coffee hour, the hour of his siesta. At twenty-five minutes past, he could endure it no longer, but began to grumble. The devil take the young lady! The young stranger immediately gave him his card, requested my cousin's in return, and the whole matter was arranged for eight o'clock the next morning— "eight o'clock precisely," added the stranger. On that occasion, however, my cousin was not quite so punctual as usual. He offered apologies, but they were rejected. Then, like honest witnesses and good relatives, we did the rest, and honor was satisfied. Hav But to return to the visit that I paid my aunt Sarah last autumn. ing been invited into the garden, I found her seated in the Chinese pavilion, employed in reading to some of the good people of the neighborhood. The subject must have been very touching, for I found the whole company deeply affected, with the exception of my cousin Ernest, who, always unique and posthumous, was seated on a rustic bench, under the shade of an acacia, carelessly smoking his cigar. After having saluted the company, and embraced my aunt, I begged these ladies not to interrupt their reading on my account, and accordingly seated myself also, and smoked my cigar on the rustic bench, beneath the shade of the acacia. My aunt read distinctly, just as a tender mother reads, who has been a governess in her youth; with a didactic emphasis, according to established principles, and in strict conformity to all the rules of pronunciation, so that it was a pleasure to hear her. After replacing her spectacles on her nose, she thus continued: "This young lady had one of those pale female countenances that seem to be surrounded, as with a crepuscular veil, by a bluish auriole of secret sorrow. Condemned by fate to submit to the authority of a father incapable of comprehending the mysterious aspirations of a soul that seeks to attain the object of its hopes, and to complete the realization of its being, she was a prey to unheard sighs and stifled lamentations. This plant, born to flourish on the radiant summit of the Appenines, had germinated amid the cold acclivities of Helvetia, so that on the point of expanding into a brilliant carolla, the chill blasts of the upper regions compelled it to take shelter in the unwelcome envelope of its pale calyx." 66 No." "What plant is it, cousin ?" asked I, of the posthumous celibatary who was smoking beside me. "It is a delightful feminine creation." (My cousin was in the habit of repeating his mother's peculiar expressions.) "And this book--what is it?" "Reminiscences of Travel." "Not very sprightly?" "Sad?" "Very much so." And my cousin, much more disturbed by these questions than by the stifled lamentations of the pale female, resumed his cigar, with an expression that seemed to indicate, that although he would not undertake to listen, still he would prefer to be let alone. 66 "Thus, while she sought in vain, among the matter-of-fact individuals by whom she was surrounded, one being who might open and people with his love the desert palace of her heart, her father, (Cousin! who is this father?" "Hers,") one of those vulgar beings, whose whole life is spent in mercantile operations, ('he means a merchant, eh?' "Yes,") her father, instead of proposing as the object of her affections, one of those exiled nobles that volcanic Italy, at the period of its eruptions, had discharged beyond the Alps-('Ciani? Mazzini?" "Don't know")-one of those rich and glowing natures, such as Naples, or the city of gondolas, still produces (Venice, eh?" "Hum")--had cast his eyes on a young Swiss, of massive form, with full, ruddy cheeks, and flaxen hair, the sickly symbol of a weak, apathetic mind. Thus the pale flower, incessantly agitated by the icy winds, instead of receiving an elastic support from the flowers around it, stood exposed to the rude contiguity of these two blocks of granite, that did but kill, while desirous of affording it a shelter." Here my aunt, who was a governess in her youth, could not forbear remarking how delightfully this book was written. She found in the style, an infinitude of verbal peculiarities, which corresponded with the thousand harmonies of a fine imagination, and she insisted particularly on the unexpected recurrence of a comparison which threw so much light on the colorless condition of the heroine's countenance. The old ladies, who entirely coincided in her opinion, testified, moreover, the utmost disdain for the two miserable blocks of granite, and one of them espoused with such marked fervor the sorrows of this unknown personage, that I began to conjecture that she herself had probably been a heavy sufferer from the stupid indifference of our undiscerning sex. "Is that lady married?" I whispered to my cousin. "No." For my part, although I was yet far from suspecting that this blanched plant was my blooming companion of Aoste, and this block the hotel-keeper at Chanberry, I was still deeply interested in the narrative, which, without in the least degree disturbing my cousin's composure, excited to a high pitch the sentimentality of the ladies, and elicited from them remarks which were as delightful as the style that prompted them. When I met them," continued my aunt, as she resumed her reading, "they were journeying toward the plains of Italy, in the vain hope that the milder airs of a balmy climate would arrest the ravages of the destroyer. But I, whose soul comprehended her soul, I saw the maiden advancing, as it were, through an alley of cypress trees toward her expectant grave, and the burthen of a mighty grief weighed down my afflicted spirit. Beside her, her fair-complexioned lover, displayed to the light of heaven the massive amplitude of his form, the dull repose and prosaic movements of which, seemed never to be affected by any interior glow; a dull stupidity, like an armor of lead, covered the man, so that even the approach of a frightful avalanche (here I listened with all my ears) was insufficient to inspire him with even the selfish alarm of the most ordinary fear. Meanwhile night drew on, the dark indentations of the mountain-tops seemed as if they were biting the evening clouds, and the gorges of Saint Bernard, like enormous throats, swallowed up the last splendors of sunset. The avalanche was there; yawning, fathomless, pale as a shroud, greedy as a tomb. Suddenly, a white apparition appears, pauses a moment, and falls into the abyss. "Tis Emma! ("Emma," said I to myself.) Quicker than lightning I followed her track-I rolled, I bounded, I plunged from depth to depth, striving to outstrip death, who was following close behind, until, having come off victorious in the fearful contest, I reached the pale and shivering maiden. She had sought in this chasm a refuge from her sorrows. I then allowed her to see that I, the stranger, the unknown, had anticipated her design. Understood at length, for the first time perhaps in her life, her eyelids opened to exhibit the glow of delight, and a radiant smile of ineffable beauty played over the violets (!!) of her lips.) There arrived, just at this moment, the molossian mastiffs (!!) of the convent, loaded with cordials, and greeted us with a bark that told of succor and assistance at hand. From the height above, a cable was let down; the good fathers came to meet us. I left the victim of the world in the hands of these men of heaven, and this duty discharged, went on my way in a state bordering on desperation." I here burst forth in a loud explosion of laughter. The ladies arose, in a state of high indignation-my cousin looked at his mother, my aunt looked at me, I looked at the whole assembly in tears, and being no longer able to suppress a feeling of the ridiculous which such a spectacle excited to the utmost pitch, I saluted the company, and took my departure, apologizing for the scandalous conduct of which I had been guilty. As I regained my hotel, I thought of the words of my stout friend, when he said, "Epitaph, all is epitaph!" NATIONAL CALAMITY. The other night I, in a patriot frenzy, Discuss'd the theme of the Mosquito King The printer-(d-n him)-changed what did my pen say, |