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The day was breaking ere I came to myself; I arose, all was quiet around me. I walked to the boat – the boatmen were sleeping; I awoke them, and we returned to Dresden. I threw myself upon my bed – my brain seemed stupified and exhausted – I fell into a profound sleep, and woke not till late the following evening. A messenger had brought a note from the Count – “The Countess is worse.” The note detailed briefly that she had passed a feverish and disturbed night, and that the medical attendants had never left the villa. Was it then but a dream, my dreadful vision of the past night? and had my mind, sorrowing for the affliction of my best friend, conjured up the awful scenes I believed to have witnessed? How could it be otherwise? The billet I received told most distinctly that she was confined to her bed, severely, dangerously ill; and of course watched with all the care and attention the most sedulous anxiety could confer. I opened the picture, and then conviction flashed with lightning’s rapidity upon me, that it was not delusion – that no dream had brought these images before my mind. “Ah,” I cried, “my friend, my patron, how have I betrayed thee? Why did I not earlier communicate the dreadful story of the picture, and thus guard you against the machinations by which the fiend himself has surrounded you? But then, what had I to tell? how embody the vague and shadowy doubts that took, even in my own mind, no palpable shape or form?”

That entire day was passed in alternate resolution and abandonment; now, determined to hasten to the villa, and disclose to the Count every circumstance I had seen, and then thinking how little such mere suspicion would gain credence, and how unfit the present moment to obtrude upon his breaking and distracted heart the horrid dread that haunted mine. Towards evening a messenger arrived, breathless with haste. He brought no note, but merely bade me hasten to the villa, as the Count wished to see me with all possible despatch. I mounted the servant’s horse, and in a few minutes reached the place. Servants were running hither and thither distractedly. I asked, eagerly, How was the Countess? No one could tell, but all seemed to imply that there was no hope of recovery. I entered the large spacious and hall, and threw myself upon a sofa; and as I looked around upon the splendid hangings, the gilded cornices, and marbled pillars, and thought upon that sorrow such splendour surrounded, my heart sickened. A shadow fell upon the brightly polished floor. I looked up – a figure stood at the window of the hall, and stared me steadily in the face. The eyes glared wildly, and the dark, malignant features were lit up with a scornful scowl of more than human hate and triumph. It was the incarnation of the Evil One exulting over a fallen and lost spirit. A loud shriek rent the air behind me. I dared not turn my eyes from the horrid sight before me. “Oh, Heavens! it is true! – he is, he is the Tutore!” I cried, as the features, convulsed for an instant with fiendish triumph, resumed their cold and even more appalling aspect. A threatening gesture from his hand arrested me, as I was about to call aloud. My voice came not, though my lips moved. I could not rise from the seat – a dreadful scream rang through the building – another, and another followed – the figure was gone. At the same moment the Count rushed forward – his dress disordered, his hair falling loosely upon his shoulders – madness, wild insanity, in his look. He turned and saw me; and bursting into a torrent of hysterical laughter, cried out, —

“Ha, ha, Carl! – welcome to our abode of pleasure; here, all is gaiety and happiness. What sorrow ever crosses this threshold?” and then, with a sudden revulsion, he stared me fixedly, and said in a low sepulchral voice, “She is dead – dead! But the time is passing – a few minutes more, and ‘twill be too late. This, Carl, will explain all. Take this, and this – these papers must be your care – promise me to observe them to the letter; they were her – her last wishes, and you knew her. Oh, is this a dream? it is too, too horrible to be real. Ah!” said he, after a moment’s pause; “I am ready!” and springing from me wildly, rushed through the door towards the inner apartments.

I started up and followed him – I knew not which way he took in the corridor; and as I stood uncertain, a loud report of fire-arms crashed on my ear. I flew to the sick chamber – servants stood gasping and trembling without, I tore open the door; there, lay the Count upon the floor, his head rent asunder by the bullets from the pistol his hand still grasped. He had endeavoured to reach the bed, and fell half upon a chair. In the bed lay the still warm corpse of the Countess, beautiful as in life. I looked from one to the other; my seared and stony heart, turned to apathy by the horrors I had witnessed, gave no relief to its feeling in tears, and I spoke not as I slowly left the room.

For two days I spoke not to any one. A dreamy unconsciousness seemed to wrap my faculties, and I felt not the time passing. On the third day I rallied sufficiently to open the papers the Count had entrusted to me. One contained an affectionate farewell to myself, from the Count, with a dying bequest; the other, was in a lady’s hand – it bore the Countess’s signature; and here I discovered with surprise and horror, that to the performance of the rash act, by which the Count had terminated his existence, he was bound by a solemn oath. I ready and re-read, to assure myself of the fact. It was true! Such was the terrible promise she extorted from the wretched lover, under the delusive hope of their meeting in another and happier life. Then followed the directions for the funeral, which were minute to a degree. The bodies of both, when coffined, were to be placed in a small temple in the garden, near the river; the key of which was to be sent to a Dominican monk, who lived in an obscure part of the city. By him were the coffins to be closed, which it was strictly enjoined should be done by him, alone and unaccompanied, the night before the burial.

All was done as the wish of the deceased enjoined, and the key despatched by a trusty servant of my own to the friar, who appeared to be in expectation of it, and knew its import.

I sat in the lonely and desolate room, which had formerly been mine, in the villa of the Count; that long and dreary night the wind poured its mournful wailing through the pine-trees in dirgeful memory of him who was no more. From the window of the temple a bright light gleamed till near morning, when it gradually faded away. Thither I repaired at day-break, with the household. All was still – the door lay open – the coffins were closed and screwed down. The friar was gone; we afterwards found that he had not returned to his lodgings in the city, nor was he ever after seen in Dresden. The bodies were committed to the earth, and I returned to my home alone in the world.

It was several years after this – the awful death of my earliest, best friend – that I arrived in Paris to exhibit, in the gallery of the Luxembourg, an historical picture, upon which I had laboured for years. I must be brief – my picture was exhibited, and my most sanguine expectations surpassed by its success; and in a few short days the whole scene of my early triumph was re-enacted. Praise and flattery poured in upon me; and as in Dresden before, so now in Paris, I became the fashion and the rage. But how changed was I! No longer exulting in my success, and buoyant with hopes, I received all the adulation I met with, with cold indifference and apathy.

Among the many attentions which my popularity had conferred upon me, was an invitation to the Hôtel de Rohan. The Duke, a most distinguished connoisseur in painting, having seen and applauded my picture, waited on me. Thus bound in duty, I went; and fatigued by the round of soulless gaiety, in what I could no longer feel happy, or even forgetful, I was retiring early, when the Duke met me and said, —

“Ah, monsieur, I have been looking for you. The Comtesse de Julliart has desired me to present you to her; and when I tell you that she is the most beautiful woman in Paris, I need not say how much you must prize the honour among all the distinctions your talents have earned. Come this way.”

I followed mechanically – my heart took no interest in the scene – and I only longed to be once more alone and unobserved. As I walked after the Duke, he gave me a short account of the beautiful Countess, whom he mentioned as the last descendant of an old and honoured family, supposed to have been long since extinct, when she, a few months before, appeared in Paris, and laid claim to the title. As she possessed unbounded wealth, and had no great favours to ask any where, the Court were charmed with her beauty, and readily admitted her claims, which some were ill-natured enough to say were, perhaps, merely assumed without foundation.

I took little interest in the story. My thoughts were far away, as they ever were for many years, from every thing of the present; and ‘twas only as I heard the Duke announce my name, among a group who stood near a sofa, that I remembered why I was there.

The Countess sat with her back to us, but rose immediately on hearing my name. I bowed deeply as she stood up; and recovering myself from my obeisance, looked up. Oh, merciful Heaven, with what horror I looked! – It was no other than La Mercia! With one loud cry of “Tis she! ‘tis she!” I fell fainting to the floor.

Weeks of wild raving and delirium followed. I left Paris! – I returned to Dresden. There, all reminded me of the past. I fled from my home; and now, after years of wandering in solitary and distant lands, I feel deep in my heart the heavy curse that has followed upon my broken oath, and which has made me an outcast and a broken-hearted wanderer in the world for ever.

THE PASS OF THE ARLBERG

Before leaving the Vorarlberg, and while now on its very frontier, I would wish to keep some record of two very different but yet very characteristic actions, of which this place was the scene. As you begin the ascent of the Arlberg from the westward the road makes two very abrupt zigzags, being carried along the edge of a deep precipice. On looking down over the low battlements that guard the side of the way, you discover, immediately under you, the spire and roofs of a small village several hundred feet below. The churchyard, the little gardens, the narrow streets, and the open “Platz,” where stands a fountain, are all mapped out distinctly. This is the village of Steuben. A strange spot you would deem it for any to have chosen as a dwelling-place, hemmed in between lofty mountains, on whose bleak sides the snow is seen in the very midsummer; surrounded by wild crags and yawning clefts, without even pasturage for any thing save a goat: but your surprise will increase on learning that twice within the last century has this village been swept away by falling avalanches. The first time, the snow meeting in its descent from the mountains on either side actually formed a bridge over a portion of the village; and the houses thus saved were long regarded as under the special favour of the Virgin, with whose image they were most bounteously decorated. The next calamity, however, destroyed the prestige, for they were mingled in the common destruction.

It would be difficult for “Gentlemen of England, who live at home in ease,” to fancy any reason for this unaccountable selection of a residence which adds the highest amount of peril to all the woes of poverty. But every traveller has seen many such instances. In every mountain land they are to be met with, and in each of the Alpine passes little groups of houses – they can scarcely be called villages – can be detected in spots where access is most difficult, where no feature around indicates any means of supporting life, and where the precautions – simple and ineffectual enough – against avalanches, shew that danger to be among their calculations. How explain this? By what associations have these dreary spots become hallowed into homes? Possibly the isolated lives of these little families of men give them the same distaste to mixing with their brethren of the great world, that is felt by a solitary recluse to entering into society. Mayhap, too, the sense of peril itself has its share in the attraction. There is no saying how far this feeling may go, so strange and wayward are the caprices of human nature.

If you enter any of these villages, the narratives of snow storms, of falling precipices, and “Lavines,” as avalanches are called, meet you at every step. They are the great topics of these communities, as the movements of Politics or the vacillations of the Bourse are elsewhere. Scarcely one who has reached the middle term of life has not been, at least once, in the most imminent peril; and these things are talked of as the common accidents of existence, the natural risks of humanity! Very strange does it sound to us who discuss so eagerly the perils of a wooden pavement in our thoroughfares!

It is curious, too, to hear, as one may, most authentically, the length of time life can be preserved beneath the snow. Individuals have been buried so long as three entire days, and yet taken out alive. The cold, of which it would be supposed they had suffered dreadfully, seems scarcely very great; and the porous nature of the snow, and possibly the chinks and crevices left between falling masses, have usually left air sufficient for respiration. That individuals in such circumstances of peril are not, always at least, devoid of their exercise of the faculties, I remember one instance which is sufficiently convincing. It was in the Via Mala, about five miles from the village of Splügen, where, in the year 1829, the little cabriolet that conveyed the mail was swept away by an avalanche. The calamity was not known for full seven or eight hours afterwards, when some travellers from Andeer reaching the spot, found the road blocked up by snow, and perceived a portion of the wooden rail of the road, and a fragment of a horse-harness adhering to it, half-way down the precipice. The guides of the party, well accustomed to reason from such sad premises, at once saw what had happened. Conceiving, however, that the driver had been carried down over the cliff, and consequently to certain death, they directed their sole care to clearing a passage for the travellers. In so doing, they proceeded with long poles to sound the snow, and ascertain to what depth it lay unhardened. It was in one of these “explorations,” and when the pole had sunk above ten feet deep into a mass of soft unfrozen snow, that the man who held it found himself unable to withdraw the staff, and called his comrades to aid him. They soon perceived, however, that the resistance gradually yielded, and from the instinct peculiar to the “hand” – another illustration for Sir Charles Bell – they recognised that it must be the grip of human fingers which held the other end of the pole. They immediately began to excavate on the spot, and in half an hour liberated the poor postilion of the mail car, who, although hearing the shouts and cries of the party for nearly an hour over his head, could not succeed in making his own voice heard, and but for the fortunate accident of the pole must have perished.

Many curious escapes were told to me, but this appeared most singular of all; and now I come back to Steuben, or rather to the wild mountain above it, over which, by a succession of windings, the road leads which joins the Vorarlberg to the Tyrol. About one third of the ascent accomplished, you come upon an abrupt turning of the way, in rounding which a wide carriage can scarcely escape grating on the rock on one side, while from the window on the opposite, the traveller looks down upon * gorge actually yawning at his feet; the low barrier of wall, which does not rise above the nave of the wheel, is a very frail and insignificant protection ok such a spot, but when hid from view, as it is to those seated in a carriage, the effect of the gulf is really enough to shake common nerves. A little inscription upon a stone in this wall records the name of the engineer – Donegani, if I remember aright – who, deeming this spot the triumph of his skill, has selected it whereon to inscribe his achievement. There is another meaning connected with the place, but unrecorded; it could not, indeed, have been transmitted like that of the Engineer, for when the event of which it treats occurred, there was neither wall nor railing, and the road passed some twelve feet higher up, over a ledge of rock, and actually seemed to jut out above the precipice. There is, indeed, a memorial of the transaction to which I allude, but it stands about twelve hundred feet down in the gorge below, – a small wooden cross of rudest workmanship, with the equally rudely inscribed words, “Der Vorspann’s Grab.”

Now for the story, which happily is short.

It was late on a severe evening of winter, as a calèche drawn by two horses drew up to the door of the post-house at Steuben; for then, as now, Steuben was the last post-station before commencing the ascent of the Arlberg. The travellers, two in number, wore military cloaks and foraging caps; but what the precise rank, or to what arm of the service they belonged, not even the prying observations of the host could fathom. Their orders were for fresh horses immediately to cross the mountain, and although the snow-drift was falling fast, and the night dark as pitch, they peremptorily insisted on proceeding. The post regulations of those days were not very stringent and arbitrary; as a post-master may seem nowadays, he was nothing to the autocrat that once ruled the comings and goings of unhappy travellers.

When he averred that his horses had done enough – that it was a saint’s-day – that the weather was too bad or his postilions too weary, the case was hopeless, and the traveller was consigned, without appeal, to the consolations of his own philosophy.

It chanced that on this occasion the whole disposable cavalry of the Post consisted of two blind mares, which were both too old and weak to tempt the cravings of the Commissary, who a few days before had seized on all the draught-cattle to convey stores to Feldkirch, at that time menaced by a French force under Massena.

The officers, however, were urgent in their demand; it was of the last importance that they should reach Inspruck by the following evening. At last, half by menace, half by entreaty, it was arranged that the two old mares should be harnessed to the carriage, the host remonstrating all the while on the inability of the expedient, and averring that, without a Vorspann, a relay of horses, to lead at the steepest parts of the mountain, the attempt would be fruitless. “Nay,” added he, “if you doubt me, ask the boy who is sleeping yonder, and has been driving the Vorspann for years over the Arlberg.” The travellers turned and beheld on a heap of straw, in the corner of the kitchen, a poor little boy, whose ragged uniform of postilion had evidently reached him at third or fourth hand, so large and loosely did it hang around his slender figure. He was sleeping soundly, as well he might, for he had twice crossed the mountain to St. Cristoph on that same day.

“And this book,” said one of the travellers, taking a very tattered and well-thumbed volume which had dropped from the sleeper’s fingers, “has this poor little fellow time to read?”

“He contrives to do it somehow,” said the host, laughing; “nay, more, as you may see there, he has begun to teach himself French. Since he heard that the French army was about to invade us, he has never ceased his studies, sitting up half the night working at that old grammar there, for which he gave all his month’s earnings.”

“And what maybe his reason for this?” said the elder traveller, evidently interested in the recital.

“He has got the notion, that if the French succeed in forcing the pass of Feldkirch and enter the Tyrol, that, as he will be constantly engaged as Vorspann on the mountain, his knowledge of French would enable him to discover many secrets of the enemy, as no one would ever suspect a poor creature like him of having learned a foreign language.

“And his motive was then purely a patriotic one?”

“Purely; he is poor as you see, and an orphan, but his Tyrol blood runs warm and thick in his veins.”

“And what progress has he made?”

“That I cannot answer you, mein Herr; for no one hereabouts knows any thing of French – nor, I suppose, had he ever the opportunity of testing the acquirement himself. They are driven back, I am told.”

“For the present,” said the elder stranger, gravely; “but we shall need all the reserves at Inspruck to hold our ground whenever they renew the attack.”

The sleeper was now aroused to take the saddle; for in the absence of the regular postilion the Vorspann was obliged to take his place.

Still but half awake, the little fellow stood up, and mechanically buttoning up his worn jacket, he took down his whip and prepared for the road.

The travellers were soon ready, and ere many minutes elapsed the calèche had left the village, and, with the best pace the old mares could accomplish, was breasting the snow-drift and the first rise of the mountain. After about an hour’s driving, during which Joseph had exhibited his utmost skill in taking advantage of every available bit of trotting ground, they came at length to the commencement of the steep ascent; and there, hanging his whip on the saddle-peak, the little fellow got down, to relieve his cattle as they toiled up the precipitous ascent. He had not gone far, when, happening to drop behind beside the calèche, what did he hear but the sounds of that very language upon which all his day and night dreams were set! All that he had remarked of the two travellers was, that they wore cloaks of military cut and foraging caps, and now he heard them conversing in French. The whole train of events on which his mind so long had been dwelling came now forcibly before him. “Feldkirch had been forced, the French were already masters of the pass; in a few days they would be over the Arlberg and in possession of all Tyrol!” Such was the terrible series of events a few words of French revealed to his excited imagination. With this conviction he drew nearer and nearer the door, till he could hear the very words they spoke. Now he returned to accomplish the great purpose he had planned.

This “Zuflucht-Haus” or Hospice of Heinrich “Findelkind” – for he was named the “Foundling,” having none to claim or acknowledge him – has been superseded by a more commodious and better endowed edifice under the auspices of the Imperial Government, who have gracefully preserved the memory of the first founder; thus shewing themselves not ashamed to be reminded of their own devoirs by a poor orphan.

And now from the heights of St. Christopher I look down upon the winding glens and bold mountains of Tyrol! The great cross yonder on the rock marks the boundary. And now, adieu! the square fur caps of the Bregenzer Walderin; the huge silver filigree leaves, which look like peacocks’ tails of frosted silver, fastened to the back of the head; the short-waisted dresses, gaily embroidered with the wearer’s initials upon the stomacher; and the stockings, so piously adorned with saintly emblems; and last, but not least, the peaceful quietude of a primitive people – to have lived among whom is to carry away for life-long a pleasant memory of a simple-minded, kindly peasantry.

On descending the Arlberg by the eastward, or the Tyrol side, there is a little low ruin not far from the road. It stands nestled in a small nook between the hills, and shews the stunted and cattle-cropped remains of a few fruit-trees around. This was an ancient shrine where four monks formerly lived, devoting their lives to aiding the travellers of the pass; and some say that its foundation dates from that of the establishment of St. Gallen in Switzerland, and that both owe their origin to the same pious hand – an Irish monk. So is it incontestably true that the great monastery of St. Gall, and the spacious convents of Mehrer-Au and Loch-Au on the borders of the Lake of Constance, were founded by an Irishman. What a destiny, that the nation whose mission should have been the spread of Christianity in the earliest centuries, should present such a spectacle of crime and God-forgetfulness in our own!