the future, and we shall see whether it will bring me happiness or doom me to despair. Farewell, then, Eliza; and if you will yet give to the poor wanderer, to whom you have given life, food, money, and clothes, a priceless treasure, a talisman that will shield him from all temptations of the world, then give me a kiss !”

"No, sir; an honest Tyrolese girl never kisses any man but the one whose wife she is to be. You see, therefore, that I cannot give you a kiss. Go, sir. But have you no commis sions to give me for your uncle and my dear Elza?”

"Greet them both; tell them that I love you, Eliza, and that you rejected my proposals."

That does not concern anybody, and only we two and the good God shall know it, but no one else. But, sir, give me a souvenir for Elza; it will gladden her heart.

"I have nothing to give her," he said, shrugging his shoulders.

She pointed to the crimson Alpine roses blooming at their feet amidst the grass and moss.

"Gather some of these flowers, and give them to me,” she said; "I will take them to Elza, and tell her that you gathered the flowers for her."

He knelt down, gathered a handful of Alpine roses, and tied them together with a few blades of grass. "I would," he said, still kneeling in the grass, "they were myrtles that I was gathering for you, Eliza, for you, my affianced bride, and that you would accept them at my hands as the sacred gift of love. There, take the bouquet for Elza, and give it to her with my greetings."

She stretched out her hand to take it; but Ulrich, instead of giving it to her, pressed the bouquet to his lips, and imprinted an ardent kiss on the flowers; then only did he hand it to Eliza.-"Now, Eliza," he said, "take it. You refused me a kiss, but you will carry my glowing kiss home with you, and with it also my heart. I shall come back one day to demand of you your heart and my kiss. Farewell! It is your will, and so I must go. I do not say, forget me not; but I shall return, and ask you then: 'Have you forgotten me? Will you become my wife?' Until then, farewell!"

He gazed at her with a long look of love and tenderness; she avoided meeting his look, and when he saw this, a smile, radiant as sunshine and bliss, illuminated his features.

"Go, sir," she said, in a low voice, averting her face. "I am going, Eliza," he exclaimed. "Farewell!"

He seized her hand impetuously, imprinted on it a burning kiss before she was able to prevent him, dropped it, and turned to descend the slope with a slow step.

Eliza stood motionless, and as if fascinated; she gazed after him, and followed with an absorbed look his tall, noble form, descending the mountain, surrounded by a halo of sunshine.

All at once Ulrich stood still and turned to her. "Eliza," he shouted, "did you call me? Shall I return to you?"

She shook her head and made a violent gesture indicating that he should not return, but said nothing; the words choked in her breast.

He waved his hand to her, turned again, and continued descending the slope.

Eliza looked after him; her face turned paler and paler, and her lips quivered more painfully. Once they opened as if to call him back with a cry of anguish and love; but Eliza, pressing her hand violently upon her mouth, forced the cry back into her heart, and gazed down on Ulrich's receding form.

Already he had descended half the slope; now he reached the edge of the forest, and alas ! disappeared in the thicket.

Eliza, uttering a loud cry, knelt down, and tears, her longrestrained, scalding tears, streamed like rivers down her cheeks. She lifted her arms, her clasped hands, to heaven, and murmured with quivering lips: "Protect him, my God, for Thou knowest how intensely I love him!"

She remained a long time on her knees, weeping, praying, struggling with her grief and her love. But then all at once she sprang to her feet, brushed the tears from her eyes, and drew a deep breath.

"I must and will no longer weep," she said to herself in a loud, imperative voice. Otherwise they would see that I had been weeping, and no one must know that. I must descend in order to be at home in time, and then I will tell

father and the other men that Ulrich never was my betrothed, and that I said so only to save his life. They will forgive me for helping him to escape when I tell them that I never loved him nor would have taken him, because he is a Bavarian, but that I saved him because he is a near relative of my dear Elza. And after telling and explaining all this to the men, I shall go to Elza, give her the flowers, and tell her that Ulrich sent them to her, and that his last word was a love-greeting for her. God, forgive me this falsehood! But Elza loves him, and it will gladden her heart. She will preserve this bouquet to her wedding-day, and she will not notice that I kept one flower from it for myself. It is the flower which he kissed; it shall be mine. I suppose, good God, that I may take it, and that it is no theft for me to do so?"

She looked up to heaven with a beseeching glance; then she softly drew one of the flowers from the bouquet, pressed it to her lips, and concealed it in her bosom.

"I will preserve this flower while I live," she exclaimed. "God strengthened my heart so that I was able to reject him; but I shall love him forever, and this flower is my weddingbouquet. I shall never wear another!

She extended her arms in the direction where Ulrich had disappeared. "Farewell!" she cried. "I greet you a thousand times, and my heart goes with you

י!

Then she turned and hastily descended the path which she had ascended with Ulrich von Hohenberg.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH.

It was a wondrously beautiful morning in May; the sun shone clear and bright; the birds sang in all the shrubs and trees, and the gay spring flowers exhaled their fragrant odors in all the gardens. Nature had donned its holiday attire, and yet humanity was in mourning; the sun shone clear and bright, and yet the eyes of men were sombre and lustreless,

and instead of rejoicing over the fresh verdure and the blossoms of spring, they grieved, and their hearts were frozen with care and pain.

For the Emperor Napoleon had raised his proud hand again against Germany; he had defeated the Austrians at Ratisbon and Landshut, and made his triumphant entrance into Vienna on the 12th of May, 1809.

For the second time the imperial family, fleeing from the victorious Napoleon, had been compelled to leave the capital; for the second time the foreign emperor occupied the palace of Schönbrunn, and Vienna had to bow again to the will of the all-powerful conqueror. The Emperor Francis had escaped with his wife and children to Hungary, and Vienna, whose inhabitants had at first sworn enthusiastically to defend their city to the last man, and lay it in ashes rather than surrender it to the French, had nevertheless opened its gates already on the 12th of May to the Emperor Napoleon and his army. It had to bow to stern necessity, for during the previous night the Archduke Maximilian, with the weak forces with which he had been ordered to defend Vienna, had evacuated the city, had burned the great bridge of Thabor to prevent Napoleon from pursuing him, and had succeeded in escaping, leaving it to the Viennese to make terms with the conqueror and invoke his clemency and generosity. They had thus been obliged to conceal their rage and exasperation in their hearts, and surrender to the tender mercies of the French emperor; they had opened their gates to the enemy, but not their hearts. Their hearts were filled with boundless rage and shame, which brought wild imprecations to the lips of the men, and tears to the eyes of the women.

Joseph Haydn, the silver-haired octogenarian, had still the heart of a fiery man in his bosom, and his trembling lips cursed the conqueror, the relentless foe of Austria, and called down the wrath of Heaven on the French emperor, who always spoke of peace and conciliation, and always stirred up quarrels and enmities. The latest reverses of Austria had produced a most painful impression upon the aged maestro, and the ravishing joy which had illuminated Joseph Haydn's face at the performance of "The Creation," had long since disap

peared from his careworn and mournful countenance. His eyes were gloomy and dim, and often veiled with tears; and when he played his imperial hymn, as he did every morning, he could not sing to it, for tears choked his voice, and the words, so full of confidence and triumphant hope, seemed to him a bitter mockery.

He led now a very quiet and lonely life at his small house in the Mariahilf suburb, and he did not even leave it, as he had formerly always done, on Sundays, in order to go to mass. The sight of the French uniforms wounded his heart, and he grieved on seeing his beloved Viennese oppressed and humiliated.

"God is every where," said Haydn to his faithful servant Conrad, "and He will hear my prayer even though I should utter it in my quiet closet, and not at church. But to-day, my friend, I will pray to God in the open air. See how gloriously the sun shines, and how blue the sky is! To-day is Sunday. Let us, therefore, put on our Sunday clothes. Conrad, give me the fine ring which the great King of Prussia presented to me, and then come to hear mass in my little garden."

Conrad fetched quickly the Sunday clothes of his master; he helped him to put on the silken and silver-embroidered coat, and put the large diamond-ring, which Frederick the Great had one day sent to the great master of harmony, on his finger. Then he handed him his hat and his strong cane, which was adorned with a golden cross-piece, that the tottering octogenarian might lean on it. Joseph Haydn now left the room slowly, his right hand leaning on his cane, his left arm resting on the shoulder of his servant. Behind him walked with a grave step the old cat, an heirloom from Haydn's lamented wife, and hence highly prized and honored by the aged maestro. Purring softly, now raising its beautiful long tail, now rolling it up, the cat followed close in the footsteps of its master, through the hall and across the yard to the small garden.

"How beautiful it is here!" said Haydn, standing still in the door of the garden, and slowly looking around at the flowers and shrubbery, the humming bees and flitting butter