solved within me. A slight gleam of surprise, probably occasioned by my sympathy, wavered over his features, and without taking the article he had come to purchase, he abruptly left the shop.

The moment he retired, Count Waltzerstein compared him to Thor, the Scandinavian god of vengeance, and entered into a description of the apparition so erudite and curious, that it would have passed for a masterpiece of genius in half the colleges and academies of Christendom.

'Yes, Senor,' said our landlord, Baron Altarbro is a nobleman of an ancient and brave blood; but, like many other gallant chiefs, he is destined to pine like a felon in this miserable islet.'

Has he any family?' said I abruptly.

He has a son and a daughter,' replied the landlord, and he is the most unfortunate of fathers.'

It is certainly,' said the Count, a great misfortune to a nobleman, in his venerable years, to see his children outcasts from their country, and denied the homage due to their birth.'

That is but his common misfortune; there are many others as wretched in that respect as he is,' rejoined the landlord. But at that moment my tremor and horror increased to such a pitch, that I could not support myself at the table. The landlord happened to notice me, and stooped to offer me assistance. The Count ran to his trunk for a bottle of cordials, believing me very ill. After tasting it, I went to bed, but I found it impossible to compose myself to sleep; when my eyes would have closed, my imagination grew more awake, and kept me in a state of restless ecstacy.

As soon as the daylight began to dawn, I quitted my bed, and, attracted by a kind of hideous fascination, walked towards the spot where I had stopped to listen to the music. I could not, however, again trace the path, but on the ledge of a rock which overhung the waves, I saw the flageolet lying in a pool of scattered and clotted blood.

When I returned to the village, the Count was up, and irritably impatient to quit the island, for he too had passed an uncomfortable night, and our luggage was already embarked. On my inquiring for the Baron Altarbro, the landlord told me that he had gone early that morning to one of the neighbouring islands; and before I had time to ask a second question, the Count hurried me into the boat.

'What a dismal place this is!' said he, as I sat down beside him, I am glad we are safe out of it.'

Has any thing unpleasant happened?'

'No,' was his reply; but I have been so low-spirited, that I believe there is some malignant demon in the air that puts bad thoughts into one's head. I have had such frightful dreams.'

'Perhaps,' said I, scarcely aware of what I said, 'dreams may be owing to something in the state of the atmosphere.' The Count's eyes glistened with delight at the observation, and he related an interesting story, how a relation of his family, travelling in the Tyrol, once happened to stop at an obscure inn on the road, when he and two of his suite, who slept in the same apartment, dreamt that they were confined in an unwholesome sepulchre; and in the morning they learnt, with superstitious awe, that the landlady had died the preceding day, and that the corpse lay in an adjoining room, a proof, said the Count, that dreams, if they do not come from the air, are affected by something in it; for it was no doubt the ammonia of the dead body floating in the atmosphere of their apartment which occasioned the similarity of their dreams.

This observation was somewhat curious; and I could not help saying, But what could occasion the peculiar oppression of our spirits in the Island of Maddalena ?'

Some sympathy,' said the Count, doubtless of the same kind, if we could only know what was done there last night. I should not wonder if some terrible crime has been committed.'

In this sort of conversation, both deeply affected from some unexplained cause, we sailed towards Porto Vecchio in Corsica.

After remaining nearly twelve months at Naples, the Count received letters from his father recalling him to Germany, and we set out for Rome, During the early stages of our journey, I paid but little attention to the various objects that usually interest travellers; and we had reached the borders of the Pontine marshes before I was aware that we had entered the papal territory. It was in the morning we passed those dreaded regions of agues and death. It was also the spring, and every thing in nature that could inspire cheerfulness presented itself to the eye. The flowers

sprinkled with dew, and the bright verdure, with which the ground was overspread, seemed of an elysian beauty and freshness; but not the chirp of a single bird, nor the hum of an insect was heard, a few dumb butterflies here and there glided by, and as we advanced, even they disappeared, and all was silent.

About the fourth hour after mid-day we arrived in Rome. The heat was excessive, and my spirits were languid; in consequence of which, the celebrated objects, which travellers regard with so much interest as they approach the everlasting city, lost on me their wonted influence. In a state of drowsy abstraction I reached the house where lodgings had been previously engaged for us, without recollecting whether I had observed even the dome of St Peter's. The Count went immediately to bed, but I was induced to accept of some refreshments which the servants offered.

The fatigue of the journey, the heat of the day, and the repast I had made, overwhelmed me with sleep. I leant back on the sofa, and, unconscious of having closed my eyes, I saw the Count enter and seat himself opposite to me at the table between us. His countenance was cadaverously ghastly. He filled a glass of wine; but, in raising it to his lips, it fell from his hand, and the wine flowed along the floor. He looked as if he expected me to assist him, but I felt myself strangely unable. In this juncture a wild cry startled me, and I perceived I had been dreaming-the Count was not in the room, nor any wine on the floor.

The cry continued, and the noise and confusion in the house led me to inquire what was the matter. On opening the door for the purpose, I found our servants in the pas sage, who, immediately on seeing me, exclaimed with one voice, The Count is dead!'

It was even so he had expired during the time I was asleep. Such apparitional coincidences are, I believe, not uncommon, and those who have a superstitious faith in them, would rather ascribe them to supernatural agency than to any physical impression on the senses, or to moral sympathy of any kind.

The preparations in the course of the evening for the Count's funeral, which the heat of the weather rendered immediately necessary, absorbed my whole mind, and prevented me from adverting to the forlorn condition into which the event had cast me.-I was an utter stranger in Rome, and all the money I possessed would not suffice for a

week's expenditure. At night, when I had leisure to reflect on this, my spirits failed; my pillow burned beneath my head with anxiety, and I devised a thousand impracticable schemes to redeem myself from the thraldoms of poverty; but I was locked fast in the skeleton-embraces of the fiend.

The weather was extremely warm, and the air was heavy and stifling. The influence of night and the presence of death are apt to put ill thoughts into men's minds. The murmur of my restlessness had been overheard by the domestics who watched the corpse. They took it into their heads that the Count had died of poison; they recollected some trifling dispute which I had with him on the road; they ascribed my lethargy, in the latter part of the journey, to the morose musings of revenge; in a word, they concluded that I had poisoned their master.

The first conception of this atrocious fancy startled them; they raised the whole house; they declared their suspicions; surgeons were sent for; the door of my chamber, in the same instant, was forced with a heavy beam, as if it had been doubly fortified within; and before I had time to utter a word, they seized me, and bound my hands behind. The confusion increased; the rumour of the murder reached the street, and the house was soon filled with the multitude.

In the meantime, conscious of my innocence, I preserved myself calm, but my equanimity was construed against me. At last the surgeons came, and the body was opened, and a quantity of mineral poison was found in the stomach. A horrible growl of rage was muttered by all present against me, as the police officers dragged me to prison; but I was neither agitated with dread, depressed with shame, nor affected with sorrow. I have rarely felt more self-possessed than when the jailer left me alone in the dungeon. I was in that high state of excitement, of which some men are conscious when they act their part well in difficult circumstances, or find that they have reached the extremity of their fortunes.

The first reflection that occurred to me was, that the Count had committed suicide; but a moment's consideration convinced me that such a notion was most improbable. One of the officers, while I was considering this idea, returned to inform me that I was to be examined at an early hour in the morning.

'It will be but a short business,' said he, ' for a quantity

of the same poison found in the stomach has been discovered in your trunk.

for my

I was thunderstruck; and the officer seeing my consternation, regarded it as the confusion of guilt. But, without noticing the insolence of his exultation, I sat down on the floor, and steadily endeavoured to recollect which of the servants was likely to have stolen the poison, a particular preparation of antimony, that I had sometime before purchased for a chemical experiment. And I remembered that, on the evening prior to our departure from Naples, the phial in which it was contained had been left on the dressing table in my bed-room. It must then have been taken away, trunk was not opened after I had packed up that phial. Failing to recollect any circumstance to attach suspicion to any particular individual, I had recourse to the unjustifiable alternative of conjecturing which of the servants was constitutionally most likely to have perpetrated the deed, and the idea of the Count's valet came frequently across my mind, in spite as it were of reason. Yet he was a young man of a singularly mild and agreeable physiognomy; of a disposition alert to serve, and altogether so different in countenance and conduct from the dark characteristics of a secret murderer, that I ought not to have suspected him. Nevertheless, his image so frequently recurred upon me, that it took possession of my mind.

Notwithstanding his prepossessing physiognomy, I then began to think that he was taciturn and unsocial, and that there was often a degree of embarrassment in his, eye, which a stranger would have ascribed to diffidence; but which was never accompanied with the slightest confusion in the performance of any matter in which he, at the time, happened to be engaged. That peculiarity, I then recollected, had forcibly struck me when I first saw him, and at the time, I attributed it to the consciousness of having committed some fault, but the habit of daily intercourse wore away the first impression, and reconciled me to the secret perplexity of his look.

The whole night was spent in this course of intense meditation, till I became persuaded that Antonio (for so he was called) had committed the murder. But scarcely had I come to this conclusion, when, with one of the other servants, he was admitted into the dungeon.

His appearance acted upon me with the electricity of an insult. I leapt from the ground on which I had been sit

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