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Boodle, jumping up from his seat. | German albums, in which good simKlingensplior's wife old! Is he ple little ledger every friend or acmarried again? Is Dorothea, then, quaintance of the owner inscribes a u-d-dead?" poem or stanza from some favorite poet or philosopher with the transcriber's own name, as thus:

"Dead! -no more dead than you are, only I take her to be five and thirty. And when a woman has had nine children, you know, she looks none the younger; and I can tell ye, that when she trod on my corruns at a ball at the Grand Juke's, I felt something heavier than a feather on my foot.

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"Madame de Klingensphor, then," replied I, hesitating somewhat, "has grown rather - rather st-st-out? I could hardly get out the out, and trembled I don't know why as I asked the question.

"Stout, begad! she weighs fourteen stone, saddle and bridle. That's right, down goes my pipe; flop! crash falls the tumbler into the fender! Break away, my boy, and remember, whoever breaks a glass here pays a dozen."

The fact was, that the announcement of Dorothea's changed condition caused no small disturbance within me, and I expressed it in the abrupt manner mentioned by young

Blake.

Roused thus from my reveric, I questioned the young fellow about his residence at Kalbsbraten, which has been always since the war a favorite place for our young gentry, and heard with some satisfaction that Potzdorff was married to the Behrenstein, Haarbart had left the dragoons, the Crown Prince had broken with the- but mum! of what interest are all these details to the reader, who has never been at friendly little Kalbsbraten?

Presently Lynch reaches me down one of the three books that formed his library ("The Racing Calendar" and a book of fishing-flies making up the remainder of the set). "And there's my album," says he. "You'll find plenty of hands in it that you'll recognize, as you are an old Pumpernickelaner." And so I did, in truth: it was a little book after the fashion of

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CHAPTER II.

OTTILIA IN PARTICULAR.

SOME kind critic who peruses these writings will, doubtless, have the goodness to point out that the simile of the Mediterranean heath is applied to two personages in this chapter to Ottilia and Dorothea, and say, Psha! the fellow is but a poor unimaginative creature not to be able to find a simile apiece at least for the girls; how much better would we have done the business!

will say that I have dislocated my leg for some days you will state that I am in considerable danger. You are a good fellow and a man of courage I know, for which very reason you can appreciate those qualities in another; so mind, if you breathe a word of my secret, either you or I must lose a life."

Away went the surgeon, and the next day all Kalbsbraten knew that I was on the point of death: I had been delirious all night, had had eighty leeches, besides I don't know how much medicine; but Kalbsbrateners knew to a scruple. Whenever anybody was ill, this little kind society knew what medicines were pre

Well, it is a very pretty simile. The girls were rivals, were beautiful, I loved them both, which should have the sprig of heath? Mr. Cruikshank (who has taken to serious paint-scribed. ing) is getting ready for the exhibition a fine picce, representing FitzBoodle on the Urrisbeg Mountain, county Galway, Ireland, with a sprig of heath in his hand, hesitating, like Paris, on which of the beauties he should bestow it. In the background is a certain animal between two bundles of hay; but that I take to represent the critic, puzzled to which of my young beauties to assign the choice.

If Dorothea had been as rich as Miss Coutts, and had come to me the next day after the accident at the ball, and said, " George, will you marry me?" it must not be supposed I would have done any such thing. That dream had vanished forever: rage and pride took the place of love; and the only chance I had of recovering from my dreadful discomfiture was by bearing it bravely, and trying, if possible, to awaken a little compassion in my favor. I limped home (arranging my scheme with great presence of mind as I actually sat spinning there on the ground)-I limped home, sent for Pflastersticken, the court-surgeon, and addressed him to the following effect: "Pflastersticken," says I, "there has been an accident at court of which you will hear. You will send in leeches, pills, and the deuce knows what, and you

Everybody in the town knew what everybody had for dinner. If Madame Rumpel had her satin dyed ever so quietly, the whole society was on the qui vive; if Countess Pultuski sent to Berlin for a new set of teeth, not a person in Kalbsbraten but what was ready to compliment her as she put them on; if Potzdorff paid his tailor's bill, or Muffinstein bought a piece of black wax for his mustaches, it was the talk of the little city. And so, of course, was my accident. In their sorrow for my misfortune, Dorothea's was quite forgotten, and those eighty leeches saved me. I became interesting; I had cards left at my door; and I kept my room for a fortnight, during which time I read every one of M. Kotzebue's plays.

At the end of that period I was convalescent, though still a little lame. I called at old Speck's house and apologized for my clumsiness, with the most admirable coolness; I appeared at court, and stated calmly that I did not intend to dance any more; and when Klingenspohr grinned, I told that young gentleman such a piece of my mind as led to his wearing a large sticking-plaster patch on his nose: which was split as neatly down the middle as you would split an orange at dessert. In a word, what man could do to repair my defeat, I did.

There is but one thing now of which I am ashamed-of those killing epigrams which I wrote (mon Dieu ! must I own it? - but even the fury of my anger proves the extent of my love!) against the Speck family. They were handed about in confidence at court, and made a frightful sensation :

"Is it possible?

"There happened at Schloss P-mp-rn-ckel,

A strange mishap our sides to tickle,
And set the people in a roar;
A strange caprice of fortune fickle:
I never thought at Pumpernickel

To see a SPECK upon the floor !"

wounding her accepted lover across the nose I determined to carry my revenge still further, and to fall in love with somebody else. This person was Ottilia v. Schlippenschlopp.

Otho Sigismund Freyherr von Schlippenschlopp, Knight Grand Cross of the Ducal Order of the TwoNecked Swan of Pumpernickel, of the Porc-et-Siflet of Kalbsbraten, Commander of the George and Blue-Boar of Dummerland, Excellency, and High Chancellor of the United Duchies, lived in the second floor of a house in the Schwapsgasse; where, with his private income and his revenues as Chancellor, amount

“La Perfide Albion; or, a Caution to ing together to some 300l. per annum,

Waltzers.

"Come to the dance,' the Briton said, And forward D-r-th-a led,

Fair, fresh, and three and twenty! Ah, girls, beware of Britons red! What wonder that it turned her head? SAT VERBUM SAPIENTI.”

"Reasons for not Marrying.

"The lovely Miss S.

Will surely say "yes,"
You've only to ask and try
That subject we'll quit,'
Says Georgy the wit,

"I've a much better SPEC in my eye!'"

This last epigram especially was voted so killing that it flew like wildfire; and I know for a fact that our Chargé-d'Affaires at Kalbsbraten sent a courier express with it to the Foreign Office in England, whence, | through our amiable Foreign Secretary, Lord P-lm-rston, it made its way into every fashionable circle: nay, I have reason to believe caused a smile on the cheek of R-y-lty itself. Now that Time has taken away the sting of these epigrams, there can be no harm in giving them; and 'twas well enough then to endeavor to hide under the lash of wit the bitter pangs of humiliation: but my heart bleeds now to think that I should have ever brought a tear on the gentle cheek of Dorothea.

Not content with this- with humiliating her by satire, and with

he maintained such a state as very few other officers of the Grand-Ducal Crown could exhibit. The Baron is married to Maria Antoinetta, a Countess of the house of Kartoffelstadt, branches of which have taken root all over Germany. He has no sons, and but one daughter, the Fräulein Or

TILIA.

The Chancellor is a worthy old gentleman, too fat and wheezy to preside at the Privy Council, fond of his pipe, his ease, and his rubber. His lady is a very tall and pale Roman-nosed Countess, who looks as gentle as Mrs. Robert Roy, where, in the novel, she is for putting Baillie Nicol Jarvie into the lake, and who keeps the honest Chancellor in the greatest order.

The Fräulein Ottilia had not arrived at Kalbsbraten when the little affair between me and Dorothea was going on; or rather had only just come in for the conclusion of it, being presented for the first time that year at the ball where I — where I met with my accident.

At the time when the Countess was young, it was not the fashion in her country to educate the young ladies so highly as since they have been educated; and provided they could waltz, sew, and make puddings, they were thought to be decently bred; being seldom called upon for algebra or Sanscrit in the discharge of the

honest duties of their lives.
Fräulein Ottilia was of the modern
school in this respect, and came back
from her pension at Strasburg speak-
ing all the languages, dabbling in all
the sciences: an historian, a poet,
a blue of the ultramarinest sort, in a
word. What a difference there was,
for instance, between poor, simple
Dorothea's love of novel-reading and
the profound encyclopædic learning
of Ottilia!

But When they met, Ottilia would bounce towards her soul's darling, and put her hands round her waist, and call her by a thousand affectionate names, and then talk of her as only ladies or authors can talk of one another. How tenderly she would hint at Dora's little imperfections of education!- how cleverly she would insinuate that the poor girl had no wit! and, thank God, no more she had. The fact is, that do what I will I see I'm in love with her still, and would be if she had fifty children; but my passion blinded me then, and every arrow that fiery Ottilia discharged I marked with savage joy. Dolly, thank heaven, didn't mind the wit much; she was too simple for that. But still the recurrence of it would leave in her heart a vague, indefinite feeling of pain, and somehow she began to understand that her empire was passing away, and that her dear friend hated her like poison; and so she married Klingenspohr. I have written myself almost into a reconciliation with the silly fellow; for the truth is, he has been a good, honest husband to her, and she has children, and makes puddings, and is happy.

Before the latter arrived from Strasburg (where she had been under the care of her aunt the canoness, Countess Ottilia of Kartoffelstadt, to whom I here beg to offer my humblest respects), Dorothea had passed for a bel esprit in the little court circle, and her little simple stock of accomplishments had amused us all very well. She used to sing "Herz, mein Herz" and "T'en souviens-tu," in a decent manner (once, before heaven, I thought her singing better than Grisi's), and then she had a little album in which she drew flowers, and used to embroider slippers wonderfully, and was very merry at a game of loto or forfeits, and had a hundred small agrémens de société which rendered her an acceptable member of it.

But when Ottilia arrived, poor Ottilia was pale and delicate. She Dolly's reputation was crushed in a wore her glistening black hair in month. The former wrote poems bands, and dressed in vapory white both in French and German; she muslin. She sang her own words to painted landscapes and portraits in her harp, and they commonly insinreal oil; and she twanged off a rat-uated that she was alone in the world, tling piece of Listz or Kalkbrenner in such a brilliant way, that Dora scarcely dared to touch the instrument after her, or venture, after Ottilia had trilled and gurgled through "Una voce," or "Di piacer" (Rossina was in fashion then), to lift up her little modest pipe in a ballad. What was the use of the poor thing going to sit in the park, where so many of the young officers used ever to gather round her? Whirr! Ottilia went by galloping on a chestnut mare with a groom after her, and presently all the young fellows who could buy or hire horseflesh were prancing in her train. I

that she suffered some inexpressible and mysterious heart-pangs, the lot of all finer geniuses, that though she lived and moved in the world, she was not of it, that she was of a consumptive tendency and might look for a premature interment. She even had fixed on the spot where she should lie: the violets grew there, she said, the river went moaning by ; the gray willow whispered sadly over her head, and her heart pined to be at rest. "Mother," she would say, turning to her parent, "promise me -promise me to lay me in that spot when the parting hour has come!

At which Madame de Schlippenschlopp would shriek, and grasp her in her arms; and at which, I confess, I would myself blubber like a child. She had six darling friends at school, and every courier from Kalbsbraten carried off whole reams of her letterpaper.

In Kalbsbraten, as in every other German town, there are a vast number of literary characters, of whom our young friend quickly became the chief. They set up a literary journal, which appeared once a week, upon light-blue or primrose paper, and which, in compliment to the lovely Ottilia's maternal name, was called "The Kartoffelnkranz." Here are a couple of her ballads extracted from "The Kranz," and by far the most cheerful specimen of her style. For in her songs she never would willingly let off the heroines without a suicide or a consumption. She never would hear of such a thing as a happy marriage, and had an appetite for grief quite amazing in so young a person. As for her dying and desiring to be buried under the willowtree, of which the first ballad is the subject, though I believed the story then, I have at present some doubts about it. For, since the publication of my Memoirs, I have been thrown much into the society of literary per

Soon as she saw the tree,

Her step moved fleeter. No one was there- ah mel No one to meet her!

"Quick beat her heart to hear
The far bell's chime
Toll from the chapel-tower
The trysting time:

But the red sun went down
In golden flame,

And though she looked round,
Yet no one came!

"Presently came the night,
Sadly to greet her,
Moon in her silver light,
Stars in their glitter.
Then sank the moon away
Under the billow,

Still wept the maid alone -
There by the willow!

"Through the long darkness,
By the stream rolling,
Hour after hour went on
Tolling and tolling.
Long was the darkness,
Lonely and stilly;
Shrill came the night-wind,
Piercing and chilly.

"Shrill blew the morning breeze, Biting and cold,

Bleak peers the gray dawn

Over the wold.

Bleak over moor and stream

Looks the gray dawn,
Gray, with dishevelled hair,
Still stands the willow there-
THE MAID IS GONE!

"Domine, Domine ! Sing we a litany, ·

sons (who admire my style hugely), Sing for poor maiden-hearts broken and

and cgad! though some of them are dismal enough in their works, I find them in their persons the least sentimental class that ever a gentleman fell in with.

"THE WILLOW-TREE. "Know ye the willow-tree Whose gray leaves quiver, Whispering gloomily To yon pale river? Lady, at even-tide

Wander not near it: They say its branches hide A sad, lost spirit!

"Once to the willow-tree

A maid came fearful, Paled seemed her cheek to be, Her blue eye tearful;

weary;

Domine, Domine! Sing we a litany,

Wail we and weep we a wild Miserere!”

One of the chief beauties of this ballad (for the translation of which I received some well merited compliments) is the delicate way in which the suicide of the poor young woman under the willow-tree is hinted at; for that she threw herself into the water, and became one among the lilies of the stream, is as clear as a pikestaff. Her suicide is committed some time in the darkness, when the slow hours move on tolling and tolling, and is hinted at darkly as befits the time and the deed.

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