“To be sure, I remember him perfectly,—a strange creature that came out here with that boy you heard me speak of. Pray read on.”
“I stopped at 'syllables.' Yes—when these curiously-conceived syllables, then, come under the visionary apertures of your acute understanding, they will disclose to your much-reflecting and nice-discriminating mind as cruel and murderous a deed as ever a miscreant imagination suggested to a diabolically-constructed and nefariously-fashioned organization, showing that Nature in her bland adaptiveness never imposes a mistaken fruit on a genuine arborescence'—Do you understand him?” asked she.
“Partly, perhaps,” continued he. “Let us have the subject.”
“'Not to weary your exalted and never-enough-to-be-esteemed intelligence, I will proceed, without further ambiguous or circumgyratory evolutions, to the main body of my allegation. It happened in this way: Charley—your venerated worship knows who I mean—Charley, ever deep in marmorial pursuits, and far progressed in sculptorial excellence, with a genius that Phidias, if he did not envy, would esteem—'
“Really I cannot go on with these interminable parentheses,” said she; “you must decipher them yourself.” Upton took the letter, and read it, at first hastily, and then, recommencing, with more of care and attention, occasionally stopping to reflect, and consider the details. “This is likely to be a troublesome business,” said he. “This boy has got himself into a serious scrape. Love and a duel are bad enough; but an Austrian state-prison, and a sentence of twenty years in irons, are even worse. So far as I can make out from my not over lucid correspondent, he had conceived a violent affection for a young lady at Massa, to whose favor a young Austrian of high rank at the same time pretended.”
“Wahnsdorf, I'm certain,” broke in the Princess; “and the girl—that Mademoiselle—”
“Harley,” interposed Sir Horace.
“Just so,—Harley. Pray go on,” said she, eagerly.
“A very serious altercation and a duel were the consequences of this rivalry, and Wahnsdorf has been dangerously wounded; his life is still in peril. The Harleys have been sent out of the country, and my unlucky protégé, handed over to the Austrians, has been tried, condemned, and sentenced to twenty years in Kuffstein, a Tyrol fortress where great severity is practised,—from the neighborhood of which this letter is written, entreating my speedy interference and protection.”
“What can you do? It is not even within your jurisdiction,” said she, carelessly.