“And now to my narrative. The same note which requested my visit at Verona begged of me, if I possibly could accomplish it, to provide some English person who should sit up with the sick youth and nurse him. I was not sorry to receive this commission; I wished to learn more about this boy than the confessional at such a time could teach; and could I only find a suitable agent, this would not be difficult. Chance favored me strangely enough. Amongst the prisoners taken at Ancona I found an Irish fellow, who, it appears, had taken service in the Piedmontese navy. He had been some years in America and the West Indies, and from the scattered remarks that he let fall, I perceived that he was a man of shrewd and not over-scrupulous nature. He comprehended me in an instant; and, although I was most guarded in giving my instructions, the fellow read my intentions at once. This shrewdness might, in other circumstances, have its inconveniences, but here it gave me no alarm. I was the means of his liberation, and were he troublesome, I could consign him to the prison again,--to the galleys, if needed. In company with this respectable ally, I set out for the headquarters. On my arrival I waited on the Count von Auersberg, in whose house the sick boy lay. This old man, who is Irish by birth, is more Austrian in nature than the members of the House of Hapsburg. I found him fully convinced that the white-coated legions had reconquered Lombardy by their own unaided valor, and I left him in the same pleasant delusion. It appeared that a certain Count von Walstein was enabled to clear young Dalton's character from all taint of treason, by exhibiting, in his own correspondence, some letters and documents that related to the events detailed in Frank's writing, and of which he could have had no possible knowledge. This avowal may be a serious thing for Walstein, but rescues the young Dalton at once, and proves that he was merely the writer of Ravitzky's sentiments; so that here, again, Michel, he escapes. Is not this more than strange?