The count, having fought a duel with an Austrian general, against the emperor’s command, and having left him for dead, was obliged to seek refuge in one of the forests of Istria, where he was apprehended, and afterward rescued by a band of robbers who had long infested that quarter. With these banditti he spent nine months, until, by a close investment of the place in which they were concealed, and after a very obstinate resistance, in which the greater part of them were killed, he was taken and carried to Vienna, to be broken alive on the wheel. This punishment was, by the intercession of his friends, changed into that of perpetual confinement and labor in the mines of Idria; a sentence which, to a noble mind, was worse than death. To these mines he was accompanied by the countess, his lady, who belonged to one of the first families in Germany, and who, having tried every means to procure her husband’s pardon without effect, resolved at length to share his miseries, as she could not relieve them. They were terminated, however, through the mediation of the general with whom the duel had been fought, who as soon as he recovered from his wounds, obtained a pardon for his unfortunate opponent; and Alberti, on his return to Vienna, was again taken into favor, and restored to his fortune and rank. IRON MINES. The metal which is called iron, is familiar to all, both for its value and its various uses. It is capable of being cast in molds of any form; of being drawn in wires, extended in plates or sheets, of being bent in every direction, and of being sharpened, hardened, or softened at pleasure. It accommodates itself to all our wants, desires, and even caprices; it is equally serviceable to the arts, the sciences, to agriculture, and to war; and the same ore furnishes the sword, the plowshare, the scythe, the pruning-hook, the needle, the graver, the spring of the watch or that of the carriage, the chisel, the chain, the anchor, the compass, the cannon, the bomb, the edge of the finest knife or razor, and the ponderous trip-hammer of enormous weight. It is a medicine of much virtue, and the only metal which is always useful, and tends to no injury to mankind. The ores of iron are scattered over the entire crust of the globe in beneficent profusion, and in proportion to the utility of the metal itself: they are found in every latitude and zone, in every mineral formation, and in every soil and clime. These ores are nineteen in number, ten of which are worked to profit by the miner, either for the sake of the iron they contain, for use in their native state, or for extracting from them some principle or material, useful in manufactures or the arts.