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BERTHA;

OR, THE FALSE-HEARTED COUNT.

"MANY, many years ago there was a fair peasant-so fair, that from her childhood all her friends prophesied it could lead to no good. When she came to sixteen, the Count Ludolf thought it was a pity such beauty should be wasted, and therefore took possession of it; better that the lovely should pine in a castle than flourish in a cottage. Her mother died broken-hearted; and her father left the neighbourhood, with a curse on the disobedient girl who had brought desolation to his hearth, and shame to his old age. It needs little to tell that such passion grew cold-it were a long tale that accounted for the fancies of young, rich, and reckless cavalier; and, after all, nothing changes so soon as love," "Love!" murmured Lucy, in a low voice, as if unconscious of the interruption, "Love, which is our fate, like fate must be immutable: how can the heart forget its young religion?" "Many," pursued the sibyl, VOL. X.

See page 259 As

66 can forget, and do and will forget. for the count, his heart was cruel with prosperity, and selfish with good fortune; he had never known sickness which softens-sorrow which brings all to its own level-poverty which, however it may at last harden the heart, at first teaches us our helplessness. What was it to him that Bertha had left the home which could never receive her again? What, that for his sake she had submitted to the appearance of disgrace which was not in reality her's?-for the peasant-girl was proud as the baron; and when she stept over her father's threshold, it was as his wife. Well, well, he wearied, as men ever weary of woman's complaining, however bitter may be the injury which has wrung reproach from the unwilling lip. Many a sad hour did she spend weeping in the lonely tower, which had once seemed to her like a palace; for then the radiance of love was around it-and love, forsooth, is something like the fairies in our own land; for a time it can make all that is base and worthless seem most glittering and precious. Once, every night brought the ringing horn and eager

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step of the noble hunter; now, the nights passed away too often in dreary and unbroken splendour. Yet the shining steel of the shield in the hall, and the fair current of the mountain-spring, shewed her that her face was lovely as ever. One evening he came to visit her; and his manner was soft, and his voice was low, as in the days of old. Alas! of late she had been accustomed to the unkind look and the harsh word. "It is a lovely twilight, my Bertha," said he ; "help me to unmoor our little bark, and we will sail down the river." With a light step, and yet lighter heart, she descended the rocky stairs, and reached the boat before her companion. The white sail was soon spread-they sprang in, and the slight vessel went rapidly through the stream. At first the waves were crimson, as if freighted with rubies, the last love-gifts of the dying sun-for they were sailing on direct to the west, which was one flush like a sea of blushing wine. Gradually the tints became paler; shades of soft pink just tinged the far-off clouds, and a delicate lilac fell on the waters. A star or two shone pure and bright in the sky, and the only shadows were flung by a few wild rose-trees that sprang from the clefts of the rocks. By degrees the drooping flowers disappeared; the stream grew narrower, and the sky became darker; a few soft clouds soon gathered into a storm; but Bertha heeded them not; she was too earnestly engaged in entreating her husband that he would acknowledge their secret marriage. She speaks of the dreary solitude to which she was condemned; of her wasted youth, worn by the fever of continual anxiety. Suddenly she stopped in fear-It was so gloomy around; the steep banks nearly closed overhead, and the boughs of the old pines which stood in some of the tempest-cleft hollows met in the air, and cast a darkness like that of night upon the rapid waters, which hurried on as if they distrusted their gloomy passage. At this moment Bertha's eye caught the ghastly paleness of her husband's face, terribly distinct; she thought that he feared the rough torrent, and for her sake; tenderly she leant towards him-his arm grasped her waist, but not in love; he seized the wretched girl and flung her overboard, with the very name of God upon her lips, and appealing, too, for his sake! Twice her bright head-Bertha had ever gloried in her sunny curls, which now fell in wild profusion on her shoulders-twice did it emerge from the wave; her faint hands were spread abroad for help; he shrunk from the last glare of her despair

ing eyes; then a low moan; a few bubbles of foam rose on the stream; and all was still-but it was the stillness of death. An instant after, the thunder-cloud burst above, the peal reverberated from cliff to cliff, the lightning clave the black depths of the stream, the billows_rose_in tumultuous eddies; but Count Ludolf's boat cut its way through, and the vessel arrived at the open river. No trace was there of storm; and the dewy wild flowers filled the air with their fragrance; and the moon shone over them pure and clear, as if her light had no sympathy with human sorrow, and shuddered not at human crime. And why should she? We might judge her by ourselves; what care we for crime in which we are not involved, and for suffering in which we have no part?

The red wine-cup was drained deep and long in Count Ludolf's castle that night; and soon after,its master travelled afar into other lands-there was not pleasure enough for him at home. He found that bright eyes could gladden even the ruins of Rome-but Venice became his chosen city. It was as if revelry delighted in the contrast which the dark robe, the gloomy canal,and the death-black gondola offered to the orgies which made joyous her midnights. "And did he feel no remorse?" asked Lucy. "Remorse!" said 66 with a scornful laugh; the crone, morse is the word for a child, or for a fool

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the unpunished crime is never gretted. We weep over the consequence, not over the fault. Count Ludolf soon found another love. This time his passion was kindled by a picture, but one of a most strange and thrilling beauty-a portrait, the only unfaded one in a deserted palace situate in the eastern lagune. Day after day he went to gaze on the exquisite face and the large black eyes, till they seemed to answer to his own. But the festival of San Marco was no time for idle fantasies; and the Count was among the gayest of the revellers. Amid the many masks which he followed, was one that finally rivetted his attention. Her light step seemed scarcely to touch the ground, and every now and then a dark curl or two of raven softness escaped the veil; at last the mask itself slipped aside, and he saw the countenance of his beautiful incognita. He addressed her; and her answers, if brief, were at least encouraging; he followed her to a gondola, which they entered together. It stopped at the steps of the palace he had supposed deserted. "Will you come with me!" said she, in a voice whose melancholy was as the lute when the night-wind

he felt himself sinking rapidly; again he
rose to the surface-he knew the gloomy
pine-trees overhead; the grasp on his
hand loosened; he saw the fair head of
Bertha gasp in its death-agony amid the
waters; the blue eyes met his; the stream
flung her towards him; her arms closed
round his neck with a deadly weight;
down they sank beneath the dark river
together-and to eternity.
The Book of Beauty.
HUNGARIAN HORSE-DEALER.

a Hungarian horse-dealer stopped at an On the third night after leaving Vienna, inn, situated in the suburbs of a small

town. He had never been there before, but the house was comfortable, it respectable. Having first attended and the appearance of the people about to his tired horse, he sat down to supthe meal, he was asked whence he came ? per with his host and family. During and when he liad said from Vienna, all present were anxious to know the news. The horse-dealer told them all business had carried him to Vienna? He he knew. The host then inquired what told them he had been there to sell some of the best horses that were ever taken to that market. When he heard this, the host cast a glance at one of the men of the family, who seemed to be his son, which the dealer scarcely observed then, but which he had reason to recall afterwards.

wakens its music; and as she stood by the sculptured lions which kept the entrance, the moonlight fell on her lovely face-lovely as if Titian had painted it. "Could you doubt!" said Ludolf, as he caught the extended hand; "neither heaven nor hell should keep me from your side!" And here I cannot choose but laugh at the exaggerated phrases of lovers; why a stone, wall or a steel chain might have kept him away at that very moment! They passed many a gloomy room, dimly seen in the moonshine, till they came to the picture-gallery, which was splendidly illuminated-and, strange contrast to its usual desolation, there was spread a magnificient banquet. The waxen tapers burned in their golden candlesticks, the lamps were fed with perfumed oil, and many a crystal vase was filled with rare flowers, till the atmosphere was heavy with fragrance. Piled up, iu mother-ofpearl baskets, the purple grapes had yet the morning dew upon them; and the carved pine reared its emerald crest beside peaches, like topazes in a sunset. The Count and the lady seated themselves on a crimson ottoman; one white arm, leant negligently, contrasted with the warm colour of the velvet; but extending the other towards the table, she took a glass; at her sign the Count filled it with wine. "Will you pledge me?" said she, touching the cup with her lips, and passing it to him. He drank it-for wine and air seemed alike freighted with the fatigued traveller requested to be When supper was finished, the odour of her sigh. "My beauty!" shewn to his bed. The host himself exclaimed Ludolf, detaining the ivory took up a light, and conducted him across hand. " Nay, Count," returned the strana little yard at the back of the house to ger, in that sweet and peculiar voice, a detached building, which contained more like music than language-"I know two rooms, tolerably decent for an Hunhow lightly you hold the lover's vow!" garian hostel. In the inner room "I never loved till now!" exclaimed was a bed, and here the host left him to he, impatiently; " name, rank, fortune, himself. As the dealer threw off his life, soul, are your own." She drew a jacket and loosened the girdle round his ring from her hand, and placed it on waist, where his money was deposited, bis, leaving her's in his clasp. "What he thought he might as well see whether will you give me in exchange,-this?"it was all safe. Accordingly, he drew and she took the diamond cross of an out an old leathern purse that contained order which he wore. "Ay, and by my his gold, and then a tattered parchment knightly faith will I, and redeem it at pocket-book that enveloped the Ausyour pleasure." It was her hand which trian bank-notes, and finding that both now grasped his; a change passed over were quite right, he laid them under the her face; "1 thank you, my sister-in- bolster, extinguished the light, and death, for your likeness," said she, in threw himself on the bed, thanking God an altered voice, turning to where the and the saints that had carried him thus portrait had hung. For the first time, far homeward in safety. He had no the Count observed that the frame was misgiving as to the character of the empty. Her grasp tightened upon him people he had fallen amongst to hinder -it was the bony hand of a skeleton. his repose, and the horse-dealer was very The beauty vanished: the face grew a soon enjoying a profound and happy familiar one-it was that of Bertha! sleep. He might have been in this state The floor became unstable, like water; of beatitude an hour or two, when he

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was disturbed by a noise like the opening of a window, and felt a sudden rush of cool night air; on raising himself on the bed, he saw peering through an open window which was almost immediately above the bed, the head and shoulders of a man, who was evidently attempting to make his ingress into the room that way. As the terrified dealer looked, the intruding figure was withdrawn, and he heard a rumbling noise, and then the voices of several men, as he thought, close under the window. The most dreadful apprehensions, the more horrible as they were so sudden, now agitated the traveller, who, scarcely knowing what he did, but utterly despairing of preserving his life, threw himself under the bed. He had scarcely done so, when the hard breathing of a man was heard at the open window, and the next moment a robust fellow dropped into the room, and after staggering across it, groped his way by the walls to the bed. Fear had almost deprived the horsedealer of his senses, but yet he perceived that the intruder, whoever he might be, was drunk. There was, however, slight comfort in this, for he might only have swallowed wine to make him the more desperate, and the traveller was convinced he had heard the voices of other men without, who might climb into the room to assist their brother villain in case any resistance should be made. His astonishment, however, was great and reviving when he heard the fellow throw off his jacket on the floor, and then toss himself upon the bed under which he lay. Terror, however, had taken too firm a hold of the traveller to be shaken off at once, his ideas were too confused to permit his imagining any other motive for such a midnight intrusion on an unarmed man with property about him, save that of robbery and assassination, and he lay quiet where he was until he heard the fellow above him snoring with all the sonorousness of a drunkard. Then, indeed, he would have left his hiding-place, and gone to rouse the people in the inn to get another resting place, instead of the bed of which he had been dispossessed in so singular a manner; but, just as he came to this resolution, he heard the door of the outer room open-then stealthy steps cross it-then the door of the very room he was in was softly opened, and two men, one of whom was the host and the other his son, appeared on its threshold. "Leave the light where it is," whispered the host, 66 or it may disturb him and give us trouble."

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"There is no fear of that," said the
younger man, also in a whisper,
are two to one; he has nothing but a
little knife about him he is dead
asleep too! hear how he snores!" "Do
my bidding," said the old man sternly;
"would you have him wake and rouse
the neighbourhood with his screams?"
As it was, the horror-stricken dealer
under the bed could scarcely suppress
a shriek; but he saw that the son left
the light in the outer room, and then,
pulling the door partially after them, to
skreen the rays of the lamp from the
bed, he saw the two murderers glide to
the bedside, and then heard a rustling
motion as of arms descending on the
bed-clothes, and a hissing, and then a
grating sound, that turned his soul sick,
for he knew it came from knives or dag-
gers penetrating to the heart or vitals of
a human being like himself, and only a
few inches above his own body. This
was followed by one sudden and violent
start on the bed, accompanied by a
moan. Then the bed, which was a low
one, was bent by an increase of weight
caused by one or both the murderers
throwing themselves upon it, until it
pressed on the body of the horse-dealer.
There was an awful silence for a mo-
ment or two, and then the host said, "he
is finished- I have cut him across the
throat take the money, I saw him
put it under his bolster "" "I have it,
here it is," said the son; 66 a purse and
a pocket-book." The traveller was
then relieved from the weight that had
oppressed him almost to suffocation;
and the assassins, who seemed to tremble
as they went, ran out of the room, took
up the light, and disappeared altogether
from the apartment. No sooner were
they fairly gone than the poor dealer
crawled from under the bed, took one
desperate leap, and escaped through the
little window by which he had seen en-
ter the unfortunate wretch, who had
evidently been murdered in his stead.
He ran with all his speed into the town,
where he told his horrid story and mira-
culous escape to the night-watch. The
night-watch conducted him to the bur-
gomaster, who was soon aroused from
his sleep, and acquainted him with all ··
that had happened. In less than half an
hour from the time of his escape from it,
the horse-dealer was again at the mur-
derous inn with the magistrate, and a
strong force of the horror-stricken in-
habitants and the night-watch, who had
all run thither in the greatest silence.
In the house all seemed as still as death;
but as the party went round to the

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stables they heard a noise; cautioning the rest to surround the inn and the outhouses, the magistrate, with the traveller and some half-dozen armed men, ran to the stable-door; this they opened, and found within the host and his son digging a grave. The first figure that met the eyes of the murderers was that of the traveller. The effect of this on their guilty souls was too much to be borne; they shrieked, and threw themselves on the ground; and though they were immediately seized by hard griping hands of real flesh and blood, and heard the voices of the magistrate and their friends and neighbours, denouncing them as murderers, it was some minutes ere they could believe that the figure of the traveller that stood among them was other than a spirit. It was the hardier villain, the father, who, on hearing the stranger's voice continuing in conversation with the magistrate, first gained sufficient command over himself to raise his face from the earth; he saw the stranger still pale and haggard, but evidently unhurt. The murderer's head spun round confusedly; but, at length rising, he said to those who held him, "Let me see that stranger nearer; let me touch him-only let me touch him!" The poor horse-dealer drew back in horror and disgust. 'You may satisfy him in this," said the magistrate; he is unarmed and unnerved, and we are here to prevent his doing you harm." On this the traveller let the host approach him, and pass his hand over his person, which, when he had done, the villain exclaimed, "I am no murderer! Who says I am a murderer ?" "That shall we see anon," said the traveller, who led the way to the detached apartment, followed by the magistrate, by the two prisoners, and all the party which had collected in the stable on hearing what passed there. Both father and son walked with considerable confidence into the room; but when they saw by the lamps the night-watch and others held over it, that there was a body covered with blood, lying upon the bed, they cried out, "How is this! who is this!" and rushed together to the bed side. The lights were lowered; their rays fell full upon the ghastly face and bleeding throat of a young man. At the sight, the younger of the murderers turned his head, and swooned in silence; but the father, uttering a shriek so loud, so awful, that one of the eternally damned alone might equal its effects, threw himself on the bed, and on the gashed and bloody body, and murmuring in his

66

throat, "My son! I have killed mine own son!" also found a temporary relief from the horrors of his situation in insensibility. The next minute the wretched hostess, who was innocent of all that had passed, and who was, without knowing it, the wife of a murderer, the mother of a murderer, and the mother of a murdered son-of a son killed by a brother and a father, ran to the apart

ment and would have increased tenfold its already insupportable horrors by entering there, had she not been prevented by the honest townspeople. She had been roused from sleep by the noise made in the stable, and then by her husband's shriek, and was now herself shrieking and frantic carried back into the inn by main force. The two murderers were forthwith bound and carried to the town gaol, where, on the examination, which was made the next morning, it appeared from evidence that the person murdered was the youngest son of the landlord of the inn, and a person never suspected of any crime more serious than habitual drunkenness; that instead of being in bed, as his father and brother had believed him, he had stolen out of the house and joined a party of carousers in the town of these boon companions, all appeared in evidence; and two of them deposed that the deceased, being exceedingly intoxicated, and dreading his father's wrath, should he rouse the house in such a state, and at that late hour, had said to them that he would get through the window into the little detached apartment, and sleep there, as he had often done before, and that they two had accompanied him, and assisted him to climb to the window. The deceased had reached the window once, and as they thought would have got safe through it, but drunk and unsteady as he was, he slipped back; they had then some difficulty in inducing him to climb again, for, in the caprice of intoxication, he said he would rather go sleep with one of his comrades. However, he had at last effected his entrance; and they, his two comrades, had gone to their respective homes. The wretched criminals were executed a few weeks after the commission of the crime. They had confessed every thing, and restored to the horse-dealer the gold and the paper-money they had concealed, and which had led them to do a deed so much more atrocious than even they had contemplated.

Mac Farlane's Lives of Banditti.

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