University of Virginia Library

The Bandit of Austria.

ROMANCE OF TRAVEL.

THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA.

Fast and rebukingly rang the matins from the
towers of St. Etienne, and, though unused to wake,
much less to pray, at that sunrise hour, I felt a compunctious
visiting as my postillion cracked his whip
and flew past the sacred threshold, over which tripped,
as if every stroke would be the last, the tardy

yet light-footed mass-goers of Vienna. It was my
first entrance into this Paris of Germany, and I
stretched my head from the window to look back
with delight upon the fretted gothic pile, so cumbered
with ornament, yet so light and airy—so vast in the
area it covered, yet so crusted in every part with
delicate device and sculpture. On sped the merciless
postillion, and the next moment we rattled into
the court-yard of the hotel.

I gave my keys to the most faithful and intelligent
of valets—an English boy of sixteen, promoted from
white top-boots and a cabriolet in London, to a plain
coat and almost his master's friendship upon the
continent—and leaving him to find rooms to my
taste, make them habitable and get breakfast, I retraced
my way to ramble a half hour through the
aisles of St. Etienne.

The lingering bell was still beating its quick and
monotonous call, and just before me, followed closely
by a female domestic, a veiled and slightly-formed
lady stepped over the threshold of the cathedral,
and took her way by the least-frequented aisle to the
altar. I gave a passing glance of admiration at the
small ankle and dainty chaussure betrayed by her
hurried step; but remembering with a slight effort
that I had sought the church with at least some feeble
intentions of religious worship, I crossed the
broad nave to the opposite side, and was soon leaning

against a pillar, and listening to the heavenly-breathed
music of the voluntary, with a confused,
but I trust, not altogether unprofitable feeling of devotion.

The peasants, with their baskets standing beside
them on the tesselated floor, counted their beads upon
their knees; the murmur, low-toned and universal,
rose through the vibrations of the anthem with
an accompaniment upon which I have always
thought the great composers calculated, no less than
upon the echoing arches, and atmosphere thickened
with incense; and the deep-throated priest muttered
his Latin prayer, more edifying to me that it left my
thoughts to their own impulses of worship, undemeaned
by the irresistible littleness of criticism, and
unchecked by the narrow bounds of another's comprehension
of the Divinity. Without being in any
leaning of opinion a son of the church of Rome, I
confess my soul gets nearer to heaven; and my religious
tendencies, dulled and diverted from improvement
by a life of travel and excitement, are more
gratefully ministered to, in the in distinct worship of
the catholics. It seems to me that no man can pray
well through the hesitating lips of another. The
inflated style or rhetorical efforts of many, addressing
heaven with difficult grammar and embarrassed
logic—and the weary monotony of others, repeating
without interest and apparently without

thought, the most solemn appeals to the mercy of
the Almighty—are imperfect vehicles, at least to
me, for a fresh and apprehensive spirit of worship.
The religious architecture of the catholics favors the
solitary prayer of the heart. The vast floor of the
cathedral, the far receding aisles with their solemn
light, to which penetrate only the indistinct murmur
of priest and penitent, and the affecting wail or triumphant
hallelujah of the choir; the touching attitudes
and utter abandonment of all around to their
unarticulated devotions; the freedom to enter and
depart, unquestioned and unnoticed, and the wonderful
impressiveness of the lofty architecture, clustered
with mementos of death, and presenting
through every sense, some unobtrusive persuasion
to the duties of the spot—all these, I cannot but
think, are aids, not unimportant to devout feeling,
nor to the most careless keeper of his creed and
conscience, entirely without salutary use.

My eye had been resting unconsciously on the
drapery of a statue, upon which the light of a painted
oriel window threw the mingled dyes of a peacock.
It was the figure of an apostle; and curious
at last to see whence the colours came which turned
the saintly garb into a mantle of shot silk, I strayed
towards the eastern window, and was studying
the georgeous dyes and grotesque drawing of an art
lost to the world, when I discovered that I was in

the neighbourhood of the pretty figure that had tripped
into church so lightly before me. She knelt
near the altar, a little forward from one of the heavy
gothic pillars, with her maid beside her, and,
close behind knelt a gentleman, who I observed at
a second glance, was paying his devotions exclusively
to the small foot that peeped from the edge of
a snowy peignoir, the dishabille of which was covered
and betrayed by a lace-veil and mantle. As I
stood thinking what a graceful study her figure
would make for a sculptor, and what an irreligious
impertinence was visible in the air of the gentleman
behind, he leaned forward as if to prostrate his face
upon the pavement, and pressed his lips upon the
slender sole of (I have no doubt) the prettiest shoe
in Vienna. The natural aversion which all men
have for each other as strangers, was quickened in
my bosom by a feeling much more vivid, and said
to be quite as natural—resentment at any demonstration
by another of preference for the woman one
has admired. If I have not mistaken human nature,
there is a sort of imaginary property which every
man feels in a woman he has looked upon with even
the most transient regard, which is violated malgré
lui, by a similar feeling on the part of any other individual.

Not sure that the gentleman, who had so suddenly
become my enemy, had any warrant in the lady's

connivance for his attentions, I retreated to the shelter
of the pillar, and was presently satisfied that he
was as much a stranger to her as myself, and was
decidedly annoying her. A slight advance in her
position to eseape his contact gave me the opportunity
I wished, and stepping upon the small space between
the skirt of her dress and the outpost of his
ebony cane, I began to study the architecture of the
roof with great seriousness. The gothic order, it is
said, sprang from the first attempts at constructing
roofs from the branches of trees, and is more perfect
as it imitates more closely the natural wilderness
with its tall tree-shafts and interlacing limbs.
With my eyes half shut I endeavoured to transport
myself to an Ameriean forest, and convert the
beams and angles of this vast gothic structure into a
primitive temple of pines, with the sunshine coming
brokingly through; but the delusion, otherwise easy
enough, was destroyed by the cherubs roosting on
the cornices, and the apostles and saints perched as
it were in the branches; and, spite of myself, I
thought it represented best Shylock's “wilderness
of monkeys.”

“S'il vous plait, monsieur!” said the gentleman,
pulling me by the pantaloons as I was losing myself
in these ill-timed speculations.

I looked down.

“Vous me gênez, monsiêur!”

“J'en suis bien sure, monsieur!”—and I resumed
my study of the roof, turning gradually round till my
heels were against his knees, and backing peu-à-peu.

It has often occurred to me as a defect in the system
of civil justice, that the time of the day at which
a crime is committed is never taken into account by
judge or jury. The humours of an empty stomach
act so energetically on the judgment and temper of
a man, and the same act appears so differently to
him, fasting and full, that I presume an inquiry into
the subject would prove that few offences against
law and human pity were ever perpetrated by villains
who had dined. In the adventure before us,
the best-disposed reader will condemn my interference
in a stranger's gallantries as impertinent and
quixotick. Later in the day, I should as soon have
thought of ordering water-cresses for the gentleman's
dindon aux truffes.

I was calling myself to account something after
the above fashion, the gentleman in question standing
near me, drumming on his boot with his ebony
cane, when the lady rose, threw her rosary over her
neck, and turning to me with a grateful smile, courtesied
slightly and disappeared. I was struck so
exceedingly with the intense melancholy in the expression
of the face—an expression so totally at
variance with the elasticity of the step, and the promise
of the slight and riante figure and air—that I

quite forgot I had drawn a quarrel on myself, and
was loitering slowly toward the door of the church,
when the gentleman I had offended touched me on
the arm, and in the politest manner possible requested
my address. We exchanged cards, and I hastened
home to breakfast, musing on the facility with which
the current of our daily life may be thickened. I
fancied I had a new love on my hands, and I was
telerably sure of a quarrel—yet I had been in Vienna
but fifty-four minutes by Bréguet.

My breakfast was waiting, and Percie had found
time to turn a comb through his brown curls, and
get the dust off his gaiters. He was tall for his age,
and, (unaware to himself, poor boy!) every word and
action reflected upon the handsome seamstress in
Cranbourne Alley, whom he called his mother—for
he showed blood. His father was a gentleman, or
there is no truth in thorough-breeding. As I looked
at him a difficulty vanished from my mind.

“Percie!”

“Sir!”

“Get into your best suit of plain clothes, and if a
foreigner calls on me this morning, come in and forget
that you are a valet. I have occasion to use you
for a gentleman.”

“Yes, sir!”

“My pistols are clean, I presume?”

“Yes, sir!”

I wrote a letter or two, read a volume of “Ni
jamais, ni toujours,” and about noon a captain of
dragoons was announced, bringing me the expected
cartel. Percie came in, treading gingerly in a pair
of tight French boots, but behaving exceedingly
like a gentleman, and after a little conversation,
managed on his part strictly according my instructions,
he took his cane and walked off with his friend
of the steel scabbard to become acquainted with the
ground.

The gray of a heavenly summer morning was
brightening above the chimneys of the fair city of
Vienna as I stepped into a caléche, followed by Percie.
With a special passport (procured by the
politeness of my antagonist) we made our sortie at that
early hour from the gates, and crossing the glacis,
took the road to the banks of the Danube. It was
but a mile from the city, and the mist lay low on the
face of the troubled current of the river, while the
towers and pinnacles of the silent capital cut the sky
in clear and sharp lines—as if tranquillity and purity,
those immaculate hand-maidens of nature, had
tired of innocence and their mistress—and slept in
town!

I had taken some coffee and broiled chicken before
starting, and (removed thus from the category of
the savage unbreakfasted) I was in one of those
moods of universal benevolence, said (erroneously)

to be produced only by a clean breast and milk diet.
I could have wept, with Wordsworth, over a violet.

My opponent was there with his dragoon, and Percie,
cool and gentlemanlike, like a man who “had served,”
looked on at the loading of the pistols, and gave
me mine with a very firm hand, but with a moisture
and anxiety in his eye which I have remembered
since. We were to fire any time after the counting
of three, and having no malice against my friend,
whose impertinence to a lady was (really!) no business
of mine, I intended, of course, to throw away my
fire.

The first word was given and I looked at my antagonist,
who, I saw at a glance, had no such gentle
intentions. He was taking deliberate aim, and in the
four seconds that elapsed between the remaining two
words, I changed my mind (one thinks so fast when
his leisure is limited!) at least twenty times whether
I should fire at him or no.

“Trois!” pronounced the dragoon, from a throat
like a trombone, and with the last thought, up flew
my hand, and as my pistol discharged in the air,
my friend's shot struck upon a large turquoise which
I wore on my third finger, and drew a slight pencil-line
across my left organ of causality. It was well
aimed for my temple, but the ring had saved me.

Friend of those days, regretted and unforgotten!
days of the deepest sadness and heart-heaviness, yet

somehow dearer in remembrance than all the joys
I can recall—there was a talisman in thy parting gift
thou didst not think would be, one day, my angel!

“You will be able to wear your hair over the
scar, sir!” said Percie, coming up and putting his
finger on the wound.

“Monsieur!” said the dragoon, advancing to Percie
after a short conference with his principal, and
looking twice as fierce as before.

“Monsieur!” said Percie, wheeling short upon
him.

“My friend is not satisfied. He presumes that
monsieur l' Anglais wishes to trifle with him.”

“Then let your friend take care of himself,” said I,
roused by the unprovoked murderousness of the
feeling. Load the pistols, Percie! In my country,”
I continued, turning to the dragoon, “a man is disgraced
who fires twice upon an antagonist who has
spared him! Your friend is a ruffian, and the consequences
be on his own hand!”

We took our places and the first word was given,
when a man dashed between us on horseback at
top-speed. The violence with which he drew rein
brought his horse upon his haunches, and he was on
his feet in half a breath.

The idea that he was an officer of the police was
immediately dissipated by his step and air. Of the
finest athletic form I had ever seen, agile, graceful

and dressed pointedly well, there was still an indefinable
something about him, either above or below
a gentleman—which, it was difficult to say. His
features were slight, fair, and, except a brow too
heavy for them and a lip of singular and (I thought)
habitual defiance, almost feminine. His hair grew
long and had been soigné, probably by more caressing
fingers than his own, and his rather silken moustache
was glossy with some odorent oil. As he
approached me and took my hand, with a clasp like
a smith's vice, I observed these circumstances, and
could have drawn his portrait without ever seeing
him again—so marked a man was he, in every point
and feature.

His business was soon explained. He was the
husband of the lady my opponent had insulted,
and that pleasant gentleman could, of course, make
no objection to taking my place. I officiated as
tèmoin and, as they took their positions, I anticipated
for the dragoon and myself the trouble of carrying
them both off the field. I had a practical assurance
of my friend's pistol, and the stranger was not the
looking man to miss a hair's breadth of his aim.

The word was not fairly off my lips when both
pistols cracked like one discharge, and high into the
air sprang my revengeful opponent, and dropped
like a clod upon the grass. The stranger opened
his waistcoat, thrust his fore-finger into a wound in

his left breast, and slightly closing his teeth, pushed
a bullet through, which had been checked by the
bone and lodged in the flesh near the skin. The
surgeon who had accompanied my unfortunate antagonist,
left the body, which he had found beyond
his art, and readily gave his assistance to stanch
the blood of my preserver; and jumping with the
latter into my calèche, I put Percie upon the stranger's
horse, and we drove back to Vienna.

The market people were crowding in at the gate,
the merry peasant girls glanced at us with their blue,
German eyes, the shopmen laid out their gay wares
to the street, and the tide of life ran on as busily and
as gaily, though a drop had been extracted, within
scarce ten minutes, from its quickest vein. I felt a
revulsion at my heart, and grew faint and sick. Is a
human life—is my life worth anything, even a thought,
to my fellow-creatures? was the bitter question
forced upon my soul. How icily and keenly the
unconscious indifference of the world penetrates to
the nerve and marrow of him who suddenly realizes
it.

We dashed through the kohl-market, and driving
into the porte-cochére of a dark-looking house in one
of the cross streets of that quarter, were ushered
into apartments of extraordinary magnificence.

2. CHAP. II.

“What do you want, Percie?”

He was walking into the room with all the deliberate
politeness of a “gold-stick-in-waiting.”

“I beg pardon, sir, but I was asked to walk up,
and I was not sure whether I was still a gentleman.”

It instantly struck me that it might seem rather
infra dig to the chevalier (my new friend had thus
announced himself) to have had a valet for a second,
and as he immediately after entered the room, having
stepped below to give orders about his horse, I presented
Percie as a gentleman and my friend, and
resumed my observation of the singular apartment
in which I found myself.

The effect on coming first in at the door, was that
of a small and lofty chapel, where the light struggled
in from an unseen aperture above the altar. There
were two windows at the farther extremity, but curtained
so heavily, and set so deeply into the wall,
that I did not at first observe the six richly-carpeted
steps which led up to them, nor the luxuriously cushioned
seats on either side of the casement, within
the niche, for those who would mount thither for
fresh air. The walls were tapestried, but very

ragged and dusty, and the floor, though there were
several thicknesses of the heavy-piled, small, Turkey
carpets laid loosely over it, was irregular and
sunken. The corners were heaped with various
articles I could not at first distinguish. My host
fortunately gave me an opportunity to gratify my
curiosity by frequent absences under the housekeeper's
apology (odd I thought for a chevalier) of
expediting breakfast; and with the aid of Percie, I
tumbled his chattles about with all necessary freedom.

“That,” said the chevalier, entering, as I turned
out the face of a fresh coloured picture to the light,
“is a capo d'opera of a French artist, who painted
it, as you may say by the gleam of the dagger.”

“A cool light, as a painter would say!”

“He was a cool fellow, sir, and would have handled
a broad sword better than a pencil.”

Percie stepped up while I was examining the
exquisite finish of the picture, and asked very respectfully
if the chevalier would give him the particulars
of the story. It was a full-length portrait
of a young and excessively beautiful girl, of aparently
scarce fifteen, entirely nude, and lying upon
a black velvet couch, with one foot laid on a broken
diadem, and her right hand pressing a wild rose
to her heart.

“It was the fancy, sir,” continued the chevalier,

“of a bold outlaw, who loved the only daughter
of a noble of Hungary,

“Is this the lady sir?” asked Percie, in his politest
valet French.

The chevalier hesitated a moment and looked
over his shoulder as if he might be overheard.

“This is she—copied to the minutest shadow of
a hair! He was a bold outlaw, gentlemen, and had
plucked the lady from her father's castle with his
own hand.”

“Against her will?” interrupted Percie, rather
energetically.

“No!” scowled the chevalier, as if his lowering
brows had articulated the word, “by her own will
and connivance; for she loved him.”

Percie drew a long breath, and looked more closely
at the taper limbs and the exquisitely-chiselled
features of the face, which was turned over the
shoulder with a look of timid shame inimitably true
to nature.

“She loved him,” continued our fierce narrator,
who, I almost began to suspect was the outlaw himself,
by the energy with which he enforced the tale,
“and after a moonlight ramble or two with him in
the forest of her father's domain, she fled and became
his wife. You are admiring the hair, sir! It
is as luxuriant and glossy now!”

“If you please, sir, it is the villain himself!” said
Percie in an undertone.

“Bref,” continued the chevalier, either not understanding
English or not heeding the interruption, “an
adventurous painter, one day hunting the picturesque
in the neighbourhood of the outlaw's retreat, surprised
this fair creature bathing in one of the loneliest
mountain-streams in Hungary. His art appeared to
be his first passion, for he hid himself in the trees
and drew her as she stood dallying on the margin of
the small pool in which the brook loitered; and so
busy was he with his own work, or so soft was the
mountain moss under its master's tread, that the
outlaw looked, unperceived the while, over his
shoulder, and fell in love anew with the admirable
counterfeit. She looked like a naiad, sir, new-born
of a dew-drop and a violet.”

I nodded an assent to Percie.

“The sketch, excellent as it seemed, was still unfinished
when the painter, enamoured as he might
well be, of these sweet limbs, glossy with the shining
water, flung down his book and sprang toward her.
The outlaw—”

“Struck him to the heart? Oh heaven!” said
Percie, covering his eyes as if he could see the
murder.

“No! he was a student of the human soul, and
deferred his vengeance.”

Percie looked up and listened, like a man whose
wits were perfectly abroad.

“He was not unwilling since her person had been
seen irretrievably, to know how his shrinking Iminild
(this was her name of melody) would have escaped,
had she been found alone.”

“The painter”—prompted Percie, impatient for
the sequel

“The painter flew over rock and brake, and
sprang into the pool in which she was half immersed;
and my brave girl—”

He hesitated, for he had betrayed himself.

“Ay—she is mine, gentlemen; and I am Yvain,
the outlaw—my brave wife, I say with a single
bound, leaped to the rock where her dress was concealed,
seized a short spear which she used as a staff
in her climbing rambles, and struck it through his
shoulder as he pursued!”

“Bravely done!” I thought aloud.

“Was it not? I came up the next moment, but the
spear stuck in his shoulder, and I could not fall upon
a wounded man. We carried him to our ruined
castle in the mountains, and while my Iminild cured
her own wound, I sent for his paints, and let him
finish his bold beginning with a difference of my own.
You see the picture.”

“Was the painter's love cured with his wound!”
I asked with a smile.

“No, by St. Stephen! He grew ten times more
enamoured as he drew. He was as fierce as a

welk hawk, and as willing to quarrel for his prey.
I could have driven my dagger to his heart a hundred
times for the mutter of his lips and the flash of
his dark eyes as he fed his gaze upon her; but he
finished the picture, and I gave him a fair field. He
chose the broadsword, and hacked away at me like
a man.”

“And the result”—I asked.

“I am here!” replied the outlaw significantly.

Percie leaped upon the carpeted steps, and pushed
back the window for fresh air; and, for myself, I
scarce knew how to act under the roof of a man,
who, though he confessed himself an outlaw and
almost an assassin, was bound to me by the ties of
our own critical adventure, and had confided his
condition to me with so ready a reliance on my
honour. In the midst of my dilemma, while I was
pretending to occupy myself with examining a silver
mounted and peaked saddle, which I found behind
the picture in the corner, a deep and unpleasant
voice announced breakfast.

“Wolfen is rather a grim chamberlain,” said the
chevalier, bowing with the grace and smile of the
softest courtier, “but he will usher you to breakfast
and I am sure you stand in need of it. For myself,
I could eat worse meat than my grandfather with
this appetite.”

Percie gave me a look of inquiry and uneasiness

when he found we were to follow the rough domestic
through the dark corridors of the old house, and
through his underbred politeness of insisting on following
his host, I could see that he was unwilling to
trust the outlaw with the rear; but a massive and
broad door, flung open at the end of the passage, let
in upon us presently the cool and fresh air from a
northern exposure, and, stepping forward quickly to
the threshold, we beheld a picture which changed
the current and colour of our thoughts.

In the bottom of an excavated area, which, as
well as I could judge, must be forty feet below the
level of the court, lay a small and antique garden,
brilliant with the most costly flowers, and cooled by
a fountain gushing from under the foot of a nymph in
marble. The spreading tops of six alleys of lindens
reaching to the level of the street, formed a living
roof to the grot-like depths of the garden, and concealed
it from all view but that of persons descending
like ourselves from the house; while, instead of
walls to shut in this Paradise in the heart of a city,
sharply-inclined slopes of green-sward leaned in
under the branches of the lindens, and completed the
fairy-like enclosure of shade and verdure. As we
descended the rose-laden steps and terraces, I observed,
that, of the immense profusion of flowers in
the area below, nearly all were costly exoticks, whose
pots were set in the earth, and probably brought

away from the sunshine only when in high bloom;
and as we rounded the spreading basin of the fountain
which broke the perspective of the alley, a table,
which had been concealed by the marble nymph,
and a skilfully-disposed array of rhododendrons lay
just beneath our feet, while a lady, whose features
I could not fail to remember, smiled up from her
couch of crimson cushions and gave us a graceful
welcome.

The same taste for depth which had been shown
in the room sunk below the windows, and the garden
below the street, was continued in the kind of marble
divan in which we were to breakfast. Four steps
descending from the pavement of the alley introduced
us into a circular excavation, whose marble seats,
covered with cushions of crimson silk, surrounded a
table laden with the substantial viands which are
common to a morning meal in Vienna, and smoking
with coffee, whose aroma (Percie agreed with me)
exceeded even the tube roses in grateful sweetness.
Between the cushions at our backs and the pavements
just above the level of our heads, were piled circles
of thickly-flowering geraniums, which enclosed
us in rings of perfume, and, pouring from the cup of
a sculptured flower, held in the hand of the nymph
a smooth stream like a silver rod supplied a channel
grooved around the centre of the marble table,
through which the bright water, with the impulse of

its descent, made a swift revolution and disappeared.

It was a scene to give memory the lie if it could
have recalled the bloodshed of the morning. The
green light flecked down through the leafy roof upon
the glittering and singing water; a nightingale in a
recess of the garden, gurgled through his wires as if
intoxicated with the congenial twilight of his prison;
the heavy-cupped flowers of the tropics nodded with
the rain of the fountain spray; the distant roll of
wheels in the neighbouring streets came with an
assurance of reality to this dream-land, yet softened
by the unreverberating roof and an air crowded with
flowers and trembling with the pulsations of falling
water; the lowering forehead of the outlaw cleared
uplike a sky of June after a thunder-shower, and his
voice grew gentle and caressing; and the delicate
mistress of all (by birth, Countess Iminild,) a creature
as slight as Psyche, and as white as the lotus,
whose flexile stem served her for a bracelet, welcomed
us with her soft voice and humid eyes, and
saddened by the even of the morning, looked on her
husband with a tenderness that would have assoiled
her of her sins against delicacy, I thought even in the
mind of an angel.

“We live, like truth, here, in the bottom of a well,”
said the countess to Percie, as she gave him his coffee;
“how do you like my whimsical abode, sir?”

“I should like any place where you were, Miladi!”

he answered, blushing and stealing his eyes across
at me, either in doubt how far he might presume
upon his new character, or suspecting that I should
smile at his gallantry.

The outlaw glanced his eyes over the curling
head of the boy, with one of those just perceptible
smiles which developed, occasionally, in great beauty,
the gentle spirit in his bosom; and Iminild, pleased
with the compliment or the blush, threw off her pensive
mood, and assumed in an instant, the coquettish
air which had attracted my notice as she stepped
before me into the church of St. Etienne.

“You had hard work,” she said to keep up with
your long-legged dragoon yesterday. Monsieur
Percie!”

“Miladi?” he answered, with a look of inquiry.

“Oh, I was behind you, and my legs are not much
longer than yours. How he strided away with his
long spurs, to be sure! Do you remember a smart
young gentleman with a blue cap that walked past
you on the glacis occasionally.”

Ah, with laced boots, like a Hungarian?”

“I see I am ever to be known by my foot,” said
she, putting it out upon the cushion, and turning it
about with naive admiration; “that poor captain of
the imperial guard payed dearly for kissing it, holy
virgin!” and she crossed herself and was silent for a
moment.

“If I might take the freedom, chevalier,” I said,
“pray how came I indebted to your assistance
in this affair?”

“Iminild has partly explained,” he answered.
“She knew, of course, that a challenge would follow
your interference, and it was very easy to know that
an officer of some sort would take a message in the
course of the morning to Le Prince Charles, the
only hotel frequented by the English d'un certain
gens.

I bowed to the compliment.

“Arriving in Vienna late last night, I found Iminild
(who had followed this gentleman and the dragoon
unperceived) in possession of all the circumstances;
and, but for oversleeping myself this morning, I should
have saved your turquoise, mon seigneur!”

“Have you lived here long, Miladi?” asked Percie,
looking up into her eyes with an unconscious
passionateness which made the Countess Iminild
colour slightly, and bite her lips to retain an expression
of pleasure.

“I have not lived long, anywhere, sir!” she
answered half archly, “but I played in this garden
when not much older than you!”

Percie looked confused and pulled up his cravat.

“This house said the chevalier, willing apparently
to spare the countess a painful narration, “is the
property of the old Count Ildefert, my wife's father.

He has long ceased to visit Vienna, and has left it, he
supposes, to a stranger. When Iminild tires of the
forest, she comes here, and I join her if I can find
time. I must to the saddle to-morrow, by St.
Jacques!”

The word had scarce died on his lips when the
door by which we had entered the garden was flung
open, and the measured tread of gens-d'armes resounded
in the corridor. The first man who stood
out upon the upper terrace was the dragoon who
had been second to my opponent.

“Traitor and villain!” muttered the outlaw between
his teeth, “I thought I remembered you! It
is that false comrade Berthold, Iminild!”

Yvain had risen from the table as if but to stretch
his legs; and drawing a pistol from his bosom he
cocked it as he quietly stepped up into the garden.
I saw at a glance that there was no chance for his
escape, and laid my hand on his arm.

“Chevalier!” I said, “surrender and trust to opportunity.
It is madness to resist here.”

“Yvain!” said Iminild, in a low voice, flying to
his side as she comprehended his intention, “leave
me that vengeance, and try the parapet. I,ll kill
him before he sleeps! Quick! Ah, heavens!”

The dragoon had turned at that instant to fly, and
with suddenness of thought the pistol flashed, and
the traitor dropped heavily on the terrace. Springing

like a cat up the slope of green sward, Yvain
stood an instant on the summit of the wall, hesitating
where to jump beyond, and in the next moment
rolled heavily back, stabbed through and through
with a bayonet from the opposite side.

The blood left the lips and cheek of Iminild; but
without a word or a sign of terror, she sprang to
the side of the fallen outlaw and lifted him up against
her knee. The gens-d'armes rushed to the spot, but
the subaltern who commanded them yielded instantly
to my wish that they should retire to the skirts
of the garden; and, sending Percie to the fountain
for water, we bathed the lips and forehead of the
dying man and set him against the sloping parapet.
With one hand grasping the dress of Iminild and the
other clasped in mine, he struggled to speak.

“The cross!” he gasped, “the cross!”

Iminild drew a silver crucifix from her bosom.

“Swear on this,” he said, putting it to my lips and
speaking with terrible energy, “swear that you will
protect her while you live!”

“I swear!”

He shut our hands together convulsively, gasped
slightly as if he would speak again, and, in another
instant sunk, relaxed and lifeless, on the shoulder of
Iminild.

3. CHAP. III.

The fate and history of Yvain, the outlaw, became,
on the following day, the talk of Vienna.
He had been long known as the daring horse-stealer
of Hungary; and, though it was not doubted that
his sway was exercised over plunderers of every
description, even pirates upon the high seas, his own
courage and address were principally applied to robbery
of the well-guarded steeds of the emperor and
his nobles. It was said that there was not a horse
in the dominions of Austria whose qualities and
breeding were not known to him, nor one he cared
to have which was not in his concealed stables in
the forest. The most incredible stories were told
of his horsemanship. He would so disguise the
animal on which he rode, either by forcing him into
new paces or by other arts only known to himself,
that he would make the tour of the Glacis on the
emperor's best horse, newly stolen, unsuspected
even by the royal grooms. The roadsters of his
own troop were the best steeds bred on the banks
of the Danube; but, though always in the highest
condition, they would never have been suspected to
be worth a florin till put upon their mettle. The

extraordinary escapes of his band from the vigilant
and well-mounted gens-d'armes were thus accounted
for; and, in most of the villages in Austria, the people,
on some market-day or other, had seen a body
of apparently ill-mounted peasants suddenly start
off with the speed of lightning at the appearance of
gens-d'armes, and, flying over fence and wall, draw
a straight course for the mountains, distancing their
pursuers with the ease of swallows on the wing.

After the death of Yvain in the garden, I had
been forced with Percie into a carriage, standing in
the court, and accompanied by a guard, driven to
my hotel, where I was given to understand that I was
to remain under arrest till further orders. A sentinel
at the door forbade all ingress or egress except
to the people of the house: a circumstance which
was only distressing to me, as it precluded my inquiries
after the Countess Iminild, of whom common
rumour, the servants informed me, made not the
slightest mention.

Four days after this, on the relief of the guard at
noon, a subaltern entered my room and informed
me that I was at liberty. I instantly made preparations
to go out, and was drawing on my boots when
Percie, who had not yet recovered from the shock
of his arrest, entered in some alarm, and informed
me that one of the royal grooms was in the court
with a letter, which he would deliver only into my

own hands. He had orders beside, he said, not to
leave his saddle. Wondering what new leaf of my
destiny was to turn over, I went below and received
a letter, with apparently the imperial seal, from a
well-dressed groom in the livery of the emperor's
brother, the king of Hungary. He was mounted on
a compact, yet fine-limbed horse, and both horse
and rider were as still as if cut in marble.

I returned to my room and broke the seal. It
was a letter from Iminild, and the bold bearer was
an outlaw disguised! She had heard that I was to
be released that morning, and desired me to ride out
on the road to Gratz. In a postscript she begged I
would request Monsieur Percie to accompany me.

I sent for horses, and, wishing to be left to my
own thoughts, ordered Percie to fall behind, and
rode slowly out of the southern gate. If the Countess
Iminild were safe, I had enough of the adventure
for my taste. My oath bound me to protect
this wild an unsexed woman, but farther intercourse
with a band of outlaws, or farther peril of my head
for no reason that either a court of gallantry or of justice
would recognize, was beyond my usual programme
of pleasant events. The road was a gentle
ascent, and with the bridle on the neck of my
hack I paced thoughfully on, till, at a slight turn, we
stood at a fair height above Vienna.

“It is a beautiful city, sir,” said Percie, riding up.

“How the deuce could she have escaped?” said
I, thinking aloud.

“Has she escaped, sir? Ah, thank heaven!” exclaimed
the passionate boy, the tears rushing to his
eyes.

“Why, Percie!” I said with a tone of surprise
which called a blush into face, “have you really
found leisure to fall in love amid all this imbroglio?”

“I beg pardon, my dear master!” he replied in a
confused voice, “I scarce know what it is to fall in
love; but I would die for Miladi Iminild.”

“Not at all an impossible sequel, my poor boy!
But wheel about and touch your hat, for here comes
some one of the royal family!”

A horseman was approaching at an easy canter,
over the broad and unfenced plain of table-land
which overlooks Vienna on the south, attended by
six mounted servants in the white kerseymere frocks,
braided with the two-headed black eagle, which
distinguish the members of the imperial household.

The carriages on the road stopped while he passed,
the foot-passengers touched their caps, and, as he
came near, I perceived that he was slight and young,
but rode with a confidence and a grace not often
attained. His horse had the subdued, half-fiery
action of an Arab, and Percie nearly dropped from
his saddle when the young horseman suddenly
drove in his spurs, and with almost a single vault
stood motionless before us.

“Monsieur!”

“Madame la Contesse!”

I was uncertain how to receive her, and took refuge
in civility. Whether she would be overwhelmed
with the recollection of Yvain's death, or had
put away the thought altogether with her masculine
firmness, was a dilemma for which the eccentric contradictions
of her character left me no probable solution.
Motioning with her hand after saluting me,
two of the party rode back and forward in different
directions, as if patrolling; and giving a look
between a tear and a smile at Percie, she placed
her hand in mine, and shook off her sadness with a
strong effort.

“You did not expect so large a suite with your
protegée,” she said, rather gaily, after a moment.

“Do I understand that you come now to put
yourself under my protection!” I asked in reply.

“Soon, but not now, nor here. I have a hundred
men at the foot of Mount Semering, whose future
fate, in some important respects, none can decide
but myself. Yvain was always prepared for this,
and everything is en train. I come now but to appoint
a place of meeting. Quick! my patrole
comes in, and some one approaches whom we must
fly. Can you await me at Gratz?”

“I can and will!”

She put her slight hand to my lips, waved a kiss

at Percie, and away with the speed of wind, flew her
swift Arab over the plain, followed by the six horsemen,
every one of whom seemed part of the animal
that carried him—he rode so admirably.

The slight figure of Iminild in the close fitting
dress of a Hungarian page, her jacket open and her
beautiful limbs perfectly defined, silver fringes at
her ankles and waist, and a row of silver buttons
gallonné down to the instep, her bright, flashing eyes,
her short curls escaping from her cap and tangled
over her left temple, with the gold tassel, dirk and
pistol at her belt and spurs upon her heels—it was
an apparition I had scarce time to realize, but it seemed
painted on my eyes. The cloud of dust which
followed their rapid flight faded away as I watched
it, but I saw her still.

“Shall I ride back and order post-horses, sir!”
asked Percie standing up in his stirrups.

“No; but you may order dinner at six. And
Percie,!” he was riding away with a gloomy air;
“you may go to the police and get our passports
for Venice.”

“By the way of Gratz, sir!”

“Yes, simpleton!”

There is a difference between sixteen and twenty-six,
I thought to myself, as the handsome boy
flogged his horse into a gallop. The time is
gone when I could love without reason. Yet I

remember when a feather, stuck jauntily into a bonnet,
would have made any woman a princess; and
in those days heaven help us! I should have loved
this woman more for her galliardize than ten times
a prettier one with all the virtues of Dorcas. For
which of my sins am I made guardian to a robber's
wife, I wonder!

The heavy German postillions, with their cocked
hats and yellow coats, got us over the ground after
a manner, and toward the sunset of a summer's
evening the tall castle of Gratz, perched on a
pinnacle of rock in the centre of a vast plain, stood
up boldly against the reddening sky. The rich
fields of Styria were ripening to an early harvest,
the people sat at their doors with the look of household
happiness for which the inhabitants of these
“despotic countries” are so remarkable; and now
and then on the road the rattling of steel scabbards
drew my attention from a book or a reverie, and the
mounted troops, so perpetually seen on the broad
roads of Austria, lingered slowly past with their
dust and baggage-trains.

It had been a long summer's day, and, contrary to
my usual practice, I had not mounted, even for half a
post, to Percie's side in the rumble. Out of humour

with fate for having drawn me into very embarassing
circumstances—out of humour with myself for
the quixotic step which had first brought it on me—
and a little out of humour with Percie, (perhaps from
an unacknowledged jealously of Iminild's marked
preference for the varlet,) I left him to toast alone
in the sun, while I tried to forget him and myself in
“Le Marquis de Pontanges.” What a very clever
book it is, by the way!

The pompous sergeant of the guard performed
his office upon my passport at the gate—giving me
at least a kreutzer worth of his majesty's black sand
in exchange for my florin and my English curse;
(I said before I was out of temper, and he was half
an hour writing his abominable name,) and leaving
my carriage and Percie to find their way together
to the hotel, I dismounted at the foot of a steep street
and made my way to the battlements of the castle,
in search of scenery and equanimity.

Ah! what a glorious landscape! The precipitous
rock on which the old fortress is built seems dropped
by the Titans in the midst of a plain, extending
miles in every direction, with scarce another pebble.
Close at its base run the populous streets,
coiling about it like serpents around a pyramid, and
away from the walls of the city spread the broad
fields, laden, as far as the eye can see, with tribute
for the emperor! The tall castle, with its armed
crest, looks down among the reapers.

“You have not lost your friend and lover, yet you
are melancholy!” said a voice behind me, that I
was scarce startled to hear.

“Is it you, Iminild?”

“Scarce the same—for Iminild was never before
so sad. It is something in the sunset. Come away
while the woman keeps down in me, and let us
stroll through the Plaza, where the band is playing.
Do you love military music?”

I looked at the costume and figure of the extraordinary
creature before I ventured with her on a
public promenade. She was dressed like one of
the travelling apprentices of Germany, with cap
and bleuzer, and had assumed the air of the craft
with a success absolutely beyond detection. I gave
her my arm and we sauntered through the crowd,
listening to the thrilling music of one of the finest
bands in Germany. The priviliged character and
free manners of the wandering craftsmen whose
dress she had adopted, I was well aware, reconciled,
in the eyes of the inhabitants, the marked
contrast between our conditions in life. They would
simply have said, if they had made a remark at all,
that the Englishman was bon enfant and the craftsman
bon camarade.

“You had better look at me, messieurs!” said the
dusty apprentice, as two officers of the regiment
passed and gave me the usual strangers' stare; “I

am better worth your while by exactly five thousand
florins.”

“And pray how?” I asked.

“That price is set on my head!”

“Heavens! and you walk here!”

“They kept you longer than usual with your passport,
I presume?”

“At the gate? yes.”

“I came in with my pack at the time. They have
orders to examine all travellers and passports with
unusual care, these sharp officials! But I shall get
out as easily as I got in!”

“My dear countess!” I said, in a tone of serious
remonstrance, “do not trifle with the vigilance of
the best police in Europe! I am your guardian, and
you owe my advice some respect. Come away
from the square and let us talk of it in earnest.”

“Wise seignior! suffer me to remind you how
deftly I slipped through the fingers of these gentry
after our tragedy in Vienna, and pay my opinion some
respect! It was my vanity that brought me, with
my lackeys, to meet you à la prince royale so near
Vienna; and hence this alarm in the police, for I was
seen and suspected. I have shown myself to you
in my favourite character, however, and have done
with rash measures. You shall see me on the road
to-morrow, safe as the heart in your bosom.
Where is Monsieur Percie!”

“At the hotel. But stay! can I trust you with
yourself?”

“Yes, and dull company, too! A revoir!”

And whistling the popular air of the craft she had
assumed, the Countess Iminild struck her long staff
on the pavement, and with the gait of a tired and
habitual pedestrian, disappeared by a narrow street
leading under the precipitory battlements of the castle.

Percie made his appearance with a cup of coffee
the following morning, and, with the intention of posting
a couple of leagues to breakfast, I hurried through
my toilet and was in my carriage an hour after sunrise.
The postillion was in his saddle and only waited
for Percie, who, upon enquiry, was nowhere to
be found. I sat fifteen minutes, and just as I was
beginning to be alarmed he ran into the large court of
the hotel, and, crying out to the postillions that all
was right, jumped into his place with an agility,
it struck me, very unlike his usual gentlemanlike
deliberation. Determining to take advantage of the
first up-hill to catechize him upon his matutinal
rambles, I read the signs along the street till we
pulled up at the gate.

Iminild's communication had prepared me for
unusual delay with my passport, and I was not
surprised when the officer, in returning it to me,

requested me as a matter of form, to declare, upon
my honour, that the servant behind my carriage was
an Englishman, and the person mentioned in my
passport.

“Foi d'honneur, monsieur,” I said, placing my
hand politely on my heart, and off trotted the postillion,
while the captain of the guard, flattered with
my civility, touched his foraging-cap, and sent me
a German blessing through his mustache.

It was a divine morning, and the fresh and dewy
air took me back many a year, to the days when I
was more familiar with the hour. We had a long
trajet across the plain, and unlooping an antivibration
tablet, for the invention of which my ingenuity took
great credit to itself, (suspended on caoutchouc cords
from the roof of the carriage—and deserving of a
patent I trust you will allow!) I let off my poetical
vein in the following beginning to what might have
turned out, but for the interruption, a very edifying
copy of verses:

A foot thrust into my carriage-window rudely
broke the thread of these delicate musings. The
postillion was on a walk, and before I could get my
wits back from their wool-gathering, the Countess
Iminild, in Percie's clothes, sat laughing on the
cushion beside me.

“On what bird's back has your ladyship descended
from the clouds?” I asked with unfeigned astonishment.

“The same bird has brought us both down—c'est
à dire, if you are not still en l' air,” she added, looking
from my scrawled tablets to my perplexed face.

“Are you really and really the Countess Iminild?”
I asked with a smile, looking down at the trowsered
feet and loose-fitting boots of the pseudo-valet.

“Yes, indeed! but I leave it to you to swear,
`foi d' honneur,' that a born countess is an English
valet!” And she laughed so long and merrily that
the postillion looked over his yellow epaulettes in
astonishment.

“Kind, generous Percie!” she said, changing her
tone presently to one of great feeling, I would scarce
believe him last night when he informed me, as as inducement
to leave him behind, that he was only a servant!
You never told me this. But he is a gentleman,
in every feeling as well as in every feature,
and, by heavens! he shall be a menial no longer!”

This speech, begun with much tenderness, rose,
toward the close, to the violence of passion; and
folding her arms with an air of defiance, the lady-outlaw
threw herself back in the carriage.

“I have no objection,” I said, after a short silence,
“that Percie should set up for a gentleman. Nature
has certainly done her part to make him one; but
till you can give him means and education, the coat
which you wear, with such a grace, is his safest shell.
`Ants live safely till they have gotten wings,' says
the old proverb.”

The blowing of the postillion's horn interrupted
the argument, and, a moment after, we were rolled
up, with German leisure, to the door of the small inn
where I had designed to breakfast. Thinking it
probable that the people of the house, in so small a

village, would be too simple to make any dangerous
comments upon our appearance, I politely handed the
countess out of the carriage, and ordered plates for
two.

“It is scarce worth while,” she said, as she heard
the order, “for I shall remain at the door on the
look out. The eil-waggen, for Trieste, which
was to leave Gratz an hour after us, will be soon
here, and, (if my friends have served me well,) Percie
in it. St. Mary speed him safely!”

She stode away to a small hillock to look out for
the lumbering diligence, with a gait that was no
stranger to, “doublet and hose.” It soon came on
with its usual tempest of whip-cracking and bugle-blasts,
and nearly overturning a fat burgher, who
would have profferred the assistance of his hand,
out jumped a petticoat, which, I saw, at a glance,
gave a very embarrassed motion to gentleman
Percie.

“This young lady,” said the countess, dragging
the striding and unwilling damsel into the little parlour
where I was breakfasting “travels under the
charge of a deaf old brazier, who has been requested
to protect her modesty as far as Laybach. Make
a curtsy, child!”

“I beg pardon, sir!” began Percie.

“Hush, hush! no English! Walls have ears, and
your voice is rather gruffish, mademoiselle. Show

me your passport? Cunegunda Von Krakenpate,
eighteen years of age, blue eyes, nose and chin middling,etc!
There is the conductor's horn! Allez vite!” We meet a Laybach. Adieu, charmante femme! Adieu!

And with the sort of caricatured elegance which
women always assume in their imitations of our sex,
Countess Iminild, in frock-coat and trowsers, helped
into the diligence, in hood and petticoat, my “tiger”
from Cranbourne-alley!

4. CHAP. IV.

Spite of remonstrance on my part, the imperative
countess, who had asserted her authority more than
once on our way to Laybach, insisted on the company
of Miss Cunegunda Von Krakenpate, in an
evening walk around the town. Fearing that Percie's
masculine stride would betray him, and objecting
to lend myself to a farce with my valet, I
opposed the freak as long as it was courteous—but
it was not the first time I had learned that a spoiled
woman would have her own way, and, too vexed
to laugh, I soberly promenaded the broad avenue of
the capital of Styria, with a valet en demoiselle, and
a dame en valet.

It was but a few hours hence to Planina, and Iminild,

who seemed to fear no risk out of a walled city,
waited on Percie to the carriage the following
morning, and in a few hours we drove up to the
rural inn of this small town of Littorale.

I had been too much out of humour to ask the
countess, a second time, what errand she could have
in so rustic a neighbourhood. She had made a
mystery of it, merely requiring of me that I should
defer all arrangements for the future, as far as she
was concerned, till we had visited a spot in Littorale,
upon which her fate in many respects depended.
After twenty fruitless conjectures, I abandoned myself
to the course of circumstances, reserving only
the determination, if it should prove a haunt of
Yvain's troop, to separate at once from her company
and await her at Trieste.

Our dinner was preparing at the inn, and tired of
the embarrassment Percie exhibited in my presence,
I walked out and seated myself under an immense
linden, that every traveller will remember, standing
in the centre of the motley and indescribable clusters
of buildings, which serve the innkeeper and blacksmith
of Planina for barns, forge, dwelling, and
outhouses. The tree seems the father of the village.
It was a hot afternoon, and I was compelled to
dispute the shade with a congregation of cows and
double-jointed posthorses; but finding a seat high up
on the root, at last I busied myself with gazing down

the road, and conjecturing what a cloud of dust
might contain, which, in an opposite direction from
that which we had come, was slowly creeping
onward to the inn.

Four roughly-harnessed horses at length, appeared,
with their traces tied over their backs—one
of them ridden by a man in a farmer's frock. They
struck me at first as fine specimens of the German
breed of draught-horses, with their shaggy fetlocks
and long manes; but while they drank at the trough
which stood in the shade of the linden, the low tone
in which the man checked their greedy thirst, and the
instant obedience of the well-trained animals, awakened
at once my suspicions that we were to become
better acquainted. A more narrow examination
convinced me that, covered with dust and disguised
with coarse harness as they were, they were four
horses of such bone and condition, as were never
seen in a farmer's stables. The rider dismounted
at the inn door, and very much to the embarrassment
of my suppositions, the landlord, a stupid and heavy
Boniface, greeted him with the familiarity of an old
acquaintance, and in answer, apparently to an inquiry,
pointed to my carriage, and led him into the
house.

“Monsieur Tyrell,” said Iminild, coming out to
me a moment after, “a servant whom I had expected
has arrived with my horses, and with your

consent, they shall be put to your carriage immediately.”

“To take us where?”

“To our place of destination.”

“Too indefinite, by half, Countess! Listen to me!
I have very sufficient reason to fancy that, in leaving
the post-road to Trieste, I shall leave the society of
honest men. You and your `minions of the moon'
may be very pleasant, but you are not very safe
companions; and having really a wish to die quietly
in my bed—”

The countess burst into a laugh.

“If you will have the character of the gentleman
you are about to visit from the landlord here—”

“Who is one of your ruffians himself, I'll be
sworn!”

“No, on my honour! A more innocent old beer-guzzler
lives not on the road. But I will tell you
thus much, and it ought to content you. Ten miles
to the west of this dwells a country gentleman, who,
the landlord will certify, is as honest a subject of his
gracious majesty as is to be found in Littorale. He
lives freely on his means, and entertains strangers
occasionally from all countries, for he has been a
traveller in his time. You are invited to pass a day
or two with this Mynheer Krakenpate, (who, by the
way, has no objection to pass for father of the young
lady you have so kindly brought from Laybach,)

and he has sent you his horses, like a generous host,
to bring you to his door. More seriously, this was
a retreat of Yvain's, where he would live quietly
and play bon citoyen, and you have nothing earthly
to fear in accompanying me thither. And now will
you wait and eat the greasy meal you have ordered,
or will you save your appetite for la fortune de pot at Mynheer Krakenpate's, and get presently on the
road!”

I yielded rather to the seducing smile and captivating
beauty of my pleasing ward, than to any
confidence in the honesty of Myneer Krakenpate;
and Percie being once more ceremoniously handed
in, we left the village at the sober trot becoming
the fat steeds of a landholder. A quarter of a
mile of this was quite sufficient for Iminild, and
a word to the postillion changed, like a metamorphosis,
both horse and rider. From a heavy unelastic
figure, he rose into a gallant and withy horseman,
and, with one of his low-spoken words, away flew
the four compact animals, treading lightly as cats,
and, with the greatest apparent ease, putting us over
the ground at the rate of fourteen miles in the hour.

The dust was distanced, a pleasant breeze was
created by the motion, and when at last we turned
from the main road, and sped off to the right at the
same exhilarating pace, I returned Iminild's arch
look of remonstrace with my best-humoured smile

and an affectionate je me fie à vous! Miss Krakenpate,
I observed, echoed the sentiment by a slight
pressure of the countess's arm, looking very innocently
out of the window all the while.

A couple oi miles, soon done, brought us round
the face of a craggy precipice, forming the brow of
a hill, and with a continuation of the turn, we drew
up at the gate of a substantial-looking building,
something between a villa and a farm-house, built
against the rock, as if for the purpose of shelter from
the north winds. Two beautiful Angora hounds
sprang out at the noise, and recognized Iminild
through all her disguise, and presently, with a look of
forced courtesy, as if not quite sure whether he
might throw off the mask, a stout man of about fifty,
hardly a gentleman, yet above a common peasant
in his manners, stepped forward from the garden to
give Miss Krakenpate his assistance in alighting.

“Dinner in half an hour!” was Iminild's brief
greeting, and, stepping between her bowing dependant
and Percie, she led the way into the house.

I was shown into a chamber, furnished scarce
above the common style of a German inn, where I
made a hungry man's despatch in my toilet, and descended
at once to the parlour. The doors were all
open upon the ground floor, and, finding myself quite
alone, I sauntered from room to room, wondering
at the scantiness of the furniture and general air of

discomfort, and scarce able to believe that the same
mistress presided over this and the singular paradise
in which I had first found her at Vienna. After visiting
every corner of the ground floor with a freedom
which I assumed in my character as guardian, it
occurred to me that I had not yet found the dining-room,
and I was making a new search, when Iminild
entered.

I have said she was a beautiful woman. She was
dressed now in the Albanian costume, with the additional
gorgeousness of gold embroidery, which
might distinguish the favourite child of a chief of
Suli. It was the male attire, with a snowy white
juktanilla reaching to the knee, a short jacket of
crimson velvet, and a close-buttoned vest of silver
cloth, fitting admirably to her girlish bust, and leaving
her slender and pearly neck to rise bare and
swan-like into the masses of her clustering hair.
Her slight waist was defined by the girdle of fine
linen edged with fringe of gold, which was tied coquettishly
over her left side and fell to her ankle
and below the embroidered leggin appeared the
fairy foot, which had drawn upon me all this long
train of adventure, thrust into a Turkish slipper
with a sparkling emerald on its instep. A feronière
of the yellowest gold sequins bound her hair back
from her temples, and this was the only confinement
to the dark brown meshes which, in wavy lines and

in the richest profusion, fell almost to her feet. The
only blemish to this vision of loveliness was a flush
about her eyes. The place had recalled Yvain to
her memory.

“I am about to disclose to you secrets,” said she,
laying her hand on my arm, “which have never
been revealed but to the most trusty of Yvain's confederates.
To satisfy those whom you will meet
you must swear to me on the same cross which he
pressed to your lips when dying, that you will never
violate, while I live, the trust we repose in you.”

“I will take no oath,” I said; “for you are leading
me blindfolded. If you are not satisfied with the
assurance that I can betray no confidence which
honour would preserve, hungry as I am, I will yet
dine in Planina.”

“Then I will trust to the faith of an Englishman.
And now I have a favour, not to beg, but to insist
upon—that from this moment you consider Percie
as dismissed from your service, and treat him, while
here at least, as my equal and friend.”

“Willingly!” I said; and as the word left my
lips, enter Percie in the counterpart dress of Iminild,
with a silver-sheathed ataghan at his side, and the
blueish muzzles of a pair of Egg's hair-triggers
peeping from below his girdle. To do the rascal
justice, he was as handsome in his new toggery as
his mistress, and carried it as gallantly. They

would have made the prettiest tableau as Juan and
Haidée.

“Is there any chance that these `persuaders' may
be necessary,” I asked, pointing to his pistols which
a woke in my mind a momentary suspicion.

“No—none that I can foresee—but they are
loaded. A favourite, among men whose passions
are professionally wild,” she continued with a meaning
glance at Percie; “should be ready to lay his
hand on them, even if stirred in his sleep!”

I had been so accustomed to surprises of late, that
I scarce started to observe, while Iminild was speaking,
that an old-fashioned clock, which stood in a
niche in the wall, was slowly swinging out upon
hinges. A narrow aperture of sufficient breadth to
admit one person at a time, was disclosed when it
had made its entire revolution, and in it stood with
a lighted torch, the stout landlord Von Krakenpate.
Iminild looked at me an instant as if to enjoy my
surprise.

“Will you lead me in to dinner, Mr. Tyrell?” she
said at last, with a laugh.

“If we are to follow Myneer Von Krakenpate,”
I replied, “give me hold of the skirt of your juktanilla,
rather, and let me follow! Do we dine in the
cellar?”

I stepped before Percie, who was inclined to take
advantage of my hesitation to precede me, and followed

the countess into the opening, which, from
the position of the house, I saw must lead directly
into the face of the rock. Two or three descending
steps convinced me that it was a natural opening enlarged
by art; and after one or two sharp turns, and
a descent of perhaps fifty feet, we came to a door
which, suddenly flung open by our torch-bearer,
deluged the dark passage with a blaze of light which
the eyesight almost refused to bear. Recovering
from my amazement, I stepped over the threshold
of the door, and stood upon a carpet in a gallery of
sparkling stalactites, the dazzling reflection of inumerable
lamps flooding the air around, and a long
snow-white vista of the same brilliancy and effect
streching downward before me. Two ridges of
the calcareous stratta running almost parallel over
our heads, formed the cornices of the descending
corridor, and from these with a regularity that
seemed like design, the sparkling pillars, white as
alabaster, and shaped like inverted cones, dropped
nearly to the floor, their transparent points resting
on the peaks of the corresponding stalagmites,
which of a darker hue and coarser grain, seemed
designed as bases to a new order of architectural
columns. The reflection from the pure crystalline
rock gave to this singular gallery a splendor which
only the palace of Aladdin could have equalled. The
lamps were hung between in irregular but effective
ranges, and in our descent, like Thalaba, who refreshed
his dazzled eyes in the desert of snow by
looking on the green wings of the spirit bird, I was
compelled to bend my eyes perpetually for relief upon
the soft, dark masses of hair which floated upon
the lovely shoulders of Iminild.

At the extremity of the gallery we turned short to
the right, and followed an irregular passage, sometimes
so low that we could scarce stand upright,
but all lighted with the same intense brilliancy, and
formed of the same glittering and snow-white substance.
We had been rambling on thus far perhaps
ten minutes, when suddenly the air, which I had felt
uncomfortably chill, grew warm and soft, and the
low reverberation of running water fell delightfully
on our ears. Far a-head we could see two sparry
columns standing close together, and apparently
closing up the way.

“Courage! my venerable guardian!” cried Imnild,
laughing over her shoulder; “you will see your
dinner presently. Are you hungry, Percie?”

“Not while you look back, Madame la Comtesse!”
answered the callow gentleman, with an instinctive
tact at his new vocation.

We stood at the two pillars which formed the
extremity of the passage, and looked down upon a
scene of which all description must be faint and imperfect.

A hundred feet below ran a broad subterraneous
river, whose waters sparkling in the blaze
of a thousand torches, sprang into light from the
deepest darkness, crossed with foaming rapidity the
bosom of the vast illuminated cavern, and disappeared
again in the same inscrutable gloom. Whence it
it came or whither it fled was a mystery beyond the
reach of the eye. The deep recesses of the cavern
seemed darker for the intense light gathered about
the centre.

After the first few minutes of bewilderment, I endeavoured
to realize in detail the wondrous scene before
me. The cavern was of an irregular shape, but
all studded above with the same sparry incrustation,
thousands upon thousands of pendant stalactites glittering
on the roof, and showering back light upon the
clusters of blazing torches fastened every where
upon the shelvy sides. Here and there vast
columns, alabaster white, with bases of gold colour,
fell from the roof to the floor, like pillars left standing
in the ruined nisle of a cathedral, and from corner
to corner ran their curtains of the same brilliant
calcareous spar, shaped like the sharp edge of a
snow-drift, and almost white. It was like laying
bare the palace of some king-wizard of the mine to
gaze down upon it.

“What think you of Myneer Krakenpate's taste
in a dining-room, Monsieur Tyrell?” asked the countess,

who stood between Percie and myself, with
a hand on the shoulder of each.

I had scarce found time, as yet, to scrutinize the
artificial portion of the marvellous scene, but, at the
question of Iminild, I bent my gaze on a broad platform,
rising high above the river on its opposite
bank, the rear of which was closed in by perhaps
forty irregular columns, leaving between them and
the sharp precipice on the river-side, an area, in
height and extent of about the capacity of a ball-room.
A rude bridge, of very light construction,
rose in a single arch across the river, forming the
only possible access to the platform from the side
where we stood, and, following the path back with
my eye, I observed a narrow and spiral staircase,
partly of wood and partly cut in the rock, ascending
from the bridge to the gallery we had followed
hither. The platform was carpetted richly, and
flooded with intense light, and in its centre stood a
gorgeous array of smoking dishes, served after the
Turkish fashion, with a cloth upon the floor and surrounded
with cushions and ottomans of every shape
and colour. A troop of black slaves, whose silver
anklets, glittered as they moved, were busy bringing
wines and completing the arrangements for the
meal.

“Allons, mignon!” cried Iminild, getting impatient
and seizing Percie's arm, “let us get over the

river, and perhaps Mr. Tyrell will look down upon
us with his grands yeux while we dine. Oh, you
will come with us! Suivez donc!”

An iron door, which I had not hitherto observed,
let us out from the gallery upon the staircase, and
Myneer Von Krakenpate carefully turned the key
behind us. We crept slowly down the narrow
staircase and reached the edge of the river, where
the warm air from the open sunshine came pouring
through the cavern with the current, bringing with
it a smell of green fields and flowers, and removing
entirely the chill of the cavernous and confined at
mosphere I had found so uncomfortable above
We crossed the bridge, and stepping upon the elastic
carpets piled thickly on the platform, arranged
ourselves about the smoking repast, Myneer Von
Krakenpate sitting down after permission from Iminild,
and Percie by order of the same imperative
dictatress, throwing his graceful length at her feet.

5. CHAP. V.

“Take a lesson in flattery from Percie, Mr. Tyrell,
and be satisfied with your bliss in my society without
asking for explanations. I would fain have the
use of my tongue (to swallow) for ten minutes, and
I see you making up your mouth for a question.

Try this pilau! It is made by a Greek cook,
who fries, boils and stews in a kitchen with a river
for a chimney.”

“Precisely what I was going to ask you. I was
wondering how you cook without smoking your
snow-white roof.”

“Yes, the river is a good slave, and steals wood
as well. We have only to cut it by moonlight and
commit it to the current.”

“The kitchen is down stream, then?”

“Down stream; and down stream lives jolly Perdicaris
the cook, who having lost his nose in a sea-fight,
is reconciled to forswear sunshine and mankind,
and cook rice for pirates.”

“Is it true then that Yvain held command on the
sea?”

“No, not Yvain, but Tranchcœur—his equal in
command over this honest confederacy. By the
way, he his your countryman, Mr. Tyrell, though he
fights under a nom de guerre. You are very likely
to see him, too, for his bark is at Trieste, and he is
the only human being besides myself (and my company
here) who can come and go at will in this
robber's paradise. He is a lover of mine, parbleu!
and since Yvain's death, heaven knows what fancy
he may bring hither in his hot brain! I have armed
Percie for the hazard?”

The thin nostrils of my friend from Cranbourne

Alley dilated with prophetic dislike of a rival thus
abruptly alluded to, and there was that in his face
which would have proved, against all the nurses'
oaths in christendom, that the spirit of a gentleman's
blood ran warm through his heart. Signor Tranchcœur
must be gentle in his suit, I said to myself
or he will find what virtue lies in a hair-trigger!
Percie had forgot to eat since the mention of the
pirate's name, and sat with folded arms and his right
hand on his pistol.

A black slave brought in an omellette souffleé, as
light and delicate as the chef-d'œuvre of an artiste in
the Palais Royal. Iminild spoke to him in Greek,
as he knelt and placed it before her.

“I have a presentiment,” she said, looking at me
as the slave disappeared, “that Tranchcœur will
be here presently. I have ordered another omelette
on the strength of the feeling, for he is fond of it,
and may be soothed by the attention.”

“You fear him, then?”

“Not if I were alone, for he is as gentle as a woman
when he has no rival near him—but I doubt
his relish of Percie. Have you dined?”

“Quite.”

“Then come and look at my garden, and have a
peep at old Perdicaris. Stay here, Percie, and finish
your grapes, mon-mignon! I have a word to say
to Mr. Tyrell.”

We walked across the platform, and passing between
two of the sparry columns forming its boundary,
entered upon a low passage which led to a large
opening, resembling singularly a garden of low
shrubs turned by some magic to sparkling marble.

Two or three hundred of these stalagmite cones,
formed by the dripping of calcareous water from
the roof, (as those on the roof were formed by the
same fluid which hardened and pondered,) stood
about in the spacious area, every shrub having an
answering cone on the roof, like the reflection of the
same marble garden in a mirror. One side of this
singular apartment was used as a treasury for the
spoils of the band, and on the points of the white
cones hung pitchers and altar lamps of silver, gold
drinking-cups, and chains, and plate and jewellery
of every age and description. Farther on were piled,
in unthrifty confusion, heaps of velvets and silks, fine
broadcloths, French gloves, shoes and slippers,
brocades of Genoa, pieces of English linen, damask
curtains still fastened to their cornices, a harp and
mandolin, cases of damaged bons-bons, two or three
richly-bound books, and, (last and most valuable in
my eyes,) a minature bureau, evidently the plunder
of some antiquary's treasure, containing in its little
drawers antique gold coins of India, carefully dated
and arranged, with a list of its contents half-torn
from the lid.

“You should hear Tranchcœur's sermons on
these pretty texts,” said the countess, trying to thrust
open a bale of Brusa silk with her Turkish slipper.

“He will beat off the top of a stalagmite with his
sabre-hilt, and sit down and talk over his spoils and
the adventures they recall, till morning dawns.”

“And how is that discovered in this sunless
cave?”

“By the perfume. The river brings news of it,
and fills the cavern with the sun's first kisses. Those
violets `kiss and tell,' Mr. Tyrell! Apropos des
bottes, let us look into the kitchen.”

We turned to the right, keeping on the same level,
and a few steps brought us to the brow of a considerable
descent forming the lower edge of the carpeted
platform, but separated from it by a wall of close
stalactites. At the bottom of the descent ran the
river, but just along the brink, forming a considerable
crescent, extended a flat rock, occupied by all the
varied implements of a kitchen, and lighted by the
glare of two or three different fires blazing against
the perpendicular limit of the cave. The smoke of
these followed the inclination of the wall, and was
swept entirely down with the current of the river.
At the nearest fire stood Perdicaris, a fat, long-haired
and sinister-looking rascal, his noseless face glowing
with the heat, and at his side waited, with a silver
dish, the Nubian slave who had been sent for
Tranchcœur's omelette.

“One of the most bloody fights of my friend the
rover,” said Iminild, “was with an armed slaver,
from whom he took these six pages of mine. They
have reason enough to comprehend an order, but
too little to dream of liberty. They are as contented
as tortoises, ici-bas.”

“Is there no egress hence but by the iron door?”

“None that I know of, unless one could swim up
this swift river like a salmon. You may have surmised
by this time, that we monopolize an unexplored
part of the great cave of Adelsberg. Common
report says it extends ten miles under ground,
but common report has never burrowed as far as
this, and I doubt whether there is any communication.
Father Krakenpate's clock conceals an entrance,
discovered first by robbers, and handed
down by tradition, heaven knows how long. But—
hark! Tranchcœur, by heaven! my heart foreboded
it!”

I sprang after the countess, who, with her last
exclamation, darted between two of the glittering
columns separating us from the platform, and my
first glance convinced me that her fullest anticipations
of the pirate's jealousy were more than realised.
Percie stood with his back to a tall pillar on the
farther side, with his pistol levelled, calm and
unmoveable as a stalactite; and, with his sabre

drawn and his eyes flashing fire, a tall powerfully-built
man in a sailor's press, was arrested by Iminild
in the act of rushing on him. “Stop! or you die,
Tranchcœur!” said the countess, in a tone of trifling
command. He is my guest!”

“He is my prisoner, madame!” was the answer
as the pirate changed his position to one of perfect
repose and shot his sabre into his sheath, as if a brief
delay could make little difference.

“We shall see that,” said the countess, once more'
with as soft a voice as was ever heard in a lady's
boudoir; and stepping to the edge of the platform'
she touched with her slipper a suspended gong,
which sent through the cavern a shrill reveberation
heard clearly over the rushing music of the river.

In an instant the click of forty muskets from the
other side fell on our ears; and, at a wave of her
hand, the butts rattled on the rocks, and all was still
again.

“I have not trusted myself within your reach,
Monsieur Tranchcœur,” said Iminild, flinging herself
carelessly on an ottoman, and motioning to Percie
to keep his stand, “without a score or two of
my free riders from Mount Semering to regulate
your conscience. I am mistress here, sir! You
may sit down!”

Tranchcœur had assumed an air of the most gentlemanly
tranquillity, and motioning to one of the

slaves for his pipe, he politely begged pardon of
smoking in the countess's presence, and filled the
enamelled bowl with Shiraz tobacco.

“You heard of Yvain's death?” she remarked
after a moment passing her hand over her eyes.

“Yes, at Venice.”

“With his dying words, he gave me and mine in
charge to this Englishman. Mr. Tyrell, Monsieur
Tranchcœur.”

The pirate bowed.

“Have you been long from England?” he asked
with an accent and voice that even in that brief
question, savoured of the nonchalant English of the
West End.

“Two years!” I answered.

“I should have supposed much longer from your
chivalry in St. Etienne, Mr. Tyrell. My countrymen
generally are less hasty. Your valet there,” he
continued, looking sneeringly at Percie, “seems as
quick on the trigger as his master.”

Percie turned on his heel, and walked to the edge
of the platform as if uneasy at the remark, and Iminild
rose to her feet.

“Look you, Tranchcœur! I'll have none of your
sneers. That youth is as well-born and better bred
than yourself, and with his consent, shall have the
authority of the holy church ere long to protect my
property and me. Will you aid me in this, Mr.
Tyrell?”

“Willingly, countess!”

“Then, Tranchcœur, farewell! I have withdrawn
from the common stock Yvain's gold and jewels,
and I trust to your sense of honour to render me at
Venice whatever else of his private property may
be concealed in the island.”

“Iminild!” cried the pirate, springing to his feet,
“I did not think to show a weakness before this
stranger, but I implore you to delay!”

His bosom heaved with strong emotion as he
spoke, and the colour fled from his bronzed features
as if he were struck with a mortal sickness.

“I cannot lose you, Iminild! I have loved you
too long. You must—”

She motioned to Percie to pass on.

“By heaven, you shall!” he cried, in a voice suddenly
become hoarse with passion; and reckless of
consequences, he leaped across the heaps of cushions,
and, seizing Percie by the throat, flung him with
terrible and headlong violence into the river.

A scream from Iminild, and the report of a musket
from the other side, rang at the same instant
through the cavern, and as I rushed forward to
seize the pistol which he had struck from Percie's
hand, his half-drawn sabre slid back powerless into
the sheath, and Tranchcœur dropped heavily on his
knee.

“I am peppered, Mr. Tyrell!” he said, waving me

off with difficult effort to smile, “look after the
boy, if you care for him! A curse on her German
wolves!”

Percie met me on the bridge, supporting Iminild,
who hung on his neck, smothering him with kisses.

“Where is that dog of a pirate?” she cried, suddenly
snatching her ataghan from the sheath and
flying across the platform. “Tranchcœur!”

Her hand was arrested by the deadly pallor and
helpless attitude of the wounded man, and the weapon
dropped as she stood over him.

“I think it is not mortal,” he said, groaning as he
pressed his hand to his side, “but take your boy
out of my sight! Iminild!”

“Well, Tranchcœur!”

“I have not done well—but you know my nature
—and my love! Forgive me, and farewell! Send
Bertram to stanch his blood—I get faint! A little
wine, Iminild!”

He ook the massive flagon from her hand, and
drank a long draught, and then drawing to him a
cloak which lay near, he covered his head and dropped
on his side as if to sleep.

Iminild knelt beside him and tore open the shirt
beneath his jacket, and while she busied herself in
stanching the blood, Perdicaris, apparently well prepared
for such accidents, arrived with a surgeon's
probe, and, on examination of the wound, assured

Iminild that she might safely leave him. Washing
her hands in the flagon of wine, she threw a cloak
over the wet and shivering Percie, and, silent with
horror at the scene behind us, we made our way
over the bridge, and in a short time, to my infinite
relief, stood in the broad moonlight on the portico
of Myneer Krakenpate.

My carriage was soon loaded with the baggage
and treasure of the countess, and with the same
swift horses that had brought us from Planina, we
regained the post-road, and sped on toward Venice
by the Friuli. We arrived on the following night
at the fair city so beloved of romance, and with
what haste I might, I procured a priest and married
the Countess Iminild to gentleman Percie.

As she possessed now a natural guardian, and a
sufficient means of life, I felt released from my death
vow to Yvain, and bidding farewell to the “happy
couple,” I resumed my quiet habit of travel, and
three days after my arrival at Venice, was on the
road to Padua by the Brenta.