“‘You were no sooner gone, my friend, than her inspired prophecy of last evening was fulfilled. I was seated where you had left me, at her feet, when a young man of the Neapolitan embassy, who had been hovering around the door, gathered sufficient courage to enter the boudoir and make his bow to Madame de Krudener. His name was Carascola; he had arrived but a few days since from Naples. Madame de Krudener had known his mother, and in courtesy and kindness felt in duty bound to ask him some few questions concerning the prospects and intentions which had led him to Paris. He had answered her questions with that embarrassed timidity with which young men are used to reply to their superiors, and Madame de Krudener had already dismissed him, and turned again to the “white angel of the north,” whose conversation had been interrupted by the young man’s entrance, when suddenly she started from the sofa as though a pistol-shot had been fired through her brain, and darting on me a look of terror, she exclaimed, faintly, “Bergasse, the hour is come—nought can save us from the approach of our Sovereign Lord and Master. He is here—his choice is made.” At that very instant, I give you my honour as a gentleman, I beheld Carascola, who was leaving us, full of youthful spirit, to gain the outer room, fall forward upon the floor, without stumbling, without resistance, without convulsion, but rather as it were sink down softly as though seeking repose, and there lie stretched his full length, without sense and without motion. A crowd soon gathered round him, and they raised him up; his countenance was pale and his features frightfully swollen, even in that minute; a doctor who was present opened a vein upon the forehead, but it was all of no avail. She had spoken truth. Death had chosen his victim, and that victim was Carascola.’ “Such was the tale which Bergasse had come so early to my bedside to tell me. I ascertained, that very day, that it was true in every particular, and was certainly an extraordinary proof of the possibility of an almost supernatural coincidence. I doubt not that Madame de Krudener had often experienced these _pressentiments_ before, but I much doubt whether any one of them ever came true so rapidly, so _àpropos,_ as in this case. The young man had evidently been in a bad state of health, perhaps subject to fits, from his childhood, and on this occasion the excitement of meeting with the august personage he had come to visit, the heat of the room, the emotion of the prayer and prophecies, must have caused a congestion of the brain. I can, however, vouch for the entire truth of the fact I have related; you must yourselves arrange the causes, according to your own scepticism or powers of belief.”