University of Virginia Library

THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA.

—La Bruyere.

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 indistinct 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 mementoes of death, and presenting through
every sense, some unobtrusive persuasion to the duties
of the spot—all these, I can not 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 colors came which turned the saintly
garb into a mantle of shot silk, I strayed toward the
eastern window, and was studying the gorgeous dyes
and grotesque drawing of an art lost to the world, when
I discovered that I was in the neighborhood 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
escape 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 endeavored
to transport myself to an American 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 génez, 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 humors 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 quixotic. 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 graceful 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 tolerably 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 to 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 mustache
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 his taking my place. I officiated as tèmoin,
and, as they took their position, 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 caleche,
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 gayly, 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. CHAPTER 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 chattels about with all necessary freedom.

“That,” said the chevalier, entering, as I turned out
the face of a fresh colored 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 broadsword 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 apparently 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 neighborhood 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, enamored 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 lminild
(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
enamored 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 honor. 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 color 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 exotics, 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 lofty 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 neighboring 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
up like 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 crea
ture 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 event 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 paid 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 color
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 Hdefert, 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 flud
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.

“Traiter 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. CHAPTER 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 countress Iminild, of whom common rumor, 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 and
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 recognise,
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 thoughtfully 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 his 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
protégée,” she said, rather gayly, 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
revery, 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 humor
with fate for having drawn me into very embarrassing
circumstances—out of humor with myself for the
quixotic step which had first brought it on me—and a
little of out humor with Percie (perhaps from an unacknowledged
jealousy 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 Pontangos.” 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 privileged 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 ban
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 pass
port, 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 favorite character, however, and have done
with such 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 inquiry, 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 honor, 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
trojet 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 epaulets 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 strode 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
proffered 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 parlor
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 courtesy, 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 at 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. CHAPTER 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 humor to ask the
countess, a second time, what errand she could have
in so rustic a neighborhood. 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 faney 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 honor! 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 Mynheer 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 remonstrance with my best-humored 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 of 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 recognised 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 parlor. 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 visting 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 favorite 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 honor
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 favor, 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 bluish
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
awoke in my mind a momentary suspicion.

“No—none that I can forsee—but they are loaded.
A favorite, 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 Mynheer 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 innumerable
lamps flooding the air around, and a long
snow-white vista of the same brilliancy and effect
stretching downward before me. Two ridges of
the calcareous strata 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 ahead we could see two sparry columns standing
close together, and apparently closing up the way.

“Courage! my venerable guardian!” cried Iminild,
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 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 endeavored
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 pendent stalactites glittering
on the roof, and showering back light upon the
clusters of blazing torches fastened everywhere upon
the shelvy sides. Here and there vast columns,
alabaster white, with bases of gold color, fell from the
roof to the floor, like pillars left standing in the ruined
aisle of a cathedral, and from corner to corner ran
their curtains of the same brilliant calcareous spars

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 Mynheer 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 carpeted
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 color. 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 done!”

An iron door, which I had not hitherto observed,
let us out from the gallery upon the staircase, and
Mynheer 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 atmosphere 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, Mynheer 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. CHAPTER 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 is 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 omelette 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 miniature
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 comprehended 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 realized. 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 reverberation 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 for
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, savored of the nonchalant English of the
west end.

“Two years!” I answered.

“I should have supposed much longer from your
chivalry in St. Etienue, 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 honor 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 color fled from his bronzed features as if he
were struck with a mortal sickness.

“I can not 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 cushion,
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 this blood—I get faint! A little
wine, Iminild!”

He took 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 Mynheer
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.