Johanna’s mildness towards the murderer’s family had been only assumed, in hopes of discovering where Rodolpho himself was concealed. His seizure had rendered further artifice unnecessary, and she was now permitted to show the violence of her resentment without disguise. She led her troops in person against Ravenstein. Though lately repaired and internally fitted up with elegance and splendour, the fortress no longer possest those strong means of defence, which in its antient state had enabled it to set the attacks of foes so often at defiance. Walter Forest, however, had engaged to undertake the command of it; but at the time when Johanna unexpectedly appeared before the Castle, this brave man was detained by patriotic duties in a distant part of the country. The garrison were capable of making but a sorry resistance; the gates were thrown open; and Johanna made her triumphal entrance into Ravenstein over the bleeding corses of those, who had fallen the innocent victims of her thirst for vengeance. Oh! Urania, I know well, that justice required the punishment of Albert’s murderers; I know well, that it was the remembrance of her father’s death, which transformed his daughter into a Feind; but still ... still I feel it impossible for me without horror and disgust to unite a thirst for blood with the name of woman. Johanna, that Saint-like princess, that builder of cloisters, that worker of miracles; that young and beautiful Johanna who, as ’tis whispered, is secretly by no means averse to the tender passions; even that very Johanna pursued her way over heaps of mutilated corses, and said with a triumphant smile to those who followed her,—“that it seemed, as if her path had been strown with roses.”— The doors of the Great Hall were thrown open; Adelaide lay senseless in the arms of her attendants. She was half stretched across the cradle of her sleeping child, as if even in the moment of swooning she had still been aware, that enemies were approaching too pityless to spare even slumbering innocence. The pale countenance of the Lady of the Beacon-Tower, the beauty of whose features even sorrow had not been able to destroy, and the helplessness of whose present situation served only to render her more interesting, would have touched even the hearts of dæmons with compassion; but on the incensed Johanna this very beauty produced quite a contrary effect. In the eyes of her who gladly would have seen all other charms eclipsed by her own, to be as lovely as Adelaide in itself was a crime of no inconsiderable magnitude: nor could the queen observe without extreme displeasure, that among the warriors in her train, many an eye (whose approbation she would gladly have engrossed entirely) dwelt with looks of tenderness and admiration on the fair lifeless statue, which lay extended in the dust, overthrown by fear and sorrow. —“Who is this woman?” demanded the queen. —“Adelaide, Lady of the Beacon-Tower.”—