VIII.
My campaigns were over. Rainer had laid a train, and fired the powder magazine of his captured hold. The bravest of my men perished; and I, crushed beneath a fragment of the toppling towers, lived to curse the art that returned me mutilated and miserable, to a world in which I was henceforth to have no portion.
I left the hospital a phantom, and set forth on a pilgrimage, the performance of which was the only business that remained to me in life. The tide of battle had ebbed from St. Michael, when I crawled up its steep—the church and castle were blackened ruins—the habitations of the villagers roofless and deserted—the mill a shapeless mass of timber and stones. Our orchard was unfolding the buds of spring—I fancied that the hoary apple-trees wore the aspect of friends—the voice of singing floated on my ear, as I neared the dwelling of my infancy, and the fountain of my heart re-opened.
Close to the spot where our pretty porch once stood, a matron, in the garb of extreme penury, was bending over the trampled remains of a plot of flowers. Her features were only partially revealed, but the mountain melody she sang could not be mistaken—I fell at my mother's feet! Shading back the hair from my scarred temples, she asked me if I had come from her children!
Mercy was vouchsafed to her and to me. She soon slumbered with the clods of the valley. My father had died, ere my departure from France; and the story of our injuries from the Austrian lightened the burden of remorse for the shedding of blood. I have discovered no trace of Katherine since I quitted her at the cave.
A Masked Ball At Vienna.
It is a bitterly cold night, and the snow which has been for three days tumbling down upon the roofs and pavements of Vienna, tumbles down upon us still. The theatres, which get through their performances by half-past nine, are closed already; and there is a lull now in the muffled streets. I mean to go out as a muffled man, and use the ticket I have bought for a Masked Ball at the palace. The sale of tickets for such balls, which take place now and then during the winter, raises enormous sums, which are applied to charitable purposes, so that the luxury of the rich is made to minister, in this case, also to the comforts of the poor.
Here I stand ankle-deep in snow, and look up at the palace; all the windows on the first story are being lighted up, and cold gentlemen converging toward the door from all parts, are the members of Strauss's band. And now lights [pg 470] have begun to flash about the streets, and masks are beginning to arrive. Splendid carriages of the nobility; and positively some of the imperial family do not disdain to be among the first arrivals! The beau from the suburbs, in a light fiacre. Actresses and officers in their broughams. Sledges from the country, drawn by merry little horses, frisking through the snow, and jingling bells over their harness. A chaos of lights, a coachman, and the long poles of sedan chairs in the way of a chaos of legs, hats, shoulders, coach-tops, and every thing else, powdered with snow that tumbles silently and steadily upon the scene of riot. A crush of revelers upon the staircase. Half-past eleven; all the most important people having now entered—except myself—it is quite time for me to follow to the ball-room.
A vast room. Think of the Great Exhibition, if you want a notion of it; and take off a discount for exaggeration. Walk to the end of this room, and a door opens into another ball-room, almost twice as large. In each of these great halls, there are raised orchestras, in which the bands are stationed; and when one band ceases playing, another is prepared immediately to begin. Galleries, to which you ascend by flights of stairs at each end, run round both the rooms; and into these galleries open innumerable ice and supper-rooms, passages, and out-of-the-way cells, wherein you may lose yourself, but not your company. Masks are to be found sitting in every corner; wherever a mask is, there is mischief.