—“Oh! nothing, nothing!” he exclaimed, then sprang up suddenly, and advanced towards the window—“all is as it should be; nothing has happened but what _ought_ to have happened. It is only my foolish heart, that cannot be persuaded to let me be at rest.”— —“All has happened, that ought to have happened?” repeated Adelaide, whose anxiety became more painful with every moment; “and what then _has_ happened?”— Rodolpho without answering her question, remarked that night was coming on; he then desired a domestic to take good care, that all the gates were well locked and barred, and ordered that the portcullis should be let down to guard the narrow path, whose steps were hewn in the rock, and which was the only avenue to the Castle. —“Dearest Rodolpho,” said Adelaide, while she took his hand with mingled tenderness and apprehension “what need of these precautions? are you not safe in the arms of love? surely, we now have no enemies to dread.”— —“Adelaide, while Albert lived, we had but _one_ enemy: now that he is no more, his death has created a thousand avengers, who wait with impatience for an opportunity to destroy us!”— —“His death?” exclaimed Adelaide in a tone expressing the utmost horror, and betraying that she already guest the misfortune, which she was soon to hear confirmed; “is then the emperor dead? alas! and by whom?”— Her husband gazed upon her with a gloomy frowning air, and without replying prepared to quit the apartment. Adelaide followed him, detained him, and in a voice scarcely audible repeated her question. Rodolpho bent himself towards her, and whispered somewhat in her ear; yet not so gently, but that Gertrude (who was the only person then present) could distinguish the emperor’s name, the Duke of Swabia’s, and Rodolpho’s own. —“Now then” said he, with a loud voice and terrible look; “Now then is Adelaide aware, by what name she must henceforth greet her husband?”— It is easy to guess, how violent an effect this dreadful explanation must have made upon the criminal’s unfortunate wife! life is subject to moments, in which a single word is sufficient to bring at once before the mind the whole wide extent of our future fate; in which with a single look and in a single feeling we embrace the whole; and (be they of sorrow or be they of joy) in which man’s feeble nature is compelled to sink beneath the gigantic strength of his sensations. Adelaide lay at her husband’s feet deprived of animation. His caresses and the care of her attendants only awakened her to the sense of suffering. It is true, the total deprivation of her intellects for a time preserved her mind from feeling the wretchedness of her situation; but her health was cruelly affected by the violent attacks of a malady, which soon brought her to the very brink of the grave.