By his counsel I was speedily removed from Baden, under the impression that the scene would be prejudicial to my recovery. I was indifferent where, or in what way, they disposed of me; and when I was told I was to try the air of the Lake of Constance, I heard it with the apathy of one sunk in a trance. Nor do I yet know by what means the police, so indefatigable in tormenting the innocent, abandoned their persecution of me. They must have had their own sufficient reasons for it; so much is certain. And now, once more, I ask myself, Is all that I have here set down the mere wanderings of a broken and disjointed brain? have these incidents no other foundation than a morbid fancy? I would most willingly accept even this sad alternative, and have it so; but here is evidence too strong to disbelieve. Here before me lies an English newspaper, with a paragraph alluding to the mysterious murder of an English gentleman at Baden. The dates, circumstances, all tally in the minutest particulars. Shall I discredit these proofs? The Countess is married to the Marquis de Courcelles; a distant relative of the Archduchess, it is said. Let me dismiss the theme for ever--that is, if I can. And now for one whose interest to me is scarcely less sad, but of a very different shade of sadness. This is my birthday, the 31st August. “Why had the month more than thirty days?” is a question I have been tempted to hazard more than once. Nor is it from ingratitude that I say this. I have long enjoyed the easy path in life; I have tasted far more of the bright, and seen less of the shady side of this world’s high-road than falls to the share of most men. With fortune more than sufficient to supply all that I could care for, I have had, without any pretension to high talent, that kind of readiness that is often mistaken for ability; and, what is probably even more successful with the world, I have had a keen appreciation of talent in other men--a thorough value for their superior attainments; and this--no great gift, to be sure--has always procured me acceptance in circles where my own pretensions would have proved feeble supporters. And then, this delicacy of health--what many would have called my heaviest calamity--has often carried me triumphantly through difficulties where I must have succumbed. Even in “the House” have I heard the prognostications of what I might have been, “if my health permitted;” so that my weak point ministered to me what strength had denied me.