singing of the birds, and Eugene shrugged his shoulders in despair; still he fancied himself the object of the village wonder and admiration; how many eyes, he thought, were peeping at him through the Venetian blinds, or between the folds of those muslin curtains-how many damsels were following with raptured eyes the receding form of his own exquisite self. He strolled gracefully along -a merry laugh met his ear-he turned his head, and there stood Rosa; there she stood on tiptoe, training a honeysuckle over the portico, one hand holding up the branches, the other playfully striking down a frolicsome dog; she turned her bright face round as she heard the approaching step, and to the astonishment of Mr. Eugene Adolphus, she did not seem astonished; she neither let fall the honeysuckle or jumped off the little footstool, but continued carelessly her employment: the lion did not alarm her.

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A pretty enough country girl, that," thought our city inimitable, and he walked slowly along. Egad, I wonder who she is," and he turned roundRosa had vanished-"a deuced pretty girl," and Eugene went home.

"Who lives in the stone house at the end of the street?" our hero deigned to inquire of his aunt.

"Doctor Hunter." Eugene sipped his tea. "Ahem! is he married?" "Bless you, he is a widower, with only one child, who is ——

"A pretty girl, ha!" interrupted Eugene, as he broke a cake.

"Yes, and a sweet girl, too, is Rosa; every body loves her; you would love her too, if you knew her," said the simple old lady.

"Pshaw !" said Eugene; he rose, however, from the table, walked first to the glass, then by the stone house-a little fairy figure was running through the grounds, followed by the mischievous dog, and again the merry laugh rung in his ear.

"Oh, a wild romp," thought the sensitive Eugene; "a country hoyden just from boarding-school," and he tossed his head contemptuously, "and what a laugh she has !"

Eugene went home, and all night long his ears were ringing with that happy, merry laugh.

The next day, more graceful than ever, again out-sallied our hero; a party on

horseback are coming gaily up the street, and among them he distinguishes Rosa. "Now," thought Eugene, as he assumed one of his inimitable attitudes and drew himself up to let the party pass, "now," thought he, "I shall strike this laughter-loving girl with astonishment;" but to his mortification, Rosa only switched her little pony, and, without deigning to cast even a look at the elegant attitude, "the glass of fashion, the mould of form," galloped gaily along.

The next day Eugene again met Rosa; that evening he managed to get introduced, next he called, then played a sweet serenade under her window, all moon and romance; an invitation for a ride followed, which Rosa declined; and when Eugene went home, he did not look in the glass. After tea he again strolled out, forgot his gloves and rattan, met Rosa arm in arm with a sober young man in black, wondered who in the name of impudence he could be.

"He jests at scars who never felt a wound." Eugene jested no longer; deeply he felt the arrow he had defied. He wrote a note on gilt-edged paper, couleur de rose, its fragrance perfumed the air, and still sweeter were the words of admiration and love, adoration, despair and death it contained. When Rosa had read it, she laughed, and then placed it in her cabinet of curiosities. Soon Eugene received a neat little note, declining the honour, &c. &c.

Eugene Adolphus said he would shoot, hang, or drown himself; then came the reflection of "green and yellow" melancholy, enough to melt a heart of stone, so he brushed his hair à la désespoir, bathed his forehead, flourished his white handkerchief most sentimentally, then walked by the stone house with the tragedy air of a desperate man. Alas, poor Eugene! he hears again that merry laugh! When he reached home a note was handed him, an invitation to a wedding-Rosa's wedding! What! had the sober young man in black excelled the elegant Eugene Adolphus in the eyes of the simple country maiden !

That night the stage was heard to roll from Aunt Patty's door, and no more was seen of the city lion.

ILL-DESERVED COMMENDATION.

Praises of the unworthy are felt by ardent minds as robberies of the deserving.

PERCIE, MY PAGE, OR, A LEGACY OF A LADY.

(Continued from page 21.)

THE fate and history of Yvain, the outlaw, became, on the following day, the talk of Vienna. He had been long known as the daring horse-stealer of Hungary; and though it was not doubted that his sway was exercised over plunderers of every description, even pirates upon the high seas, his own courage and address were principally applied to robbery of the well-guarded steeds of the emperor and his nobles. It was said that there was not a horse in the dominions of Austria whose qualities and breeding were not known to him, nor one he cared to have which was not in his concealed stables in the forest. The most incredible stories were told of his horsemanship. He would so disguise the animal on which he rode, either by forcing him into new paces or by other arts only known to himself, that he would make the tour of the glacis on the emperor's best horse, newly stolen, unsuspected even by the royal grooms. The roadsters of his own troop were the best steeds bred on the banks of the Danube; but, though always in the highest condition, they would never have been suspected to be worth a florin till put upon their mettle. The extraordinary escapes of his band from the vigilant and well-mounted gens-d'armes thus accounted for; and, in most of the villages of Austria, the people, on some market-day or other, had seen a body of apparently ill-mounted peasants suddenly start off with the speed of lightning at the appearance of gens-d'armes, and, flying over fence and wall, draw a straight course for the mountains, distancing their pursuers with the ease of swallows on the wing.

were

After the death of Yvain in the garden, I had been forced with Percie into a carriage, standing in the court, and accompanied by a guard, driven to my hotel, where I was given to understand that I was to remain under arrest till farther orders. A sentinel at the door forbade all ingress or egress except to the people of the house: a circumstance which was only distressing to me, as it precluded my inquiries after the Countess Iminild, of whom common rumour, the servants informed me, made not the slightest mention.

Four days after this, on the relief of the guard at noon, a subaltern entered my room, and informed me that I was at liberty. I instantly made preparations to go out, and was drawing on my boots, when Percie, who had not yet recovered from the shock of his arrest, entered in some alarm, and informed me that one of the royal grooms was in the court with a letter, which he would deliver only into my own hands. He had orders beside, he said, not to leave his saddle. Wondering what new leaf of my destiny was to turn over, I went below and received a letter, with apparently the imperial seal, from a well-dressed groom in the livery of the emperor's brother, the king of Hungary. He was mounted on a compact, yet fine-limbed horse, and both horse and rider were as still as if cut in marble.

I returned to my room and broke the seal. It was a letter from Iminild, and the bold bearer was an outlaw disguised! She had heard that I was to be released that morning, and desired me to ride out on the road to Gratz. In a postscript, she begged I would request Monsieur Percie to accompany me.

I sent for horses, and, wishing to be left to my own thoughts, ordered Percie to fall behind, and rode slowly out of the southern gate. If the Countess Iminild were safe, I had had enough of the adventure for my taste. My oath bound me to protect this wild and unsexed woman; but farther intercourse with a band of outlaws, or farther peril of my head for no reason that either a court of gallantry or of justice would recognize, was beyond my usual programme of pleasant events. The road was a gentle ascent, and with the brible on the neck of my hack I paced thoughtfully on, till, at a slight turn, we stood at a fair height above Vienna.

"It is a beautiful city, sir," said Percie, riding up.

"How the deuce could she have escaped?" said I, thinking aloud.

"Has she escaped, sir? Ah, thank heaven!" exclaimed the passionate boy, the tears rushing to his eyes.

"Why, Percie!" I said, with a tone of surprise which called a blush into his face, "have you really found leisure to fall in love amid all this imbroglio ?”

"I beg pardon, my dear master!" he replied, in a confused voice, "I scarce know what it is to fall in love; but I would die for Miladi Iminild."

"Not at all an impossible sequel, my poor boy! But wheel about and touch your hat, for here comes some one of the royal family!"

A horseman was approaching, at an easy canter, over the broad and unfenced plain of table-land which overlooks Vienna on the south, attended by six mounted servants in the white kerseymere frocks, braided with the two-headed black eagle, which distinguish the members of the imperial household.

The carriages on the road stopped while he passed, the foot-passengers touched their caps, and, as he came near, I perceived that he was slight and young, but rode with a confidence and a grace not often attained. His horse had the subdued, half-fiery action of an Arab, and Percie nearly dropped from his saddle when the young horseman suddenly drove in his spurs, and with almost a single vault stood motionless before us. "Monsieur !"

"Madame la Contesse !"

I was uncertain how to receive her, and took refuge in civility. Whether she would be overwhelmed with the recollection of Yvain's death, or had put away the thought altogether with her masculine firmness, was a dilemma for which the eccentric contradictions of her character left me no probable solution. Motioning with her hand after saluting me, two of the party rode backward and forward in different directions, as if patrolling; and giving a look between a tear and a smile at Percie, she placed her hand in mine, and shook off her sadness with a strong effort.

"You did not expect so large a suite with your protegée," she said, rather gaily, after a moment.

"Do I understand that you come now to put yourself under my protection ?" I asked, in reply.

I

"Soon, but not now, nor here. have a hundred men at the foot of Mount Semering, whose future fate, in some important respects, none can decide but myself. Yvain was always prepared for this, and everything is en train. I come now but to appoint a place of meeting. Quick! my patrole comes in, and some one approaches whom we must fly. Can you await me at Gratz?"

"I can and will !"

She put her slight hand to my lips, waved a kiss at Percie, and away, with the speed of wind, flew her swift Arab over the plain, followed by the six horse.

men, every one of whom seemed a part of the animal that carried him-he rode so admirably.

The slight figure of Iminild in the close-fitting dress of a Hungarian page, her jacket open and her beautiful limbs perfectly defined, silver fringes at her ankles and waist, and a row of silver buttons gallonné down to the instep, her bright, flashing eyes, her short curls escaping from her cap, and tangled over her left temple with the gold tassel, dirk and pistol at her belt and spurs upon her heels-it was an apparition I had scarce time to realize, but it seemed painted on my eyes. The cloud of dust which followed their rapid flight faded away as I watched it, but I saw her still.

"Shall I ride back and order posthorses, sir?" asked Percie, standing up in his stirrups.

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"No; but you may order dinner at six. And, Percie!" he was riding away with a gloomy air; you may go to the police and get our passports for Venice." By the way of Gratz, sir?" "Yes, simpleton !"

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There is a difference between sixteen and twenty-six, I thought to myself, as the handsome boy flogged his horse into a gallop. The time is gone when I could love without reason. Yet I remember when a feather, stuck jauntily into a bonnet, would have made any woman a princess; and in those days, heaven help us! I should have loved this woman more for her gaillardise than ten times a prettier one with all the virtues of Dorcas. For which of my sins am I made guardian to a robber's wife, I wonder!

The heavy German postillions, with their cocked hats and yellow coats, got us over the ground after a manner, and toward the sunset of a summer's evening the tall castle of Gratz, perched on a pinnacle of rock in the centre of a vast plain, stood up boldly against the reddening sky. The rich fields of Styria were ripening to an early harvest, the people sat at their doors with the look of household happiness for which the inhabitants of these despotic countries' are so remarkable; and now and then on the road the rattling of steel scabbards drew my attention from a book or a reverie, and the mounted troops, so perpetually seen on the broad roads of Austria, lingered slowly past with their dust and baggage-trains.

It had been a long summer's day, and, contrary to my usual practice, I had not mounted, even for half a post, to Percie's side in the rumble. Out of humour with fate for having drawn me into very embarrassing circumstances-out of humour with myself for the Quixotic step which had first brought it on me-and a little out of humour with Percie, (perhaps from an unacknowledged jealousy of Iminild's marked preference for the varlet,) I left him to toast alone in the sun, while I tried to forget him and myself in "Le Marquis de Pontanges." What a very clever book it is, by the way! The pompous sergeant of the guard performed his office upon my passport at the gate-giving me at least a kreutzer worth of his majesty's black sand in exchange for my florin and my English curse; (I said before I was out of temper, and he was half an hour writing his abominable name,) and leaving my carriage and Percie to find their way together to the hotel, I dismounted at the foot of a steep street and made my way to the battlements of the castle, in search of scenery and equanimity.

Ah! what a glorious landscape! The precipitous rock on which the old fortress is built seems dropped by the Titans in the midst of a plain, extending miles in every direction, with scarce another pebble. Close at its base run the populous streets, coiling about it like serpents around a pyramid; and away from the walls of the city spread the broad fields, laden, as far as the eye can see, with tribute for the emperor! The tall castle, with its armed crest, looks down among the reapers.

You have not lost friend and lover, yet you are melancholy!" said a voice behind me, that I was scarce startled to hear.

"Is it you, Iminild ?”

"Scarce the same-for Iminild was never before so sad. It is something in the sunset. Come away while the woman keeps down in me, and let us stroll through the Plaza, where the band is playing. Do you love military music?"

I looked at the costume and figure of the extraordinary creature, before I ventured with her on a public promenade. She was dressed like one of the travelling apprentices of Germany, with cap and bleuzer, and had assumed the air of the craft with a success absolutely beyond detection. I gave her my arm and we sauntered through the crowd, listening

to the thrilling music of one of the finest bands in Germany. The privileged character and free manners of the wandering craftsmen whose dress she had adopted, I was well aware, reconciled, in the eyes of the inhabitants, the marked contrast between our conditions in life. They would simply have said, if they had made a remark at all, that the Englishman was bon enfant and the craftsman bon camarade.

"You had better look at me, messieurs !" said the dusty apprentice, as two officers of the regiment passed and gave me the usual strangers' stare; "I am better worth your while by exactly five thousand florins."

"And pray how?" I asked. "That price is set on my head!" "Heavens and you will walk here?" "They kept you longer than usual with your passport, I presume?" "At the gate? yes."

"I came in with my pack at the time. They have orders to examine all travellers and passports with unusual care, these sharp officials! But I shall get out as easily as I got in !"

"My dear countess !" I said, in a tone of serious remonstrance, "do not trifle with the vigilance of the best police in Europe! I am your guardian, and you owe my advice some respect. away from the square and let us talk of it in earnest."

Come

Percie made his appearance with a cup of coffee the following morning, and, with the intention of posting a couple of leagues to breakfast, I hurried through my toilet and was in my carriage an hour after sunrise. The postillion was in his saddle and only waited for Percie, who, upon inquiry, was nowhere to be found. I sat fifteen minutes, and just as I was beginning to be alarmed, he ran into the large court of the hotel, and, crying out to the postillions that all was right, jumped into his place with an agility, it struck me, very unlike his usual gentlemanlike deliberation. Determined to take advantage of the first up-hill to catechise him upon his matutinal rambles, I read the signs along the street till we pulled up at the gate.

Iminild's communication had prepared me for unusual delay with my passport, and I was not surprised when the officer, in returning it to me, requested me, as a matter of form, to declare, upon my honour, that the servant behind my carriage was an Englishman, and the person mentioned in my passport.

"Foi d'honneur, monsieur," I said, placing my hand politely on my heart; and off trotted the postillion, while the captain of the guard, flattered with my civility, touched his foraging-cap, and sent me a German blessing through his moustache.

It was a divine morning, and the fresh and dewy air took me back many a year, to the days when I was more familiar with the hour. We had a long trajet across the plain, and unlooping an antivibration tablet, for the invention of which my ingenuity took great credit to itself, (suspended on caoutchouc cords from the roof of the carriage-and deserving of a patent, I trust you will allow!) I let off my poetical vein in the following beginning to what might have turned out, but for the interruption, a very edifying copy of verses:

Ye are not what ye were to me,

Oh waning night and morning star! Though silent still your watches fleeThough hang yon lamp in heaven as far

Though live the thoughts ye fed of yore
I'm thine, oh starry dawn! no more!

Yet to that dew-pearl'd hour alone

I was not folly's blindest child; It came when wearied mirth had flown, And sleep was on the gay and wild;

A foot thrust into my carriage-window rudely broke the thread of these delicate musings. The postillion was on a walk, and, before I could well get my wits back from their wool-gathering, the Countess Iminild, in Percie's clothes, sat laughing on the cushion beside me.

"On what bird's back has your ladyship descended from the clouds?" I asked, with unfeigned astonishment.

"The same bird has brought us both down-c'est à dire, if you are not still en l'air," she added, looking from my scrawled tablets to my perplexed face.

"Are you really and really the Countess Iminild?" I asked with a smile, looking down at the trowsered feet and loose-fitting boots of the pseudo valet.

"Yes, indeed! but I leave it to you to swear, 'foi d'honneur,' that a born countess is an English valet!" And she laughed so long and merrily, that the postillion looked over his yellow epaulettes in astonishment.

"Kind, generous Percie!" she said, changing her tone presently to one of great feeling, "I would scarce believe him last night when he informed me, as an inducement to leave him behind, that he was only a servant ! You never told me this. But he is a gentleman in every feeling as well as in every feature, and, by heavens! he shall be a menial no longer!"

This speech, begun with much tenderness, rose, toward the close, to the violence of passion; and, folding her arms with an air of defiance, the ladyoutlaw threw herself back in the carriage.

"I have no objection," I said, after a short silence, "that Percie should set up for a gentleman. Nature has certainly done her part to make him one; but, till you can give him means and education, the coat which you wear with such a grace, is his safest shell. 'Ants live safely till they have gotten wings,' says the old proverb."

The blowing of the postillion's horn interrupted the argument, and, a moment after, we were rolled up, with Ger