She sunk down from my arms in a swoon. I flew like an arrow through the alarmed company, reached the door, threw myself into the first coach I found waiting there, and hurried back to the city, where, to my misfortune, I had left the foresighted Bendel. He was startled at seeing me--a word told all. Post-horses were instantly ordered. I took only one of my servants with me, an interested villain called Rascal, who had learned to make himself useful by his dexterity, and who could suspect nothing of what had occurred. We travelled a hundred miles before night. Bendel was left behind to dismiss my household, to distribute my money by paying my debts, and to bring away what was most necessary. When he overtook me the next day, I threw myself into his arms, solemnly promising to commit no farther folly, but to be more discreet in future. We continued our journey without interruption, passing over the chain of mountains which formed the frontier; and only when on the descent, and separated by the high bastions from the land so fatal to my peace, did I allow myself to be comforted, and hastened away to a watering-place in the vicinity, where I sought repose from my disappointments and my sorrows. CHAPTER IV. I must hurry rapidly over a part of my history, on which I should rejoice to linger, if I could invoke the living spirit of departed time. But the beautiful associations which animated it once, and which alone could animate its memory, are now extinguished within me. When I seek them--that influence which ruled so mightily over my joys and sorrows--my mingled destiny,--I strike in vain against a rock, that gives out a living stream no longer; the divinity is fled. O how changed is the aspect of those days of old! My intention was now to act an heroic character; but it was badly studied, and I a novice on the stage, was forgetting my part while fascinated by a pair of blue eyes. In the intoxication of the scene, the parents seem eager to close the bargain, and the farce ends in a common mockery. And this is all! So stale, so unprofitable, and so melancholy are the revisitings of what beat once so nobly and proudly in my bosom. Mina! as I wept when I lost thee, even now I weep to have lost thee within me. Am I become so old! Pitiful intellect of man! Oh, for a pulse-beat of those days, a moment of that consciousness,--but no! I am a solitary wave in the dark and desolate sea: and the sparkling glass I drank was drugged with misery. I had previously sent Bendel with bags of gold to fit out a dwelling suitable for me in the town. He had scattered about a great deal of money, and talked mysteriously of the illustrious stranger whom he had the honour to serve (for I did not choose to be named), and this filled the good people with strange notions. As soon as the house was ready for me, Bendel returned to convey me thither. We started immediately.