The Duke drank, whilst a tear glistened in his eye. The guests cheered and shouted his praise,--the torch-bearers arranged themselves in order,--and Albert von Sturmfeder, led by his two companions, and followed by the rest, was conducted in procession out of the castle to the house of his bride. CHAPTER XXXII. Hast thou not seen by times the cloudless sky Sudden illumined by the lightning flash, And its still, still silence, broken horribly By the loud music of the thunder crash? To this we might man's happiness compare,-- To day 'tis present, and to-morrow----where? SCHILLER. The path which the most celebrated novelists of our days generally tread, in their relation of events of ancient and modern times, may be found without the aid of any beacon, and has a direct and fixed limit:--it is the journey of a hero going to a wedding. Let the road be ever so rugged, let him even venture to loiter his time improvidently and inconsistently on his way, he will be induced in the end to hasten his steps so much more rapidly to redeem the lost ground; and so, when an author has at length conducted his reader to the bridal chamber, after having made his hero undergo all the necessary fatigues of his journey with becoming fortitude and resolution, he shuts the door in your face, and closes the book. We might in the same way have ended our story with the gay doings in the castle of Stuttgardt, or included the reader in the torchlight procession of the bridegroom, and conducted him out of our book; but the higher claims of truth and history, together with the interest we have taken in some of the leading characters, compel us to request the reader's patience to accompany us a few steps further, beyond the limit of the bridal-chamber. He will have to bewail with us the destiny of one, who, having begun his career in the midst of misfortune, progressively advanced towards the completion of his best wishes by the energy of his noble mind, until at length his impetuous spirit hurled him again into the depths of misery. His headstrong obstinacy had well nigh involved all his friends in his own sad fate: one alone of them, whose sense of gratitude had indissolubly attached him to the fortunes of his benefactor, preferred rather to risk his life in his service than to desert him in the hour of distress.