THE QUEEN'S CADET (continued 3)

"Go," said she, "and give your master this—the object of his love—and tell him, that a woman capable of such a sacrifice, knows no master but Heaven and her own heart!"

Had chignons been then in fashion, much trouble might have been saved the fair Cécile; who, finding that a hasty departure from Turkey alone could save her, demanded, but in vain, a passport from the Bashaw of Smyrna or Izmir. Urged by her father Achmet, she quitted secretly by sea, and was landed by a French frigate at Toulon, where she learned from the lieutenant of a Maltese galley that her lover had perished in a duel.

Her journey to Turkey had greatly impoverished her, and now she found herself in France almost without a friend, with only five hundred ducats and a diamond, the gift of her father Achmet III. Choosing to conceal her fallen fortune from every eye, she selected an humble dwelling in an obscure part of the city, where, long years after, her editor first discovered her, and where, at a distance from royal thrones, from human wealth and grandeur, she had sought to pass the evening of her days in peace and obscurity. "God has blessed my fortitude," she concludes. "Born in 1710, I have lived to see the 1st of January, 1786, and must now serenely and tranquilly await that peace by which death must make amends for all the surprising and afflicting changes of fortune which I experienced in my passage through life."

Cécile—if ever she existed at all—must have been then in her 76th year. Her narrative is certainly mentioned in the "Journal de Paris;" but in the tide of events that so rapidly followed the year in which the financial troubles of France began, the meeting of the States-General, and the crash of the first Revolution following, we hear no more of "La belle Turque," the soi-disant daughter of the dethroned Achmet III.

THE MARQUIS DE FRATTEAUX,

CAPTAIN OF FRENCH HORSE.

Few events made a greater sensation in England generally, and more particularly in London, in March, 1752, than the mysterious disappearance or abduction—it was called for a time the murder—of the unfortunate Marquis de Fratteaux, who was actually dragged by force from the heart of the English metropolis, and immured in the Bastile, to gratify the strange and unnatural hatred of his own father.

This noble, whose name was Louis Mathieu Bertin, Marquis de Fratteaux, Chevalier of the Order of St. Louis, and a distinguished young captain of French cavalry, was the eldest son of M. Jean Bertin de St. Geyran (Honorary Master of Requests and Counsellor to the Parliament of Bordeaux) and of his wife Lucretia de St. Chamant, both of whose families were deemed, by character and descent, most honourable among the Bordelais. In the Blazon ou Art Héraldique,* Bertin is represented as bearing an escutcheon argent, charged with a saltire (simple) dentelé.

From his birth, the Marquis Louis Mathieu was an object of aversion to his father, who, on the other hand, doted even to absurdity on his youngest son, on whom he lavished all his love and his livres, and on whom he bestowed the estate of Bourdeille. M. Bertin would seem, almost, from the birth of his second boy, to have determined, by every scheme he could devise, to deprive the eldest of his birthright; and this object he followed with singular rancour nearly to the end of his life.

It has never been hinted that M. Bertin suspected the paternity of his heir. Through life the conduct of Madame Bertin was irreproachable and above all suspicion.

In the infancy and boyhood of Louis, his father strove by systematic oppression, and by cutting neglect, to degrade, mortify, and break the spirit of the poor little fellow: on all occasions giving the place of honour, and the whole of his affection, to his second son. As his manhood approached, his father proposed to him the profession of the law, but as he, weary of his unhappy home, displayed an inclination for the army, open war was at once declared by his father against him. To more than one abbé did the young man in his misery appeal for intercession with his tyrannical parent; but such appeals only made matters worse, and the Counsellor became so furious in his wrath, that he made preparations to seclude Louis in some strong vault or cellar of his mansion.

The Marquis having discovered the residence of a young woman who was the mistress of his father, paid her a secret visit, told her the story of his unhappy life and domestic persecution; and, as his own mother seemed powerless in the matter, on his knees sought her interest in his behalf. She would seem to have been touched by the appeal; and rated the Counsellor soundly for his unnatural conduct, threatening him with the loss of her affection "if M. Louis were not left to his own inclination in the choice of a profession."

In the hope, perhaps, that some English or Prussian bullet might rid him of a son whom he hated so cordially, Bertin permitted the Marquis to join the Regiment de Noailles (or 54th Cavalry of the Line, commanded by the Comte d'Ayen, nephew of Marshal Noailles) as a cadet or volunteer; but, according to the system then pursued in the French service, he could receive no pay or emolument, even while campaigning in Flanders and Germany. After fourteen months of this probation, however, he was gazetted to a cornetcy in the Regiment de Maine, and at sixteen years of age became captain of a troop in the 40th Cavalry, or Dragoons of St. Jal, commanded by Brigadier the Comte de St. Jal;* his boyish spirit and bravery (not to mention his rank) having even then attracted the attention of Comte d'Argenson, who was prime minister of France from 1743 to 1757. The Count prevailed upon Louis the Fifteenth to make the Marquis a Chevalier of the Royal Order, and bestow upon him a special pension, in lieu of the wretched pittance allowed him by his father.

This early success in camp and at court seemed to inflame the resentment of the Counsellor, who now began to affirm that the Marquis was not his son, but a changeling, or impostor, substituted by the nurse for his first child, who, he declared, had died while under her charge; but, as this story could be in no way sustained, M. Bertin changed his tactics, and resolved to get rid of his eldest son by—poison!

A fever with which Fratteaux was seized about this time, favoured the infamous idea; and his father, who visited him with an air of concern, contrived to give him, in his medicine, a dose of some deadly drug which he called an infusion of bark. It nearly proved fatal, and would inevitably have done so, but for the prompt arrival of the apothecary who had furnished it, and who, suspecting foul play when summoned by the Marquis, brought with him a powerful antidote.

The Counsellor, who was immensely rich, now suborned some worthless fellows, among whom was an Italian (name unknown), to swear that Fratteaux meditated a parricidal design against his life; "that the Marquis, having a quarrel with his father, drew his sword, and would have killed him but for the interposition of the father of the Italian, who received the thrust, and died of it."

This deposition enabled Bertin to purchase a lettre de cachet, by virtue of which he had his son arrested, and thrust into a monastery near Bordeaux, where he was treated as a prisoner. Though for the crime of attempted parricide he might have been broken alive on the wheel by the then existing laws of France.

Through the great influence of Bertin as a Counsellor of Parliament, all his son's entreaties for release, or for a public trial, were rendered vain, and he lost his commission in the Regiment of St. Jal. Some of his friends, however, having discovered where he was confined, and fearing that he might be secretly put to death, broke into the monastery one night, and assisted him to escape. Through Gascony and Bearn he fled to Spain, where, without so much as a change of clothes, without money or letters of introduction, he arrived, in a famished and destitute condition, at the house of the Comte de Marcillac (a relation of his mother), who derived his title from the little town of that name, nine miles north of Bordeaux.

The Counsellor soon discovered the place of his son's retreat, and, assisted by a liberal donation of gold, soon procured from the French ambassador at Madrid a warrant for the arrest of the fugitive, based upon the powers afforded by that infamous instrument of tyranny, the lettre de cachet. Once more the unhappy son had to fly; the Comte de Marcillac supplied him with money; and, embarking at the nearest port, he sailed for London, where he arrived in 1749. There, under the name of Monsieur de St. Etienne, he took a humble lodging in Paddington, then a country village with green fields all round it, from Marybone Farm to Kensington. His landlord was a market gardener.

His friends in France and Spain sent him remittances and letters of introduction to several persons of rank in London. To these, the pleasant manners, gentle bearing, and handsome person of the young Marquis speedily recommended him, and ere long he was enabled to remove nearer town, where he boarded with a Mrs. Giles, in Marybone—or, as another account has it, "with one Mrs. Bacon, a widow gentlewoman of much good nature and understanding." But even in this "land of liberty" he was not safe from the rancour of the indefatigable Counsellor, with his lettre de cachet.

The English friends of the Marquis having urged that he should lay the story of his wrongs before Louis the Fifteenth in the form of a memorial, the preparation of it was confided to an amanuensis, a Frenchman named Dages de Souchard. This fellow (though only the son of an obscure lawyer at Libourne, then a very small town of Provence) assumed, in London, the title of Baron. A deep-witted, crafty, and insinuating rascal, he contrived to propitiate many unsuspecting persons, and claimed to be a strict French Protestant, though he had, in early life, been a Franciscan monk, or friar minor, in a monastery at Nerac, in the west of France, and came of a family of rigid Catholics. Nay, while in the monastery, he seduced a young girl named Du Taux, whose mother was the lavandière of the establishment, and they had come together to London, where they gave themselves out as persecuted French Protestants. Having been born within twenty miles of Bordeaux, this Souchard knew the story of the Marquis de Fratteaux, and conceived the idea of turning it to his own profit before it should reach the ears of Louis the Fifteenth. For this purpose, delaying the preparation of the memorial, he wrote secretly to the Counsellor, stating that he knew where his son was, and offering to make terms to secure and deliver him up! The Counsellor entered cordially into the scheme, and, after remitting him some money on account, agreed to settle upon him for life a pension of six hundred livres, and to pay him two thousand English guineas down, with two hundred more, for the reward of any assistants or accomplices he might deem necessary.

Dages de Souchard immediately set about his treachery, and employed a man of most unscrupulous character, one Alexander Blasdale, a Marshal's Court officer who resided in St. Martin's Lane, and whose follower or colleague, by a strange coincidence, was the very Italian who had been accessory to the incarceration of the Marquis in the monastery near Bordeaux.

On the night of the 25th of March, 1752, they repaired to the lodgings of the Marquis: who immediately became deadly pale on seeing the Italian, and exclaimed, in alarm and distress:

"I am a dead man!"

Blasdale summoned him to surrender in the king's name. Knowing that he owed no man anything, Fratteaux was disposed to resist. His landlady sent for M. Robart, French clergyman, to whom Blasdale, with cool effrontery, showed a writ to arrest the Marquis for a pretended debt. The latter was persuaded to yield and to accompany the officer to his house in St. Martin's Lane, whither he was immediately driven in a hackney-coach, and there placed in a secure chamber.

Five gentlemen, "one of them a person of the first fashion," on hearing of the arrest, repaired to the bailiff, and in strong language warned him to beware of using the least violence towards his prisoner, lest he should be called to a severe account; and they added, that sufficient bail would be found for him in the morning. One gentleman, named M. Dubois, remained with the Marquis as his friend, resolved to see the end of the affair, and to protect him; but about midnight the Italian came in, saying that some one wished to speak with this gentleman below. On descending to the street, Dubois found only the bailiff Blasdale, who roughly told him "to be gone," and thrusting him out of the house, shut him out, and secured the door. On this gentleman returning with the French clergyman and others next morning, they were told by a servant-girl "that the Marquis was gone, in company with several gentlemen." They then demanded to see her master, but were curtly told that "he was out of town." In short, neither he nor his victim was ever beheld in England again!

Fears of foul play being immediately excited, the whole party repaired to Justice Fielding, by whom a warrant to apprehend Blasdale was issued, on suspicion of murder. Application was made to the Lord Chief Justice, and also to the secretary of state, Robert Earl of Holderness, for a habeas corpus to prevent the Marquis from being taken out of the kingdom dead or alive; but all was of no avail, and the fate of Fratteaux remained for some time a dark mystery.

It would appear that on finding himself alone, after the rough expulsion of his friend Dubois, the Marquis became furious with rage; on which Blasdale swore that as he made so much noise in the house he would convey him at once to jail. Fratteaux, who feared he might be assassinated where he was, readily consented to go to jail, and a hackney-coach was called. In it, he, the bailiff, and the nameless Italian, drove through various obscure streets and by-lanes. It was now about five in the morning.

The marquis again and again implored aid from the coach window in broken English, but received none; to the watch his keepers said that he was "only a French fellow they had arrested for debt;" to others they said he had been made furious by the bite of a mad dog, and they were going to dip him in salt water at Gravesend. Thus his entreaties were abortive, and at about sunrise he found himself at a lonely place by the side of the river Thames. A cocked pistol was put to his ear, and resistance was vain; he was thrust on board a small vessel, which had been waiting for him in the river, and which, after he was secured below, dropped down with the ebb tide. So well did Souchard, Blasdale, and the Italian take all their measures, that on the night of the 29th the two last-named worthies landed the Marquis at Calais, the gates of which town were opened to admit them long after the usual hour of closing. He was then delivered over as a prisoner of state to the town authorities, who had all been duly communicated with, and probably well fee'd, and by whom he was sent, chained by the neck, in a post-chaise, to his father's house in Paris. The Counsellor, in virtue of his lettre de cachet, now sent his son the Marquis to be immured in the Bastile for life.

"This is the first narrative of the kind which has stained the annals of England," says a print of the time; "and if it be not the last, highly as we boast of giving laws to all Europe, we shall be little better, in fact, than a pitiful colony exposed to the mercy of every insolent neighbour." Great indignation was excited in London, where a subscription was raised for the purpose of punishing all concerned in this flagrant violation of British law; but nothing was achieved in the end,* though in January, 1754—one year and eight months after the outrage at St. Martin's Lane—our ambassador at the court of Versailles, General the Earl of Albemarle, demanded that both the Marquis and his infamous trepanner, Alexander Blasdale, at that time in Paris, should be delivered up and sent back to London. His request was never complied with, and for fourteen years the luckless Marquis was allowed to languish in the Bastile.

He and his story were soon forgotten, and nothing more was heard of him, until some of the London papers of July 14, 1764, contained the following paragraph: "The Marquis de Fratteaux, that French gentleman who was some years ago forcibly carried off from England to France and confined in the Bastile, is now at liberty on his estate at Fratteaux; for when his brother, M. Bertin de Bourdeille, was made Intendant of Lyons, he obtained his liberty, on giving his word of honour to remain on his estate at Fratteaux, and never to go above six miles from it without leave from his father, with whom he had been at great variance, which was the occasion of his leaving France. Two months after his arrival at Fratteaux his father went to see him, and he had permission to return the visit at Bourdeille. He has kept his word of honour strictly, and lives at present in cordiality with the whole family."

Broken in health and spirit by all he had undergone, this unfortunate victim of a family feud and an unnatural hatred, died soon afterwards, and thus the wishes of his father were accomplished.

SOCIVISCA:

THE STORY OF A GREEK OUTLAW.

In the year 1688, that district of Western Turkey named Montenegro—the ancient Illyria—placed itself under the protection of the Venetian republic, which was then governed by the doge Francisco Morosini, a famous soldier, who took the castle of the Dardanelles from the Turks, together with Lepanto and several other places.

For a time after this, its inhabitants, those half-Greek and half-Slavonian mountaineers, with the people of Bosnia, enjoyed comparative peace; but by the treaty concluded at Passarowitz in July, 1718, between Charles VI. (last Count of Hapsburg) and the Porte, they were surrendered to the tender mercies of the Turks, and became subject to all the exactions of those grasping, ignorant, and impracticable conquerors.

However, the hardy warriors of the mountains were scarcely content, like their countrymen in the eastern portions of Greece, to live on despised and unmolested for the payment of tribute; the worst and most humiliating feature of which was the number of children they were compelled to present yearly to the sultan for service in the seraglio, or in the ranks of the janissaries, where their identity soon became lost; and where in the end they realized what Voltaire termed "a great proof of the force of education and of the strange constitution of human affairs, that the most of those proud oppressors of Christianity should thus be born of Christian parents."

Socivisca, the subject of the following sketch, was born at Simiova in 1725, of Grecian parents, who reared and educated him in the profession and faith of the Greek church. He was strong, hardy, and athletic in form, and of a haughty and resentful spirit, that would ill brook the circumstances in which he found himself as he grew to manhood.

His father occupied a small sheep farm on the slope of those mountains whose forests of dark pine give a name to the people and the province. But the proprietors were Turks, who treated the family, which consisted of the old man and his four sons, with great severity, subjecting them to constant exactions, insults, and oppressions.

They were thus reduced to such extreme poverty that Socivisca, with all his industry, aided by that of his three brothers, Nicholas, Giurgius, and Adrian, found himself quite unable to marry a beautiful Greek girl, of whom he became enamoured in youth. His father, being of a peaceful and gentle nature, and being perhaps aware of the hopelessness of resistance, on perceiving that his sons writhed under their afflictions, besought them to submit with patience to the will of God; but the four young men, being alike of a fiery and haughty spirit, and, moreover, being trained to the use of those arms which the Montenegrin shepherds constantly wear (like the Scots Highlanders in the last century), they received his advice in reluctant silence, and not the less resolved to have a trial of strength some day with their Mahommedan oppressors.

Native hardihood and warlike spirit were in this instance added to national animosity and religious rancour; thus Socivisca, like Rob Roy, vowed that ere long those should tremble "on hearing of his vengeance, that would not listen to the story of his wrongs."

The Montenegrins, like most other mountaineers, are eminently patriotic, and the solemn and melancholy aspect of those dark hills of Illyria that look down on the Adriatic, to their eyes must seem well to harmonize with the fallen state of Greece:—

Though not pure Greeks, but Zernagorzii, of half-Slavonian blood, the Montenegrins have the most extravagant ideas of independence and the past glories of their country. Inspired by its scenery, by the real and imaginary stories of its departed greatness and present degradation, Socivisca and his brothers registered at the altar a vow of vengeance on their oppressive Overlords! and as if fatality had a hand in the matter, it chanced soon after that the haughty Turk, the proprietor of their sheep farm, accompanied by two of his brothers, came, either by choice or necessity, to lodge at the farm. This was in 1744, when Socivisca was in his nineteenth year.

"We are four to three," said he, "so look to your pistols and yataghans, after these dogs have had their food and coffee."

Notwithstanding their vow, it is said that he wavered for a time before performing the terrible deed; but when he saw his father's face, sharpened more by want and privation than by age—when he looked on the rags and sheepskins that clad them all—they the true lords of the soil—and saw in contrast the rich flowing garments of fine silk and velvet, laced with gold, and the jewelled weapons of the three Mahommedans, in whose presence every wooden crucifix or gaudy little picture of a Greek saint had to be hidden—and perhaps when the youth thought of his bride, and all that might be if the land they trod on was indeed their own, every scruple gave way, and, inciting his brothers to the deadly work, they fell on the three Turks, as they lounged over their long pipes, and slew them by their pistols and yataghans, after a very brief resistance.

In their mails were found eighteen thousand sequins—an unexpected but most seasonable accession of fortune. The brothers quickly buried the bodies and all their habiliments. Save the gold, which was carefully concealed, there remained no trace of the terrible deed, and as it occurred unknown to all save themselves, in that solitary little farm amid the savage mountain solitude, no suspicion of the circumstance fell on them.

Thus, instead of taking to flight, the Greeks remained quietly where they were. The Pacha of Bosnia made every inquiry after the three missing Turks, who were his friends. Suspicions somehow fell on other parties, who were dragged to Traunick, and executed with great barbarity, while Socivisca wedded the girl he loved, and lived with his father and brothers in comparative ease and comfort.

About a year after the triple assassination, some imprudence of Socivisca, in displaying the latent pride and ferocity of his character, together with the unusual amount of money the family were enabled to spend, excited the surprise and then the ready suspicions of the pastoral people around them.

Some whisper of these suspicions reached Socivisca; so by his advice the whole family abandoned the farm in the night, and, taking with them only their gold and their arms, departed from the mountains towards the Venetian territory.

The weather was severe, the roads were rough, and the elder Socivisca, unable to sustain privations so unwonted at his time of life, expired of toil by the wayside, and was hastily buried by his four sons in a wild and solitary place.

Entering the territories of the republic, where they were in safety, in the year 1745, they took up their habitation in the town of Imoski, which is now in what is termed Austrian Dalmatia, and on the borders of Bosnia; but in those days the old fortress on the hill—the site of the ancient Novanium—bore the flag of Venice.

Here they gave themselves out to be traders, and opened a bazaar, which they stored with rich merchandise; they built a large house, and soon became almost wealthy; but the easy life of a merchant by no means suited the temperament of Socivisca and his brethren,—for the warrior shepherds pined for their mountain home and the forests of the Illyrian shore.

They sold their house, the bazaar, and its goods, and attended by stout fellows, whose spirit was something like their own, they returned again to Montenegro, and commenced a series of those forays and surprises (against the pacha) in which the Black Mountaineers delight, and in the conduct of which they peculiarly excel; and during the ensuing summer they contrived to massacre, in various ways, about forty Turks, as it was against them, and them only, that all the hatred of Socivisca was directed.

The habits to which he had been accustomed from infancy pre-eminently fitted him for the life of a wandering guerrilla. "A Montenegrin," says Broniewski, a Russian traveller, "is always armed, and carries about, during his most peaceful occupation, a rifle, pistols, a yataghan, and cartouch-box. They spend their leisure from boyhood in firing at a target. Inured to hardships and privations, they perform, without fatigue, long and forced marches, climb the steepest rocks with facility, and bear with patience hunger, thirst, and every kind of privation. They cut off the heads of those enemies whom they take with arms in their hands, and spare only those who surrender before battle."

Seeking no mercy, they yielded none; and if one of their number was wounded severely, his comrades cut off his head; and when not tending their flocks, like the Circassians, they spent their whole time in forays against the invaders of the Black Mountains. But after a time Socivisca grew weary of slaughtering and beheading the Turks, and returned once more to his wife and children at Imoski, where he remained till 1754, engaged in trade, though now and then he slung his long rifle on his shoulder, stuck his dagger and pistols in his girdle, and crossed the Bosnian frontier to indulge in his favourite pastime of slaying the Turks.

In all his dealings and adventures, whether as a merchant or guerrilla robber, it could never be discovered that he wronged in the least degree any subjects either of the Austrian empire or of the Venetian republic.

Meantime, two of his brothers married, and Adrian, the youngest, joined the Aiducos, a band of Morlachians, who had leagued themselves together for the express but hazardous purpose of preventing the Turks from crossing what they considered the frontier of their own country; in short to defend the wooded passes of the Black Mountains. Brave, rash, cunning, treacherous, and cruel, these Morlachians are a mixture of Hungarian, Greek, and Venetian blood, and their religion is a mere mass of superstition, partly Christian and partly Oriental.

The youth became the comrade of a Morlachian of the Greek church, and chose him for his probatim. This choice of friendship was always consecrated by a solemn ceremony at the altar of the nearest church, before which they knelt, each holding a lighted taper, whilst the priest sprinkled them with holy water and blessed the compact.

United thus, the probatims are bound for life to assist each other in war or peace, in danger or adversity, against all men whatsoever. The young mountaineer, however, made an unfortunate choice of a friend, for the probatim lured him to his own house, gave him drugged wine, and for a sum of money delivered him over, bound hand and foot, to the Pacha of Traunick, which is one of the six military pachalics into which Bosnia is divided.

After exposing the poor youth, who was a model of manly beauty, stripped and nude before the people, the pacha put him to death, amid the most exquisite tortures that the Oriental mind can suggest.

On hearing of this atrocity Socivisca was filled with rage and grief; but dissembling, he armed himself fully, and travelled without stopping until he reached the residence of the false probatim, whose father, a subtle old Morlachian, received him with an air of such grief and commiseration that he succeeded completely in making our mountaineer believe that the son was innocent of the crime laid to his charge by common rumour. The probatim next appeared, and acted his part so well, and shed so many tears, that Socivisca, confounded and convinced, gave him his hand, and consented to dine with the family. Then the young Morlachian said that, "in honour of such a guest, he would kill the best lamb in his flock;" and he went forth, but instead of going to his pastures, he rode on the spur twelve miles to have a conference with the mir-alai who commanded a body of Turkish horse on the bank of the Danube, and to inform him of where Socivisca was to be found, receiving from the officer a handsome sum for his second act of treachery.

The day wore on, and evening came without either the lamb or the probatim appearing. The wily host, who knew what was on the tapis, left nothing unsaid to satisfy the doubts of Socivisca, who, after night-fall, retired to his bedchamber, but not to repose; for strange and unbidden forebodings of coming evil tormented him. He dared not sleep, and he seemed to hear the voices of his wife and children mingling with the wind that shook the woods, and with the tread of coming enemies. His dogs, also—two of that Molossian breed which is unsurpassed for strength and ferocity—warned him by their snorts and restlessness of approaching danger,—for dogs at times are said to have strange instincts. At last, unable to endure the suspicions of peril and treachery, he sprang from bed, dressed himself in the dark, and sought for his arms, but they had been removed!

Musket, pistols, yataghan, and all were gone. He called on his host repeatedly, but without receiving an answer. Then, inspired by rage and the conviction that, like his brother, he had been snared to his doom, with a flint and tinder-box, he lighted a lamp, went forth to search the house, and soon appeared by the bedside of his host.

"Wretch!" he exclaimed as he seized him by the beard, "my arms—where are they? Speak ere it be too late for us both!"

Every moment expecting to hear his son return with a party of Turks, the Morlachian attempted to expostulate and to temporize; but Socivisca's eye fell on a small hatchet that lay near, and snatching it up, with a terrible malediction, he cleft the old traitor's skull to the chin.

On this a female servant, dreading her master's fate, gave Socivisca his arms, and he fled into the woods close by, where he lurked long enough to see the probatim arrive with a party of Timariots, who surrounded the house. On this the fugitive withdrew and retired towards the mountains, swearing by every saint in his church to have a terrible revenge!

Assembling his followers, he descended in the night, and guarding all the avenues to prevent escape, he set fire to the house of the probatim, who perished miserably with sixteen of his family, all of whom were burned alive, save a woman, who was killed by a rifle-shot when in the act of leaping from a window with an infant in her arms.

After these affairs the Pacha of Bosnia, a three-tailed dignitary who resided at Traunick, scoured the country with his Timariots, and made such incredible efforts to capture Socivisca, that though the latter multiplied his slaughters, raids, and robberies, he was ultimately driven, with his brothers, his wife, and two children (a son and daughter), over the Montenegrin frontier to Karlovitz, a small place in the Austrian territory, famous only as the scene of Prince Eugene's victory over the Ottoman troops in the early part of the last century. The Hungarians being, like the Illyrians, of Slavonian blood, there he found a comfortable shelter for three years under the protection of the Emperor Francis I. and the Empress-Queen, and during that time his conduct and life were alike blameless and without reproach. One of his brothers, however, having strayed across the frontier, fell into the hands of the Turks, and would have died a miserable death, had his escape not been favoured by one who proved friendly to him, a Timariot named Nouri Othman.

In October, 1757, Osman III. died, and was succeeded by Mustapha, son of the deposed Sultan Achmet. Karlovitz is only forty miles from the Bosnian frontier; so the pacha, who never lost sight of Socivisca, anxious to please the new sovereign and display his activity, by a lavish disposal of gold, and by the aid of some person or persons unknown, had the exile betrayed and made prisoner. He ordered him to be conveyed at once to Traunick, and to be placed in the same prison where his younger brother perished so miserably.

Though elaborately tied and bound, by some of that skill which the rope-tricksters display in the present day, he contrived, en route, to get free, and, escaping, reached Karlovitz, where he had the unhappiness to find that, by a singular stroke of misfortune, his wife and two children had in the interim fallen into the hands of the pacha, that in his flight he had actually passed them on the road, and that they were now in the strong prison of Traunick, from which escape or release seemed alike hopeless.

By messengers from Karlovitz he strove to negotiate for their release, but the pacha was inexorable. He then wrote the following letter, which appeared in a newspaper for March, 1800, where it was given "as a curious specimen of social feeling operating on a rugged and ardent disposition;" moreover, it is no bad specimen of the outlaw's literary power:—

"I am informed, O Pacha of Bosnia, that you complain of my escape; but I put it to yourself, what would you have done in my place? Would you have suffered yourself to be bound with cords like a miserable beast, and led away without resistance by men who, as soon as they arrived at a certain place, would put you to death?

"Nature impels us to avoid destruction, and I have acted only in obedience to her laws.

"Tell me, Pacha, what crime have my wife and little children committed that, in spite of law and justice, you should retain them like slaves? Perhaps you hope to render me more submissive; but you cannot surely expect that I shall return to you and hold forth my arms to be loaded with fresh bonds.

"Hear me then, Pacha! You may exhaust on them all your fury without producing the least advantage. On my part, I declare I shall wreak my vengeance on all Turks who may fall into my hands, and I will omit no means of injuring you!

"For the love of God restore to me, I beseech you, my blood! obtain my pardon from my sovereign, and no longer retain in your memory my past offences; and I promise that I will then leave your subjects in tranquillity, and even serve them as a friend when necessary.

"If you refuse this favour, expect from me all that despair can prompt! I shall assemble my friends, carry destruction wherever you reside, pillage your property, plunder your merchants; and from this moment, if you pay no attention to my entreaties, I swear that I will massacre every Turk that falls into my hands."

As Socivisca had been doing this for so many years past, perhaps the pacha thought compliance would not make much difference; so this letter, like its preceding messages, he received with contempt, swearing by the "beard of the sultan to listen neither to the threats nor entreaties of a common robber." So Socivisca performed to the full all that he had named and threatened. At the head of a body of Greeks and Montenegrins he ravaged all the Bosnian frontier, slaying and decapitating every Mussulman who fell into his hands. Seeking no quarter and giving none, as before, flames and rapine marked his path wherever he went.

Many of his forays were made near the Lake of Scutari, in concert with the Montenegrins, whom the Russians supplied with arms and artillery to add to the troubles of the Pacha of Bosnia, whose people ere long on their knees besought him to yield up the wife and children of Socivisca, and save them from a scourge so terrible.

Still the pacha refused; but suddenly the indomitable Socivisca appeared with his hardy Aiducos before the walls of Traunick, and, by a wonderful combination of force and stratagem, the gates were stormed, the guards dispersed, and he carried off his wife, his son, and daughter to a place of safety beyond the frontier.

In retiring from Traunick, at a wild place near Razula, his people captured one of the Turkish Timariots, in the service of the pacha, and would instantly have put him to death had not the brother of Socivisca recognized in him the man who had favoured his escape a short time before,—Nouri Othman. These Timariots were soldiers, who clothed, armed, and accoutred themselves out of their pay, and were under the immediate command of the sanjiac or bey, and each maintained under him a certain number of militiamen, as they were, in fact, high-class Turkish cavaliers. Those on the Hungarian frontier had each an income of 6000 aspres, a coin then worth one shilling and threepence British money.

In gratitude the mountain warrior permitted Othman to escape; and while Socivisca was at prayers—a duty which he never omitted before a meal—the prisoner was set at liberty, a fleet horse was given him, and from the camp of the outlaws he spurred towards Traunick. Against this act of generosity the Aiducos of the band exclaimed loudly; and a nephew of Socivisca went so far as to draw from his girdle a long brass-butted pistol, with which he struck his uncle on the face; the latter, infuriated by such an insult from a junior, shot him through the heart, and was compelled to fly from the troop.

The nephew was buried as his grandfather had been, in a grave by the wayside; but this family quarrel and double misfortune affected Socivisca so much that he returned to Karlovitz, relinquishing alike his life of war and outrage for a time, but for a time only; for, fired with enthusiasm on hearing that Stephano Piciola (known as Di Montenero), so often victorious over the Turks, had made himself master of all Albania, in 1770, he issued forth again at the head of his Aiducos, and scoured the Bosnian frontier, shooting down every Turk whom he met.

In his fiftieth year, after having led a life of such danger and strife—after shedding so much blood, and during a period of thirty years since the slaughter of the three Turkish brothers at his father's farm, having plundered so much, so freely had he spent his cash among his friends and followers, that he found his exchequer reduced to only six hundred sequins.

To secure these, he entrusted three hundred to the care of a kinsman and the rest to a friend, both of whom absconded with their trust to the shelter of the pacha, and left him in abject poverty in the small town of Grachaez, in the province of Carlstadt, on the military frontier of Croatia.

In the year 1775 the Emperor Francis I., when passing through the province, wished to see the famous predatory warrior of whom he had heard so much, and visited his humble abode at Grachaez. There he was so greatly struck with the simple dignity, the resolute but respectful demeanour of the white-bearded partisan, that he presented him with a handsome sum of money, and asked him to show his numerous wounds, and to detail the chief events of his life.

Socivisca did so, with so much simplicity and modesty that the Emperor, whom he pleased and amused, and who was looking forward to the capture of the Bukovine and other districts from the Turks, made him an offer of service, and assigned him an important military command upon the Hungarian frontier, opposed to the great pachalics of Bosnia and Servia.

In the exercise of this office* he was alive at Grachaez in 1777, after which year his name can no more be traced in the histories, papers, or periodicals of the time, so that we are unable to say when he died.

Such was the wild, romantic, and singular story of a mountain robber, whose life ultimately became productive of public utility; who enjoyed the favour and protection of Francis I. and Maria Theresa; and whose career, in his unrelenting animosity to the Turks, presents a curious mixture of patriotism and ferocity, religious enthusiasm and the long-engendered rancour of rival and antagonistic races.

PAQUETTE.

AN EPISODE OF THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR.

CHAPTER I.

In the spring of the year 1870, when my merry Paquette and I used to laugh at the cartoons of the Kladderadatch, representing King William lowering a mannikin in regimentals gently, by the spike of his helmet, into a huge chair, inscribed "Spanien," we little foresaw the horrors that were to come, or the days when we might tremble at the warlike news of the official Staatsanzieger.

We had been married a year, and were so happy in our pretty little house at Blankenese (a short distance from Hamburg), where all the sloping bank above the Elbe is covered with rich green copsewood, from amid which peep out the tiny red-tiled cottages of the fishermen; while over all tower the white-walled villas of those opulent merchants whose names stood so high in the Neuerwall or the Admiralitatstrasse, and higher still in the Bourse of the Free City—free now only in name, as it has become, since the Holstein war, an integral portion of the Prussian Empire.

Paquette Champfleurie was my first real love; yet, though still little more than a girl, she was a widow when we married, and it all came to pass in this fashion, for we had indeed much sorrow before our days of joy arrived. When I, Carl Steinmetz—for such is my name, though no relation to the great Prussian general—was but a lad in a merchant's office, in the quaint old gable-ended and timber-built street called the Stubbenhuk, I had learned to love Paquette, then a boarder in a fashionable school on the beautiful Alsterdam. Our interviews were stolen; our intercourse most difficult; for her kinswoman, the Gräfine von Spitzberger—a reduced lady of rank, with whom she was placed for educational purposes—watched her with the eyes of a lynx. But what will not love achieve?

Paquette, a lively, dark-eyed, and chestnut-haired girl from Lorraine, with a piquant little face that was not by any means French in contour or expression, and I, a sharp-witted burschen fresh from Berlin, soon found means for prosecuting our affair of the heart, from the time when our eyes first met on a Sunday evening in St. Michael's Kirche, to that eventful hour when, after many a note exchanged or concealed in a certain hollow tree near the Lombardsbrücke, we plighted our troth in the little grove near Schiller's bronze statue, with no witnesses but the quiet stars overhead, and the snow-white swans that floated on the blue current of the Alster.

But sorrow soon came to rouse us from our dreams; for three weeks after that happy evening her father took her home, without permitting us to say farewell, and ere long I learned that she had become the wife of Baptiste Graindorge, a wealthy merchant of Lorraine! With these tidings the half of my life seemed to leave me. They cost me many a secret tear, and much jealous bitterness, though I knew that French girls have no freedom of choice in matrimony; and I loathed the odious Graindorge in my heart, while bending resolutely over my desk, in the dingy and gloomy little office in the noisy Stubbenhuk—bending also every energy to amass money, though for what purpose now I scarcely know. But fortune favoured me.

I became ere long a junior partner in the firm under whom I had worked as a clerk, and the same year saw Paquette free; for our horrible Graindorge had died abroad of fever, at the French colony of Senegal, and she became mine—mine after all! A widow, no scheming father could interfere with her then.

In the whole of busy Hamburg there could be no happier couple than we were—and this was but a year ago. Wedded, we visited every place where we had been wont to meet by stealth, in terror of the old Gräfine—the leafy arcades of the Young Maiden's Walk, the Botanical Gardens, the groves that cover all the old mounds about the Holstein Wall, and the banks of the Alster, while Michael's Kirche was indeed a holy place to us, for there we had first met.

One morning in July of last year—ah, I shall never forget it—we were at breakfast together in the dining-room of our cottage at Blankenese, and prior to taking the Sporvei 'bus for the city, I was skimming over the Staatsanzieger, which was then beginning to be full of threatening news concerning the Spanish succession, and calling on Prussia to rouse herself, as all France, or Paris, at least, was shouting "A Berlin!" and "To the Rhine!" The atmosphere was deliciously warm; the slender iron casements were wide open; the fragrant roses and jessamine clambered thickly round them, and the drowsy hum of the bees mingled with the sounds that came, softened by distance, from the vast shining bosom of the Elbe, where ships, with the flags of all the world, were gliding, some towards Jonashafen and the city, others downward to the North Sea; and opposite lay the flat but green and lovely coast of Hanover, studded with pretty red villages, church-spires, and windmills whirling in the sunny air.

My heart felt happy and joyous, and Paquette was looking her loveliest in a light muslin morning dress; her bright brown hair, her pure complexion, and her dark, laughing eyes, making her seem a very Hebe, as she poured out my coffee, buttered the little brown German rolls, and chirruped about how we should spend the evening, after she had joined me in the city, and we had dined, as we frequently did, under the shady verandah of the pleasant Alster Pavilion, surrounded by swans and pleasure boats.

"Where shall we go, Carl, darling?" she continued—"to the Circus Renz?"

"No, Paquette; I am sick of the horsemanship and the sawdust, and the same everlasting girl, who, when she is not flying through a hoop, prances about in the dress of a Uhlan."

"The Botanical Gardens, then; the band of the 76th Hanoverians play there to-night, and some ten thousand gay people will be present."

"Well, darling, it shall be as you wish; and after looking in at the Stadt Theatre, to see Kathie Lanner's Swedish ballet, a droski will soon whirl us home from the Damthor-wall."

"But it was in that theatre, Carl, love, we saw each other last, and at a distance, on the night——"

"Before—before——" I began.

"I was torn from you to become the wife of another, Carl," she exclaimed, in a low voice, as she took my face between her pretty hands, and kissed me playfully.

"Ah, Graindorge!" thought I, with a little bitterness, as I kissed her in return, and rose to fill my meerschaum prior to setting forth for the city; but a strange cry from Paquette made me wheel sharply round on the varnished floor, and to my bewilderment and terror, I saw her sinking back in her chair, pallid as death, like one transfixed—her jaw relaxed, her poor little hands clasped, her eyes expressive only of horror and woe, and bent on something outside the window. My gaze involuntarily followed hers, as I sprung to her side.

At the railing before our little flower-garden stood a shabby-looking man, whose face will ever haunt me. His hat, well worn, tall and shiny, was pressed knowingly over the right eye. He was looking steadily at us, and appeared as if he had been doing so for some time. A diabolical grin, like that of Mephistopheles, was over all his features—in his carbuncle-like eyes, and in his wide mouth, where all his teeth seemed to glisten. He had a sallow and dissipated face, a hooked, sardonic nose, and on his left cheek a large black mole. A faded green dress-coat, with brass buttons, a yellow vest, and short inexpressibles of checked stuff, formed his attire.

My wife was almost fainting, and seemed on the verge of distraction.

"Paquette, my love," I began; but she held up her trembling hands as if deprecatingly between us, and said in a low, broken, and wailing voice—

"Do not speak to me—do not touch me. I am not your wife! Oh, my poor deluded Carl!—oh, my poor heart! Oh, death, come and end this horror—this mystery!"

Her words, her voice, her whole air and expression, made my blood run cold with a sudden terror, that her reason had become affected.

"Paquette—dearest Paquette," I said, in a soothing and an imploring manner, "what do these terrible words mean? That man——"

"Is Monsieur Baptiste Graindorge, my first husband, come back from the grave to torment me!"

"Impossible—girl, you rave!" said I, in deep distress, as I vaulted over the window and rushed out upon the road; but the scurvy eavesdropper was gone, and no trace of him remained. In great grief, and feeling sorely disturbed by the whole affair, I returned to Paquette, whom I found crouching on the sofa, crushed by agitation and despair. She gazed at me lovingly, sorrowfully, and yet as if fearful that I might approach and touch her.

"Is there not some terrible mistake or misconception in this?" said I, seeking to gather courage from my own words.

"None—none," she replied. "I recognized too surely his face—the mole—the odious smile."

"But the man died in Africa—it is impossible; and you are my wife, Paquette, whom none can take from me," I continued, with excited utterance, as she permitted me to kiss her: but the poor little pet was cold as marble, and her tremulous hands played almost fatuously, yet caressingly, with my hair, while she murmured—

"Oh, Carl—my poor Carl—what will become of us now?"

The whole affair seemed too improbable for realization. I besought her to take courage—to consider the likeness which had startled her as a mere fancy—an optical delusion; and, aware that my presence was imperatively necessary at business in the city, I was compelled to leave her, and did so not without a sorrowful foreboding.

So strong was the latter emotion, that the closing of the house-door rang like a knell in my heart. I paused irresolute at the garden gate, and again on the road; but the jingling bells of the approaching Sporvei 'bus ended my doubts. I sprang in, and in due time found myself at my office in the busy Admiralitatstrasse, opposite the Rath Haus.

Haunted by the strange episode of the morning, I strove vainly to become absorbed in bills of lading, and so forth, till one o'clock should toll from the spires—the time for plunging into the crowd of noisy speculators at the Bourse—and I was just about to set forth, when a stranger was announced; I looked up, and was face to face with the horrible Graindorge! He stood before me just as I had seen him at the garden-rail, with his tall shiny hat, his shabby coat, his bloated visage with its black mole and malignant smile.

"Your business?" I asked curtly.

"Will be briefly stated, Herr Steinmetz," said he. "So madame fully recognized me this morning?"

"Or thought she did," said I, after a short interval of silence.

"There was no doubt in the matter, but firm conviction. I did not die in Senegal, the report was false; and so, Herr Steinmetz, I am here to claim my wife and take her back with me to Lorraine."

"You are a foul impostor!" cried I furiously, yet with a sinking heart; "and I shall hand you over to the watch."

"Pardon me, but you will do nothing of the kind," replied the other, with the most exasperating composure; "it will not be pleasant to have your wife—your supposed wife, I mean—made a source of speculation to all Hamburg, by any public exposé."

"Oh, my God! my poor Paquette!" I exclaimed involuntarily; "and I love her so!"

"Milles diables!" grinned the Frenchman; "it is more than I do."

"Wretch! what proof have we that you are Baptiste Graindorge, and not a cheat—a trickster?"

"The effect produced by my presence—my appearance—on madame, who dare not deny my identity, which the Gräfine Spitzberger has already admitted—with great reluctance, I grant you. Well, I am supposed to be dead. I shall be content to let this supposition remain, and to quit Hamburg for a consideration."

"Name it," I asked, thankful for the prospect of being rid of his horrid presence even for a time, that I might consult some legal friend; and yet, even while I spoke and thought of purchasing his silence, I knew that Paquette, my adored wife, would be no wife of mine! It was a horrible dilemma. Graindorge the Lorrainer was rich; now he seemed to be poor and needy. I knew not what to think; grief was uppermost in my soul. After a pause he said slowly—

"For six thousand Prussian dollars I shall quit Hamburg."

With a trembling hand, yet without hesitation, I wrote him a cheque on my banker, Herr Berger in the Gras-keller, for the sum named, and the snaky eyes of the Frenchman flashed as he clutched the document. He inserted it in his tattered pocket-book, and carefully buttoned his shabby green coat over it; then he placed his hat jauntily on one side of his head, and tapping the crown with his hand, made me a low ironical bow, and with a pirouette and a malicious smile quitted the room, saying—

"Adieu, Monsieur Steinmetz—I go; but for a time only."

CHAPTER II.

I saw the whole scheme now. The bankrupt—for such I had no doubt he was—meant to make his power over Paquette and me a source of future revenue to himself; and I felt sure that when his last dollar was spent—by to-morrow, perhaps—he would present himself again with a fresh demand. Like one in a dream I went to the Bourse; but little or no business was done there that day, for war rumours were hourly growing more rife. There were riots in its neighbourhood, too. The tradesmen were "on strike," and the swords of the watch had been busy, for no less than seven unarmed men were cut down in the Adolphsplatz. Then, that evening I heard that a spy, supposed to be a Frenchman, had been hovering about the northern ramparts, near the Damthor, and had been seen to count the cannon on the Holstein-wall—a spy who had escaped alike the watch and the guard of the Seventy-sixth Regiment, and whom I heard described as a shabby man in a green coat, with a mole on his cheek!

My heart leaped within me; could this personage and M. Baptiste Graindorge be one and the same? If so, neither Hamburg nor I was likely to be troubled by his presence again.

Before my usual hour, I hastened home—home to my pretty little villa among the rose-trees at Blankenese; but, alas! to find it desolate, and our servant, Trüey, a faithful young Vierlander, in tears, and filled with wonder; for her mistress had packed up some clothes, and leaving all her jewels, even to her wedding-ring, had departed, after writing a letter for me.

I tore it open, and found it to contain but a few words, to confirm my terror and fill up the cup of my misery.

"The Gräfine von Spitzberger has been with me. The man we saw is indeed my husband, M. Graindorge, the story of whose death has been all a mistake; and he proved to her his identity, by his knowledge of all our family affairs. Oh, Carl! oh, my poor darling! the real husband of my heart and my only love! I must leave you—yes—and by the time you read this, shall be far on the railroad for France. Graindorge shall never see me more; my father's house or a convent must be my shelter now. My last hope is, that you will not attempt to follow me; my last prayer, that God may bless and comfort you."

The lines were written tremulously. I kissed my darling's wedding-ring, placed it by a ribbon at my neck, and wept bitterly. Then the room seemed to swim around me; I became senseless, and was ill in bed for days. Our home was broken now. It was desolate—oh, so desolate, without my Paquette! She was gone. She had left me for ever! And every object around seemed to recall her more vividly to me—her piano, her music, the little ornaments we had bought together at the Alster Arcade, and the pillow her cheek had rested on. "She will write to me," thought I; but no letter came. And something of jealousy began to mingle with the bitterness of my soul. Was she with Graindorge?

I think I should have gone mad but for the events that occurred so quickly now, for one week sufficed to change the whole face of affairs in Hamburg. France had declared war against Prussia. Trade stood still; silence reigned in our splendid Bourse, usually the most noisy and busy scene in the world; the Elbe was empty of shipping, for its buoys and lights were all destroyed. The Prussians, horse, foot, and artillery, were pouring towards Travemünde, where a landing of the French was expected. In one day nearly every horse in Hamburg was seized for military purposes, and the city was ordered to furnish eighteen thousand infantry for the Landwehr.

Of this force I was one. A strip of paper was left at my office one day, and the next noon saw me in the barracks near the Damthor-wall, and before the colonel, an officer of Scottish descent, the Graf von Hamilton. Then, like thousands of others, my plain clothes were taken from me, and I received in lieu a spiked helmet of glazed leather, a blue tunic faced with white, a goat-skin knapsack, great-coat, and camp-kettle, a needle-gun, bayonet, and sword. We were all accoutred without delay, and within two hours were at drill, under a burning sun, in the Heilinghaist-feld, between Hamburg and Altona. My desk, my office, my home, knew me no more; yet I often mounted guard near the chambers of our firm in the Admiralitatstrasse. Paquette and my previous existence seemed all a dream—a dream that had passed away for ever. And though the gay streets, the tall spires, the sights and sounds in our pleasure-loving city were all unchanged, I seemed to have lost my identity. My former life was completely blotted out.

From the Landwehr, with many others, I was speedily drafted into the Seventy-sixth Hanoverians, and in three weeks we were ordered to join the Army of the Rhine. Though I had studied in Berlin, I was not a Prussian, but a native of the free city of Hamburg. Like many of my comrades, who were fathers of families, or only sons, torn from their homes and peaceful occupations, I had no interest in the cruel and wanton war on which we were about to enter; and more than all, I loved France, for it was the native land of Paquette Champfleurie.

In the then horror of my mind, the war was certainly somewhat of a change or relief, and the excitement around drew me from my own terrible thoughts. I was going towards Lorraine, where even while fighting against her poor countrymen, I might see my lost one, my wife—for such I still deemed her, despite the odious Baptiste Graindorge; and so I fondly and wildly speculated. The idea of being killed and buried where Paquette might perhaps pass near my grave, was even soothing to my now morbid soul, for I knew that she had loved me long before that man came between us with his wealth of gold napoleons; so she must love me still—Carl, whose heart had never wandered from her.

But there is something great and inspiring in war and its adjuncts, after all. I remember that on the day we left our beautiful Hamburg, when I heard the crash of the brass bands and saw the North German colours waving in the wind, above the long, long column of glazed helmets and bright bayonets, as our regiment, with the Forty-seventh Silesians, the Fifty-third Westphalians, and the Eighty-eighth Nassauers, defiled through the Damthor, and past the Esplanade towards the Bahnhof, I became infected by the enthusiasm around me, and found myself joining in the mad shouts of "Hurrah, Germania!" and in the old Teutonic song which the advanced guard of Uhlans struck up, brandishing their lances the while—

as we marched for the Rhine, towards which we were forwarded fast by road and rail.

We were soon face to face with the gallant French, and how fast those terrible battles followed each other at Weissenburg, Forbach, Spicheren, and elsewhere, the public prints have already most fully related. Though I did not seek death any more than others my comrades, I cared little for life, yet (until one night in October) I escaped in all three of those bloody conflicts, and many a daily skirmish, without a wound, though the chassepot balls whistled thickly round me, and more than once the fire of a mitrailleuse, a veritable stream of bullets, swept away whole sections by my side. I have had my uniform riddled with holes, my helmet grazed many times, and part of my knapsack shot away; yet somehow fate always spared poor Carl Steinmetz; for he had no enmity in his heart towards the poor fellows who fell before his needle-gun. At last we rapidly pushed on, and reduced many fortified places as we advanced to blockade Metz. Then Lorraine lay around us, and I gazed on the scenery with emotions peculiarly my own, for I thought of Paquette, of her animated face and all her pretty ways, and of all she had told me of her native province, its dense forests where wolves lurked, its wild mountains, its salt springs and lakes—Lorraine now, as in centuries long past, a subject for dispute between France and Germany.

The Seventy-sixth, under the Graf von Hamilton, formed part of the army which, under Prince Frederick Carl, blockaded Metz with such cruel success; and we had severe work in the wet nights of October, while forming the feld-wacht in the advanced rifle-pits. Often when lying there alone, in the damp hole behind a sand-bag or sap-roller, waiting for a chance shot in the early dawn at some unfortunate Frenchman, I thought bitterly and sadly of our once happy home, of Paquette, my lost wife, and wondered where she was now, or if, when she saw the Prussian columns, with all their bright-polished barrels and spiked helmets shining in the sun, she could dream that I, Carl Steinmetz, was a unit in that mighty host. Then I would marvel in my heart whether I, with the spiked helmet and needle-gun, loaded with accoutrements and spattered with mud, was the same Carl Steinmetz who, but a few months before, sat daily at his desk in the Admiralitatstrasse, and had the sweet smiles of Paquette to welcome him home and listen to his news from the Bourse. Was this military transformation madness or witchcraft? It was neither, but stern reality, as an unexpected shot from a hedge about four hundred yards distant, tore the brass eagle from my helmet and fully informed me.

This was just about daybreak on the morning of the 26th October last, and when I could see all the village quarters, from Mars-la-Tour to Mazières, lit up, and all the bivouac fires burning redly on our left and in the rear.

With a few others I started from the rifle-pits, and we made a dash at the hedge, which we believed to conceal some of those Francs-tireurs, whom we had orders to shoot without mercy, though they were only fighting for home and country. We were on the extreme flank of the blockading force, and the hedge in question surrounded a villa which stood somewhat apart from the road to Château Salins. Led by the Graf's son, a young captain, we rushed forward, and found it manned by some fifty men of the French line, who had crept out of Metz intending to desert, for Bazaine permitted them to do so when provisions began to fail. "A bas les Pru-essiens!" cried their leader—a tall sub-officer in very tattered uniform—thus accentuating the word in the excess of his hatred.

"Vorwarts—für Vaterland—hurrah, Germania!" shouted the young Von Hamilton. A volley that killed ten of our number tore among us, but we broke through and fell upon them with the bayonet. Clubbing his chassepot the French sous-officier, with a yell on his lips, beat down poor Hamilton; then he rushed upon me, and what was my emotion—what my astonishment, to find myself face to face with Graindorge—he who had robbed me of Paquette—the same beer-bloated and scurvy-looking fellow, with the huge black mole, whom I had last seen in Hamburg! I charged him with my bayonet breast high, but agitation so bewildered me that he easily eluded my point, and felled me to the earth with his clubbed rifle. Now came a sense of confusion, of light flashing from my eyes, the clash of steel, the ping of passing balls; then darkness seemed to envelop me, and death to enter my heart as I became senseless.

I remained long thus, for the sun was in the west when full consciousness returned. The thick leather helmet had saved my head from fracture, but dried blood plastered all my face, and I found my right arm broken by a bullet. All the French in the rear of the hedge had been shot down or bayoneted, and they presented a terrible spectacle. All were dead save one—the sous-officier, who lay near me, dying of many bayonet wounds. Our wounded had been removed, but ten of the Seventy-sixth lay near me stiff and cold. What a scene it was in that pretty garden, amid the rose-trees, the last flowers of autumn, and the twittering sparrows, to see all those poor fellows, made in God's fair image, butchered thus—and for WHAT? My wounds were sore, my heart was sad and heavy; oh, when was it otherwise now? Staggering up I turned to the Frenchman, whose half-glazing eyes regarded me with a fiercely defiant expression, for he doubted not that in this guerre à la mort his last moment had come. I took off my battered helmet, and then with a thrill of terror he seemed to recognize me.

"Carl Steinmetz of Hamburg!" said he, with difficulty.

"You know me then?" I asked grimly.

"Oh, yes—in God's name give me water—I am dying!"

My canteen was empty; but I found some wine in that of a corpse which lay near. I poured it down his throat and it partially revived him.

"Yes, fellow," said I, "in me you see that Steinmetz who was so happy till you came and my wife fled; so we know each other, Monsieur Baptiste Graindorge."

"I am not Baptiste—he is lying quiet in his grave on the shore of the Senegal river."

"Who, in the name of Heaven, are you?"

"Achille Graindorge—his cousin. I took advantage of our casual but strong resemblance to impose upon you—and—and get money—when in Hamburg—acting——"

"As a spy—eh?"

"Yes."

"Has she—has Paquette seen you since?"

"No—for she would at once have detected the cheat."

"And you know not where she is?"

"As I have Heaven soon to answer—no," he gasped out, and sinking back, shortly after expired, his last breath seeming to issue from the wounds in his chest. I had no pity for him, but felt a glow of joy in my heart, as I turned away, and crept—for I was unable to stand—towards the door of the villa in search of succour, the agony of my thirst and wounds being so great that I cared little whether the inmates aided or killed me.

However, the coincidences of this day were not yet over.

The door, on which I struck feebly with my short Prussian sword, was opened ultimately by an old gentleman, beyond whom I saw a female, shrinking back in evident terror. I recognized M. de Champfleurie, my father-in-law; but being now unable to speak, I could only point to my parched lips and powerless arm, as I sank at his feet and fainted.

When I recovered, my uniform was open, my accoutrements were off; I was lying upon a sofa with my aching head pillowed softly—on what?—The tender bosom of Paquette, my darling little wife; for she had recognized me, though disguised alike by dress and blood, and now her tears were falling on my weather-beaten face.

It chanced that, flying from place to place in Lorraine, before our advancing troops, and having failed to reach Metz, they had taken shelter in that abandoned villa; and thus happily I could reveal the secret of our separation before the burial party bore away the body of Achille Graindorge, who had actually been quartered at Senegal when his cousin Baptiste died there.

My story is told. On the following day Metz capitulated, and poor M. Champfleurie danced with rage on learning that Bazaine had surrendered with two other Marshals of the Empire, 173,000 prisoners and 20,000 sick, wounded, and starving men. My fighting days were over now; Paquette was restored to me, and happiness was again before us.

For their kindness in succouring me, the Graf von Hamilton gave M. de Champfleurie and his daughter a pass to the rear, and we speedily availed ourselves of it, for I was discharged with a shattered arm; and now I write these lines, again in pleasant Blankenese, our dear home, with the broad Elbe shining blue beneath our windows, and the autumn leaves falling fast from the thick woods that cover all its green and beautiful shore.

APPARITIONS AND WONDERS.