The mysterious packet contained three letters; and, eager as I was for their perusal, I almost shuddered at their touch; for they must have been obtained with infinite personal peril, and if found upon the Beguine they might have brought her under the severest vengeance of the garrison. They were from Guiscard, Mariamne, and Mordecai. Thus to three individuals, all comparatively strangers, was my world reduced. But they were no common strangers; and I felt, while holding their letters in my hand, and almost pressing them to my heart, how much more strongly friendship may bind us than the ties of cold and negligent relationship. I opened the soldier's letter first. It was like every thing that Guiscard ever did; manly, yet kind. "Your disappearance in that unfortunate rencontre has created much sorrow and surprise; but the sorrow was all for your loss to _the_ 'corps of corps,' and the surprise was, that no tidings could be heard of you, whether fallen or surviving. The flag and trumpet sent in next morning to recover the remains of such as had suffered in that mad rush to the gates of the town, came back without being permitted to pass beyond the outworks, bringing a brutal message from the officer on duty, 'that the next flag should be fired on,' and that the 'brave soldiers of the Republic allowed of no compromise with the slaves of tyranny!' The bravado might be laughed at, but it left me in the dark relative to your fate; and if you are to be flattered by the feelings of men who cannot get at you but by cannon-shot, you may congratulate yourself on having had as many fine things said of you as would make an epitaph for a duke--and, I believe, with a sincerity at least equal to the best of them. I write all this laughingly now, but suspense makes heaviness of heart, and you cost me some uneasy hours, of course. I send you none of _our_ news; as you will hear all in good time, and communications on public matters might bring your messenger or yourself into difficulties. You are alive, and in good hands; that is the grand point. Your character is now in _my_ hands, and I shall take care of it; I shall see you a general officer yet, if you have not the greater luck to retire and live an honest farmer, sitting under your own fig-tree and your own vine, with an unromantic spouse, and some half-dozen of red-cheeked children. Farewell, we shall _soon_ see each other." The last line evidently meant more than met the eye, and I was now just in the mind to indulge in the fantasies of my fair correspondent. They were like herself--a curious mixture of mirth and melancholy.