dinand now learned to tremble at the unlimited powers of this uncontrollable spirit; but it was to his sovereign's dread, not to his love, the Duke of Friedland aspired amongst his own troops death or infamy were common retribution, and the zealous devotion with which he was beheld by the immense multitude which obeyed him, served to justify his oppressive system.

"Psha!" exclaimed he, when any one ventured a remonstrance on the danger of driving men to desperation, "the beloved and clement Cæsar surrendered his life under the daggers of assassins,the abhorred and blood-dropping Sylla breathed it forth gently on his bed :-the one was murdered by the men he had forgiven, the other spared by those whose fathers, sons, and brothers, he had destroyed, and whose own souls he had crushed and trodden to the dust!"

A wicked and dangerous empiric, the Jesuit Fieramosca, was the only human

VOL. III.

C

creature of whom he took counsel: this man was passionately addicted to the practice of those mysterious sciences from a belief in whose arcana few minds were entirely exempt.-By his experiments he succeeded in confirming his patron in the one day certain accomplishment of those visions of glory which were ever swimming before his mental sight. As the decree by which these things were to come to pass was pronounced, and irreversible, the Duke founded his stern, disdainful, unbending deportment on that principle.

" should I

Why," he would say, court beings who can neither advance nor impede my progress ?-destiny will inevitably dispose them so as they must co-operate for my advantage, and I am free to use them meanwhile as it pleases me; they are no doubt placed within the grasp of my power for that purpose."

As for the Jesuit, he had tampered with these delusive secrets until their

jargon was become habitual to him, but it would be difficult to believe that he did actually accord to these gloomy unlawful mysteries that implicit faith which he exacted from his pupils, or that his imagination was so far infected by his studies as to present before him, and compel within his circle, those powers of the air over which he professed to exercise a limited and temporary jurisdiction. -That such power did exist, and that Fieramosca possessed it, was the creed of a man who gloried in his scepticism:here was the confine of his proud and grasping intellect:-he refused to credit the most simple, self-evident, and accepted truths, yet he yielded himself up, unresistingly, to the weak wild fablings of a subtle charlatan :-he gloried in the universal mistrust in which he held his fellow beings, and yet he surrendered the whole stores of his copious bosom to the investigation of as crafty and evil a spirit

as ever inhabited the human form. But to return to our interests at Vienna.

Wolfstein found himself delivered from all those competitors and observers, who, though beneath his fear or jealousy, might have crossed or harassed his proceedings. The Margrave of Lindau, no longer blinded by vanity, and occupied by himself, might have proved troublesome, and he had accomplished two objects at once in obtaining his regiment,— he removed a man whose absence he desired, and he exhibited a convincing proof of his power with the great dispenser of profits and honours, which gave him a weight at court, such as he had never before possessed. Ferdinand condescended to make him the medium of different promotions, and it was seen clearly that his word had incredible potency with the Duke of Friedland. In proportion as the Emperor became obliged to Wolfstein, the anxiety that his conversion might prove genuine and stable in

creased and as it is not difficult to reconcile our creed with our inclination, every day seemed to lend this charitable and christian hope fresh colour. No one had really a peep behind the mask but Princess Stolberg, and she dared not betray her suspicions; with her the Chevalier affected a friendly and unceremonious familiarity, which present circumstances rendered inexpressibly galling.He had overheard her conversation with Vallenstein, had witnessed the emotion which accompanied it; it was painful and humiliating to meet his eye at any rate, but to read in that. eye, whenever it dwelt upon her, a studied expression of insolent pity, was intolerable: yet was she compelled to endure it.She could not, by any sophistry, gloss over the fact to herself, that she had made a voluntary confession of love to one, who would not, could not, return it, and that her pride had so far deserted her, that even the repulse and rejection of her