instead of good evening.

Ems.

"I am ravished to see you in

Nice place;-all that there is of most nice. I drink my water and am good! Do you not think the Frau Kranich has a very beautiful leather?”

He meant skin. Flemming laughed outright; but it was not perceived by the Prince, because at that moment he was pushed aside, in the rush of a gallopade, and Flemming beheld his face no more. At the same moment the Baron introduced a friend of his, who also spoke English, and said :— You will sup with me to-night. I have some Rhine

wine, which will be a seduction to you."

Soon after, the Baron stood with an impassioned, romantic lady leaning on his arm, examining a copy of Raphael's Fornarina.

Ach! I wish I had been the Fornarina," sighed the impassioned, romantic lady.

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Then, my dear Madam," replied the Baron, I wish I had been Raphael."

And so likewise said to himself a very tall man with fiery red hair and fancy whiskers, who was waltzing round and round in one spot, and in a most extraordinary waistcoat; thus representing a fiery floating-light, to warn men of the hidden rocks on which the breath of vanity drives them shipwreck. At length, his partner, tired of spinning, sank upon a sofa, like a child's top, when it reels and falls.

You do not like the waltz" said an elderly French gentleman, remarking the expression of Flemming's countenance.

"O, yes; among the figurantes of the opera. But I confess, it sometimes makes me shudder to see a young rake clasp his arms round the waist of a pure and innocent girl. What would you say, were you to see him sitting on a sofa with his arms round your wife

"Mere prejudice of education," replied the French gentle

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man. I know that situation.

I have read all about it in

the Bibliothèque de Romans Choisis!"*

And merrily went the dance; and bright eyes and flushed cheeks were not wanting among the dancers;

"And they waxed red, and waxed warm,

And rested, panting, arm in arm;"

and the Strauss-waltzes sounded pleasantly in the ears of Flemming, who, though he never danced, yet, like Henry of Ofterdingen, in the romance of Novalis, thought to music. The wheeling waltz set the wheels of his fancy going. And thus the moments glided on, and the footsteps of Time were not heard amid the sound of music and voices.

But suddenly this scene of gaiety was interrupted. The door opened wide; and the short figure of a gray-haired old man presented itself, with a flushed countenance and wild eyes. He was but half-dressed, and in his hand held a silver candlestick without a light. A sheet was wound round his head, like a turban; and he tottered forward with a vacant, bewildered look, exclaiming :

66

:

"I am Mahomet, the king of the Jews!"

At the same moment he fell in a swoon, and was borne out of the room by the servants. Flemming looked at the lady of the festival, and she was deadly pale. For a moment, all was confusion; and the dance and the music stopped. The impression produced on the company was at once ludicrous and awful. They tried in vain to rally. The whole society was like a dead body, from which the spirit has departed. Ere long, the guests had all dispersed, and left the lady of the mansion to her mournful, expiring lamps, and still more mournful reflections.

"Truly," said Flemming to the Baron, as they wended

their way homeward, "this seems not like reality; but like one of the sharp contrasts we find in novels. Who shall say, after this, that there is not more romance in real life than we find written in books?"

"Not more romance," said the Baron, "but a different romance."

A still more tragic scene had been that evening enacted

in Heidelberg. Just as the sun set, two female figures walked along the romantic woodland pathway, leading to the Angel's Meadow, a little green opening on the brow of one of the high hills which see themselves in the Neckar and hear the solemn bells of Kloster-Neuburg. The evening shadows were falling broad and long; and the cuckoo began to sing.

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Cuckoo! cuckoo!" said the eldest of the two figures, repeating an old German popular rhyme,—

"Cuckoo cuckoo !

Tell me true,

Tell me fair and fine,

How long must I unmarried pine?'"

It was the voice of an evil spirit, that spoke in the person of Madeleine; and the pale and shrinking figure, that walked by her side, and listened to those words, was Emma of Ilmenau. A young man joined them, where the path turns into the thick woodlands; and they disappeared among the shadowy branches. It was the Polish Count.

The forget-me-nots looked up to heaven with their meek blue eyes, from their home in the Angel's Meadow. Calmly stood the mountain of All-Saints, in its majestic, holy stillness;—the river flowed so far below, that the murmur of its waters was not heard;-there was not a sigh of the evening wind among the leaves,-not a sound upon the earth nor in the air;—and yet that night there fell a star from heaven!

R

It was now that season of the year, which an old English writer calls the amiable month of June, and at that hour of the day, when, face to face, the rising moon beholds the setting sun. As yet the stars were few in heaven. But, after the heat of the day, the coolness and the twilight descended like a benediction upon the earth, by all those gentle sounds attended, which are the meek companions of the night.

Flemming and the Baron had passed the afternoon at the Castle. They had rambled once more together, and for the last time, over the magnificent ruin. On the morrow they were to part, perhaps for ever. The Baron was going to Berlin, to join his sister; and Flemming, driven forward by the restless spirit within him, longed once more for a change of scene, and was to start for the Tyrol and Switzerland. Alas! he never said to the passing hour, "Stay, for thou art