For two days I spoke not to any one. A dreamy unconsciousness seemed to wrap my faculties, and I felt not the time passing. On the third day I rallied sufficiently to open the papers the Count had entrusted to me. One contained an affectionate farewell to myself, from the Count, with a dying bequest; the other, was in a lady’s hand--it bore the Countess’s signature; and here I discovered with surprise and horror, that to the performance of the rash act, by which the Count had terminated his existence, he was bound by a solemn oath. I ready and re-read, to assure myself of the fact. It was true! Such was the terrible promise she extorted from the wretched lover, under the delusive hope of their meeting in another and happier life. Then followed the directions for the funeral, which were minute to a degree. The bodies of both, when coffined, were to be placed in a small temple in the garden, near the river; the key of which was to be sent to a Dominican monk, who lived in an obscure part of the city. By him were the coffins to be closed, which it was strictly enjoined should be done by him, alone and unaccompanied, the night before the burial. All was done as the wish of the deceased enjoined, and the key despatched by a trusty servant of my own to the friar, who appeared to be in expectation of it, and knew its import. I sat in the lonely and desolate room, which had formerly been mine, in the villa of the Count; that long and dreary night the wind poured its mournful wailing through the pine-trees in dirgeful memory of him who was no more. From the window of the temple a bright light gleamed till near morning, when it gradually faded away. Thither I repaired at day-break, with the household. All was still--the door lay open--the coffins were closed and screwed down. The friar was gone; we afterwards found that he had not returned to his lodgings in the city, nor was he ever after seen in Dresden. The bodies were committed to the earth, and I returned to my home alone in the world. It was several years after this--the awful death of my earliest, best friend--that I arrived in Paris to exhibit, in the gallery of the Luxembourg, an historical picture, upon which I had laboured for years. I must be brief--my picture was exhibited, and my most sanguine expectations surpassed by its success; and in a few short days the whole scene of my early triumph was re-enacted. Praise and flattery poured in upon me; and as in Dresden before, so now in Paris, I became the fashion and the rage. But how changed was I! No longer exulting in my success, and buoyant with hopes, I received all the adulation I met with, with cold indifference and apathy.