her from her home, and ultimately become his nurse. A shuddering thrill passed through his veins, for he was awaiting her. She was accustomed each night, after his sister had retired, to prepare for both a draught of lemonade as their night-beverage, and first leaving one with her young master, to carry the other to the chamber of the countess. Her appearance was therefore anticipated; and she remained for an instant, as usual, in order to receive the praise which her beloved nurseling never failed to lavish upon her skill; but, for the first time, Elric objected to the flavour of the draught, and requested her to bring him a lemon that he might augment its acidity. The discomfited old woman obeyed, and, having deposited her salver upon the table, left the room. Elric started up, grasped a mass of his dishevelled hair in his hand with a violence which threatened to rend it from the roots, uttered one groan which seemed to tear asunder all the fibres of his heart, and then glared about him, rapidly but searchingly, ere he drew the fatal phial from his breast, and slowly, gloatingly poured out the whole of the liquid into the porcelain cup which had been prepared for his sister. As he did so, a slight acrid scent diffused itself over the apartment, but almost instantly evaporated, and the death-draught remained as clear and limpid as before. "To-morrow!" murmured the wretched young man, as he watched the retiring form of the grey-haired attendant when she finally left the room; and then he once more buried his face in his hands, and fell into a state of torpor. "To-morrow!" he repeated, as he at length rose, staggeringly, to seek his chamber. "Mina, beloved Mina, I have bought you at a fearful price!" CHAPTER III. The voice of lamentation was loud upon the morrow in that ancient house. The Countess Stephanie had ceased to exist. The aged nurse had drawn back the curtains of the window, that her mistress might, as usual, be awakened by the cheerful sunlight; but she was no longer conscious of its beams. She lay upon her bed, pale, placid, and unchanged, like one who had passed from the calm slumber of repose to the deep sleep of death. One hand pillowed her cheek, and the other still clasped her rosary. Death had touched her lovingly, for there was almost a smile upon her lips; and the hard lines which the world traces upon the countenance had disappeared beneath his gentle pressure. The count stood gloomily beside her bed, awaiting the arrival of the physician who had been summoned. He trembled violently, but he was surrounded by the voice of wailing and the sight of tears; he had lost his only sister, his last relative. How, then, could he have remained unmoved? The physician came; he felt the small and rounded wrists, but there was no pulsation: he bared the white and beautiful arm to the shoulder, and applied the lancet, but the blood had ceased to circulate in the blue veins. The man of science shook his head, and extended his hand in sympathy to the anxious brother. The catastrophe, he said, was subject of regret to him rather than of surprise. The young gräfine had long suffered from an affection of the heart. A little sooner or a little later the blow must have fallen. It was a mere question of time. All human aid was useless. And so he departed from the house of mourning. The few individuals of Nienburg and its immediate neighbourhood who were privileged to intrude at such a moment, crowded to the mansion to offer their condolences to the young graf, and to talk over the sudden and melancholy death of his sister; and meanwhile, Elric, unable to rest for an instant in the same place, wandered through the desolate apartments, tearless and silent, occasionally lifting the different articles which had belonged to Stephanie in his trembling hands, and looking intently upon them, as though hè dreaded to behold the characters of his crime traced upon their surface. The German ceremonial of interment is complicated and minute, and all persons of high birth are expected to conform to it in every particular. Among the rites which precede bu- For four-and-twenty hours the The long day, and the still longer night in which the Countess Stephanie lay dead beneath the roof she had so reverenced throughout her life, passed over; and all the pompous accessories which could be commanded in so obscure a neighbourhood were secured to do honour to her obsequies. The mournful train moved slowly onward to the cemetery, where a grave had already been prepared for her beside her mother; and, passing near the spot where she was finally to rest, entered the Hall of Resurrection, and gently and carefully stretched her upon the bed of gloom. The wildest of the mourn. ers was the poor old nurse, who, with her grey hair streaming over her shoulders, and her dim eyes swollen with tears, knelt near the head of her mistress, and clasped her clay-cold hands. But it was the young count who was the centre of commiseration The last four-andtwenty hours had done the work of years upon him; a sullen, leaden tinge had spread over his skin, his voice was deep and hollow, and his trembling hands could scarcely perform their offices. "No wonder!" ejaculated those who looked upon him; "for years they had been every thing to each other." parted, for the sun was setting. Elric At length the funeral train delistened in horror to their retreating footsteps, for he felt that he was soon to be alone. Alone with what? With the dead, stretched there by his own hand-With his murdered sister! This was his companionship within; and without, graves, nothing but graves, sheeted corpses, and the yawning tomb which was awaiting his victim. The sweat rolled in large drops down the forehead of the young man. He had watched near the body of his mother in peace and prayer, for she had been taken from him, and he was innocent then and full of hope; but now-now! He tottered to the window and looked out. The twilight was thickening, and the light came pale through the narrow leaded panes of the little casepulchral chamber in which he was ment. He glanced around the sefire burning upon to pass the night. There was a small at which he lighted his lamp, and a prayer-book lying upon the table, on which he vainly endeavoured to concentrate his thoughts. At that moment he was beyond the reach of prayer! The strong man was bowed, body and spirit, beneath the pressure of his crime! Again and again he asked himself, with a pertinacity that bordered on delirium, what it was over which he watched? And again and again the question was answered in his own heart. Over his sister, his only surviving relative, murdered the open hearth by his own hand. The murderer was watching beside his victim! At intervals he strove against the horror by which he was oppressed; he endeavoured to rally the pride of his sex and of his strength. What could he fear? The dead are powerless over the living; and yet, fiercer and sharper came the memory that his crime had been gratuitous, for had he not been told that the death which he had given must ere long have come? "A little sooner, or a little later," had said the man of science. Oh, had he only waited, promised, temporised; but all was now too late! She lay there cold, pale, stark, within a few paces of him, and tears of blood could not recall the dead! It was the close of autumn, and as the sun set masses of lurid and sulphureous clouds gathered upon the western horizon, but save an occasional sweep of wind which moaned through the funereal trees, all remained still, buried in that ringing silence which may be heard; and the moon, as yet untouched by the rising vapours, gleamed on the narrow window of the cell, and cast upon the floor the quivering shadows of the trees beside it. But at length came midnight, the moon was veiled in clouds, and a sweeping wind rushed through the long grass upon the graves, and swayed to and fro the tall branches of the yews and cypresses; next came the sound of falling rain,-large, heavy drops, which plashed upon the foliage, and then fell with a sullen reverberation upon the dry and thirsty earth. Gradually the storm increased; and ere long, as the thunder began to growl hoarsely in the distance, it beat angrily against the diamond panes, and dropped in a shower from the eaves of the little building. Elric breathed more freely. This elemental warfare was more congenial to his troubled spirit than the fearful silence by which it had been preceded. He tried to think of Mina; but as though her pure and innocent image could not blend with the objects around him, he found it impossible to pursue a continuous chain of thought. Once more he bent over the book before him, but as he turned the page a sudden light filled the narrow chamber, and through the sheeted glare sprang a fierce flash, which for a moment seemed to destroy his power of vision. He rose hurriedly from his chair; the thunder appeared to be bursting over his head, the lightning danced like fiery demons across the floor, the wind howled and roared in the wide chimney; and suddenly, as he stood there, aghast and consciencestricken, a sharp blast penetrating through some aperture in the walls, extinguished his solitary lamp. At this instant the bell rang. "The Bell!” shouted the young count, like a maniac,-"THE BELL! And then, gaining strength from his excess of horror, he laughed as wildly as he had spoken. "Fool that I am! Is not such a wind as this enough to shake the very edifice from its foundation? and am I scared because it has vibrated along a wire? Ias not the same blast put out my lamp? All is still again. My own thoughts have made a coward of me!" As he uttered these words, another and a brighter flash shot through the casement and ran along the wire, and again the bell rang out; but his eye had been upon it, and he could no longer cheat himself into the belief that he had endeavoured to create. The fiery vapour had disappeared, but still louder and louder rang the bell, as though pulled by a hand of agony. Elric sank helpless to his knees. At every successive flash he saw the violent motion of the bell which hung above him, and as the darkness again gathered about the cell, he still heard the maddening peal, which seemed to split his brain. "Light! light!" he moaned at last, as he rose painfully from the floor. "I must have light, or I shall become a raving maniac.' 99 And then he strove to re-illumine the lamp; but his shaking hand ill obeyed the impulse of his frenzied will. And still, without the intermission of a second, the bell rang on. At length he obtained a light, and staggering to the wall, he fixed his eyes upon the frightful wire. "It stretches," he muttered, unconsciously; "still it stretches, and there is no wind now; there is a lull. Some one must be pulling it from the other chamber, and if so, it must be His voice became extinct; he could not utter the name of his sister. With a frantic gesture he seized the lamp and turned towards the door which opened into the deathchamber, and still the bell rang on, without the cessation of an instant. A short passage parted the two cells, and as he staggered onwards he was compelled to cling to the wall, for his knees knocked together, and he could scarcely support himself. At length he reached the inner door, and desperately flung it open. chill like that which escapes from a vault fell upon his brow, and the sound of the bell pursued him still. He moved a pace forward, retreated, again advanced, and, finally, by a mighty effort, sprang into the centre of the chamber. One shrill and piercing cry escaped him, and the lamp fell from his hand. A "You are then here ?" murmured a low and feeble voice. "You, Elric von Königstein, the renegade from honour, the sororicide, the would-be murderer! Yours is the affection which watches over my last hours on earth? The same hand which mixed the deadly draught is ready to lay me in the grave ?" As the words fell upon his ear, a vivid flash filled the room, and the count saw his sister sitting upright wrapped in her death-clothes. deep groan escaped him. 66 A "That draught was scarcely swallowed," pursued the voice, ere I detected that it had been tampered with; but it was then too late to save myself, and, for the honour of our name, I shrank from denouncing you, though I felt at once that you were the murderer. But you were coward as well as sororicide. You have subjected me to all the agonies of death, and have not merely condemned me to an after-life of suffering, but of suffering to us both, for I shall live on under the knowledge of the fate to which you destined me, and you beneath my irrevocable curse. The last few sentences were uttered feebly and gaspingly, as though the strength of the speaker were spent, and then a heavy fall upon the bed betrayed to the horrorstricken Elric that some fresh catastrophe had occurred. With the energy of despair he rushed from the room, and hastened to procure a light. A frightful spectacle met him on his return. Stephanie lay across the bed, with a portion of her funeral-dress displaced. The arm with which she had rung the fatal bell was that from which her medical attendant had striven to procure blood during her insensibility, and which, in preparing her for the grave, had been unbound. The violent exertion to which it had been subjected, added to the power of the poison that still lurked in her veins, had opened the wound, and ere the young count returned with the lamp she was indeed a corpse, with her white burial-garments dabbled in blood. The scene told its own tale on the morrow. She had partially awakened, and the result was evident. None knew, save he who watched beside her, that the fatal bell had rung! Madness The curse worked. seized upon the wretched Elric, and for years he was a raving lunatic, who might at any moment be lashed into frenzy by the mere ringing of a bell. PRINCIPAL CAMPAIGNS IN THE RISE OF NAPOLEON. No. V. THE CAMPAIGN OF MARENGO. CHAPTER VIII. THE Conquest of Italy had, as we have seen, placed Napoleon on a pedestal of fame which already overshadowed the government of the Republic. The power of his popularity weighed heavily on the Directors; and as he was "moody and dissatisfied, and brooding over the prospect of inactivity," they were as anxious to find him employment as he was to obtain it. The peace so lately concluded left, however, no opening for military exertion on the continent of Europe; and as Napoleon, though named general of the army of England, declined after a brief survey of the ports of the Channel, to venture on the invasion of the hostile island, attention was turned to a different quarter. The French government had already, under Louis XV., contemplated the occupation of Egypt. The Directory were also desirous of making conquests in the East, and, some time before Napoleon's expedition, had ordered Admiral Bruyez to surprise Malta, -a plan which the knights foiled, by refusing to admit his four ships into the harbour of La Valette. During the Italian campaigns Napoleon had more than once proposed to seize the Turkish province of Albania; at a later period he turned his thoughts towards Egypt, and now both the general and Directory resolved to carry this last plan into execution. That so unprincipled an act of aggression could not be defended by the slightest shadow or semblance of justice, troubled the projectors as little as the executors of the undertaking. The details of the expedition belong not to our subject. Treachery and cowardice opened the gates of Malta to the Republican forces; and in Egypt an army of 40,000 French veterans could experience but little opposition from a few undisciplined Turks and Mamelukes; the military operations cannot, therefore, be reckoned among the principal campaigns of Napoleon. Biographers assure us that he governed the conquered province with so much ability, as to obtain from the inhabitants the title of the Just Sultan." On examination it proves, however, that his conduct was so rapacious and oppressive, so directly at variance with all the long-established customs of the East, that it maddened the people and drove them into open rebellion. The ruthless barbarity by which the insurrections were crushed, and the sanguinary cruelty which marked his subsequent conduct, are fully attested by his own letters. Defeated at Acre, disappointed, perhaps, in his expectations of founding a splendid Eastern empire, he deserted his army. - left them by stealth in a foreign land, beset with difficulties and cut off from all communication with their native country. Preceded by the bulletin of a victory he had achieved over some Turks who had landed at Aboukir, he arrived in France after a long and tedious passage, and his first reception on landing already told him that he was the undisputed lord of the soil. His journey to the capital was a continued triumph, and the intelligence of his arrival was hailed with acclamations in every part of the country. This was Napoleon's first illomened return to Paris, after sacri ficing thousands to his ambition and forsaking the remains of the gallant army entrusted to his care: but we shall see him again returning, vampire-like, to seek for more victims, after burying hundreds of thousands beneath the snows of Russia. The fresh victims are granted and led to death, and he appears again a lonely deserter from the slaughter-scene of |