as yet but little affected, and if he came again and again for many days in succession, it was simply because the peasant girl was right when she averred, that the forest rides were, by far, the most beautiful to be found in the neighbourhood of Vienna. Thus a whole week passed away, each day of which saw them meet for a few brief minutes; but, as yet, no more intimate relation sprang up between them, unless it were the habit of meeting. He had learned nothing more of her, than that her name was Catherine, and her father's, Tillman; and that the convalescence of this latter was rapidly and steadily advancing. The least change of occupation in the young unknown, the most trifling incident in the life of the peasant girl, might have been sufficient to break this habit, and leave to both no more than a vague remembrance, without emotion or regret, had not a word, which might have been sooner uttered, called up again one of those abrupt explosions by which their first interviews had been broken, and which Catherine already perceived no longer. The day on which it happened was a Saturday: at his approach, Catherine ran to meet him, with a charming expression of discontent upon her pouting lips.

"Do you know," said she, that I am vexed? they want me to go on a party of pleasure to-morrow.'

"How is that?" asked the young man, smiling at the phrase she had employed. "Madame Apsberg, you know, she whom you took for my mother, has invited me to the fête at her village, and my father has given leave that I shall go."

"Well," replied the youth, still smiling. "Well!" she returned, pettishly, as if vexed at his want of comprehension; "well! if I go there to-morrow, how can I come here?" To any other heart than his, these words would have been the complete avowal of an attachment, of which she who felt it was yet ignorant; but to him they conveyed nothing more than the expression of a pleasure in his society, for which his gratitude was due; and to shew that it was not withheld, he did more for her than he had ever before done for any other, he appointed a time for their next meeting; saying, with a pleasant kindness,

"Well, then, it shall be on Monday." "Oh yes, on Monday," she answered, with an air of gesture and delight; "but early, very early, for I have so much to say to you."

"Yes, early," he replied, with a cheerful smile; and, as she parted from him,

smiling in her turn, " Adieu, Catherine," he cried, waving his hand.

"Adieu, monsieur;" then stopping suddenly, and returning to his side, she added, with her accustomed graceful naiveté, "but you have never told me your name yet."

"My name," he cried, starting and casting upon her a look of trouble and despair; "my name," he repeated, bitterly; and then, after a long and dreadful pause, "I have neither name nor place."

At this wretched look, this incomprehensible reply, the poor girl started back with terror, as though she thought him mad, yet, with the most touching expression of tenderness and pity; and he, seeing the effect of his words, perceiving that even the little happiness, of which he might partake, was, at every moment, in danger of destruction upon the rock of his cruel destiny,-he sorrowed for himself, for the grateful habit of forgetting his own misery in the converse of this innocent and lovely creature; and, as he slowly rode away, he exclaimed, in a despairing voice, "Oh, why did you ask me for my name?"

Peace was not in his breast as he returned that day to Vienna; his feelings were those of one condemned to death, just awakened from a dream of life and liberty. With a stern and resolute integrity he surveyed the aspect of his probable destiny, and severely condemned himself for being turned aside even for a moment from the rigid and joyless course he had marked out; but this condemnation had less reference to the grief which he himself endured, than to that which he must cause; for at length his eyes were opened to the real nature of the relation existing between him and the peasant girl. He recalled her every look, each word, each movement, and there discovered love, love from which he ought to fly; which could end only in despair; for he felt that it would be a crime to link with his own hopeless destiny, the life of any other human creature. He condemned himself; but he could only pity Catherine. How should he act? Should he return no more, and leave her to expect him, long for his coming, waste the weary hours in lamenting his neglect? That would be cruel and ungrateful. Should he meet her once again, and bid her farewell for ever? This appeared both just and easy; pretexts for the discontinuance of their meetings could be readily assigned, and the poor girl would be spared the

misery of hope deferred and every day deceived. He felt and acknowledged this to be the preferable course, and yet he determined to adopt the other; for, in probing the secrets of his own heart, he began to fear that it would require less of courage to abandon Catherine at once, than to behold her grief, and sustain his resolution through a parting interview.

Having thus resolved, he remained at Vienna on the Monday appointed for the meeting, until long after the hour at which he felt assured that Catherine would have returned to her father's house; then he mounted his horse, and rode into the forest, certain of being alone at the well-known spot, the memory of which was henceforth to be for ever graven on his heart. His progress was so slow that darkness was around him ere he reached the corner of the avenue; yet Catherine was there. The moment he appeared in sight, she waved her handkerchief; and he, with a mixed feeling of delight and shame at his own weakness, yielding to the impulse of the moment, rode swiftly toward the place where she was standing. As soon as he was near enough to hear, she exclaimed aloud,

"Oh, how very late you are!" "Have you been waiting for me?" he said.

"Yes, ever since the morning, and I had so many things to say to you; but now I must go, for my father is expecting me, and no doubt wondering what has become of me. But, to-morrow!"

"To-morrow?" said the young man doubtfully. "To-morrow? I am afraid

"Oh," she cried, interrupting him, "to-morrow I can wait as long as you please; I will arrange matters on purpose.

And with these words she darted away before he had time to speak, even if he had possessed the power and the will. The next day he was first at the rendezvous. There is in every human event a fatal moment, in which all is established or destroyed; if he had not seen Catherine on the preceding day, they would never have met again; having seen her, it was decreed that they should now meet always and since he had permitted himself to be led, by the simple witchery of this artless girl, although unwittingly, into the way of love, he was now prepared to move forward in it, of his own free will, and with the boldest progress. His heart would not permit him again to inflict upon Catherine that long and weary watching, in which had been dis

closed to him the whole extent and power of her innocent passion; this time he was first at the place of meeting. Catherine had not reproached him for his delay, nor did she now thank him for his promptness; subdued and controlled as she was by the tyranny of a sentiment, of whose nature she as yet was ignorant, it never occurred to her that the object of her love could in any thing have motives and feelings different from her own, and she doubted not for a moment that his lateness of the day before and his early arrival now, were both results of a similar necessity. For the first time he had dismounted from his horse, and was walking rapidly along the alley by which she came to meet him. At first she did not recognise him in this new position, and stopped short in her advance; but in a moment her doubts were put to flight, and she ran to meet him, exclaiming,

"What are we to do? my father is quite well again, and I have no excuse for coming out to meet you every day; how are we to manage now?"

Should he have replied, "Alas! we are to meet no more?" who would venture to ascribe to an unvitiated heart of twenty, this cold and miserable reply? who that reads this tale will condemn the weakness of him who had not strength and courage so to answer? He was silent, as if he could not, or dared not propose any mode or time of future interviews, or perhaps feared even to attempt it. She too, was silent, but it was only that she might the better recall, ere she proposed to him, all the plans she had imagined.

"This is what I have thought," she said: "before my father was taken ill, he was in the habit of going out every night, and never returned till late; within the last few days he has resumed this habit, and now the evening is the only time when I am free. Are you too at liberty after sunset?"

"At liberty!" replied the youth, with a thoughtful and melancholy smile; "I at liberty!" Then he seemed to shake off the reflection that oppressed him, and added, looking affectionately at Catherine, "I will be at liberty, at least for you."

"Well, then," she answered gaily, "at night I can come, after seven o'clock: not here, for the vintagers all pass this way in returning from their work, but a little farther in the wood, at a solitary place, where no one ever comes; walk with me, and I will shew it to you."

And thus speaking, she placed her arm within that of her companion, and led him gently forward; while he, yielding to her guidance, and smiling on her with his melancholy eyes, could not help exclaiming

"Ah, Catherine, how good and loveable you are!"

He could not have said more, even in giving utterrance to his real thought, and telling her at once how much he loved. They reached the secluded spot; the way to it was described and pointed out; and Catherine made him see how easily it could be gained or left without the risk of observation, yet how impossible it was for any to approach without being seen by them. Then they returned in silence to the place where they had met; and there standing by his horse, which he had fastened to a tree, the young man saw a mounted officer apparently waiting his return. The blood rushed into his face at sight of this intruder, but the haughty look with which he gazed upon him, shewed that it was not for himself or his own situation that he blushed.

"My lord," the officer began: but the frown and gesture of the person he addressed, warned him that the title was unwelcome at the moment; and with the ready quickness of a practised courtier, he resumed, "my lord the archduke wishes your attendance, sir."

A look of haughty and displeased surprise gleamed for a moment in the eyes of the unknown; but noticing the eager curiosity with which Catherine surveyed them both, he checked the utterance of what was passing in his mind, and answered, cheerfully, "It is well, sir; within the hour I will wait upon him, and I thank you for the information." The officer bowed profoundly, and rode off at full speed without another word. The young man then turned to Catherine, who gazed upon him with an aspect of astonishment and fear, and in a low voice said, "I thought he said, my lord,' to you!"

"And if he had, you would, of course, have been astonished?"

"I do not know; but I am very glad that it was not you he meant.' "You heard, then, that it was not I?"

"Oh, yes, certainly; but still you are

a courtier," she added, retaining the timid look and tone which had now usurped the place of her former undoubt ing confidence.

"A courtier ? no, not exactly that-" "An officer of the archduke's suite, is it not?" said Catherine, with somewhat less embarrassment.

"Yes-something of the kind." "But your rank is not very high, is it? You are not a colonel? Not a major? You are.”

"A sub-lieutenant, you would say, perhaps," said the young man smiling. "Oh yes," she answered cheerfully; a sub-lieutenant; I thought it must be that."

And he, easily perceiving why she had fixed upon this rank for him, that it was in the hope of a not too great inequality between them, of a parity of station which should not take away from her all possibility of being loved and happy, he could not undeceive her; and they were about to part without another word, when Catherine suddenly exclaimed,

"But how did he know that he would find you here?"

"This question struck the young man with a sudden and painful surprise; he cast his eyes around with a piercing and indignant look, and repeated thoughtfully,

"How, indeed, did they know that?" "You surely have not mentioned it to any one?" said Catherine, as if gently chiding him for an indiscretion which she knew would never be repeated.

"Mentioned it to any one!" he echoed; "is there any to whom I can speak of you or myself?" as if she knew, or could comprehend the secret of his existence. Then, he added, “ But have you not yourself spoken of our meeting?"

"I!" she said, casting down her eyes, "I have not even told it to my father; I should not have owned even to my confessor, that I see you every day in the forest, if he had not asked me whether I were not in love with somebody." And the poor girl was so frightened and ashamed, and he so occupied with the single idea which perplexed his mind, that neither of them recognised the complete avowal of attachment so openly conveyed in these last words.

"But you did not tell him who I am -my name?" said the young man eagerly.

"Your name?" she answered, sadly, and with downcast eyes; 66 your name?" "True, true," was his reply, as he

remembered that she had not a name to murmur even in her dreams, to call upon in her distress; "you are right, and I must hasten to Vienna, and there learn who it is that has betrayed me. Farewell, Catherine!" and as he moved away without a parting look, she began to weep, and answered with a sob, "Adieu monsieur."

He turned, saw the big drops stealing down her cheeks, and whispered tenderly, "Remember, Catherine, to-morrow!"

SO

A bright smile, beaming through tears, was Catherine's only reply; and she saw him depart, relieved at once by the hope of the next day's meeting, from the doubts and fears through which she had just passed. Not so with the young unknown. He racked his brain in conjecturing how or by what perfect system of espionage he had been traced readily to the rendezvous. The thought that his actions should be the subject of idle discourse, of the small talk of the courtly circle, it might be of jesting and laughter, excited him even to rage; rather than undergo that, it were better, he thought, to see the maiden no more; and such would have been his resolve, had the archduke spoken a word to indicate that his secret was known. was the feeling with which the young man entered his presence.

Such

My son," said the archduke, "I have sent for you, to give you a piece of advice."

"I am here to receive it," was the cold and suspicious reply.

"Listen to me then, and do not suspect me of wishing either to hurry you on to the undertaking of measures which may not have entered into your views, or to turn you aside from such as you have conceived. I speak to you, as with the voice of a navigator who has just completed his voyage, and who makes known his discovery of a hidden and dangerous rock, without knowing whether his hearer intends or not to embark.'

These words, and the deep emotion with which they were uttered, at once wrought a change in the feelings of him to whom they were addressed, and he listened, now, with deep and respectful attention. The archduke continued

"A man sought and obtained an interview with me this morning; as soon as we were alone, he placed in my hands a written paper, which I read carefully, as he requested; when I had finished, he began, my name is——;' but I allowed him to go no farther, tell

ing him that I would forget what I had read, and had no wish to know who he was. He looked at me for some moments in silence, took back his paper, and we nt away with the simple remark, 'you are right; it is to another that I must address myself.' My son, you are that other."

"I" cried the youth, with a look of astonishment.

"Yourself. You can, perhaps, guess what the paper contained. There is no permanence in the condition of France, and it may be that old, faithful friends

A second cry, but one full of despair, burst from the lips of the young man ; and the archduke, alarmed and astonished in equal degrees at the violence of his rapidly changing emotions, hastened to add,

'My son, my son, I have said more than I meant; situated as I am, I can give no opinion; I am utterly powerless, except to inform you of facts. When the man left me, I looked from the window, and saw him pass to the other side of the court; there he was met by another man, with whom he stopped to speak for a few moments; that man is a monk of the abbey at Kleusterneubourg, a well-known tool of the minister. Your frequent absence alarms me; I know not how your time is employed; but I thought myself bound to tell you what I had seen, and I have done so, with as little delay as was possible."

"And I can ask nothing more," said the youth, in a sorrowful tone; "the future has but two issues for me, France or the grave; and who can tell whether the choice will be left to me?"

The old man and the youth whom he had called his son then parted. But this conversation had driven all thoughts of Catherine from the mind of the latter; it continued long to engage his thoughts, and he soon came to the conclusion that it had no reference to the events in the forest, but that the messenger of the archduke had found him so readily only by chance, or by the aid of some casual indications. In these and a thousand conflicting ideas, he passed away the re

mainder of this and the whole of the next day.

Two days afterward, an interview of a totally different character was held between the baron and that taciturn minister of whom mention was made in the early part of this history. Having requested an audience, the baron marched into the great man's presence, and in a whisper, with a look of profound wisdom, began:

"Well, my lord!"

"Well, monsieur le baron!"

"Well!" said the baron; "he went out at seven o'clock last evening, and did not return till long after midnight."

Sedate as he was, the minister could not help laughing outright in the face of his visiter; and he, fully impressed with the belief that his tale was no less than a great secret of state, which might in its consequences shake the continent to its foundations, seeing it thus received, could not resist for a moment the fear that the minister's senses were gone, or that he intended to get up a general war, or perhaps even that he was about to betray his imperial master. The truth never flashed on his mind; to wit, that he himself was a fool, and was treated as such. But a fool is always a dangerous animal; a blockhead kills you by accident, rashly handling the gun which perhaps would remain undischarged in the hands of an assassin; a blundering fool disconcerts oftentimes the deepest laid schemes; and so it befell with the shrewd minister and the idiot courtier.