"Antoinette was sixteen. She was fair and smiling like the morn, but she was fated to die like the others. Grétry prayed and wept, as he saw her growing pale; but death was not stopped so easily. Cruel that he is, he stops his ears, there is no use to pray to him! Grétry, however, still hoped. 'God,' said he, 'will be touched by my thrice bitter tears.' He almost abandoned music, in order to have more time to consecrate to his dear Antoinette. He anticipated all her fancies, dresses, and ornaments, books and excursions,—in a word, she enjoyed to her heart's desire every pleasure the world could afford. At each new toy she smiled with that divine smile which seems formed for heaven. Grétry succeeded in deceiving himself; but she one day revealed to him all her ill-fortune in these words, which accidentally escaped from her: 'My godmother died on the scaffold: she was a godmother of bad augury, Jenny died at sixteen, Lucile died at sixteen, and I am now sixteen myself.' The godmother of Antoinette was the queen Maria Antoinette.
"Another day, Antoinette was meditating over a pink at the window. On seeing her with this flower in her hand, Grétry imagined that the poor girl was suffering herself to be carried away by a dream of love. It was the dream of death! He soon heard Antoinette murmur; 'I shall die this spring, this summer, this autumn, this winter!' She was at the last leaf. 'So much the worse,' she said; 'I should like the autumn better.' 'What do you say, my dear angel?' said Grétry, pressing her to his heart. 'Nothing, nothing! I was playing with death; why do you not let the children play?'
"Grétry thought that a southern journey would be a beneficial change; he took his daughter to Lyons, where she had friends. For a short time she returned to her gay and careless manner. Grétry went to work again, and finished Guillaume Tell. He went every morning, in search of inspiration, to the chamber of his daughter, who said to him one day, on awaking: 'Your music has always the odor of a poem; this will have that of wild thyme.'
"Towards autumn, she again lost her natural gayety. Grétry took his wife aside—'You see your daughter,' said he to her. At this single word, an icy shudder seized both. They shed a torrent of tears. The same day they thought of returning to Paris. 'So we are to go back to Paris', said Antoinette; 'it is well. I shall rejoin there those whom I love.' She spoke of her sisters. After reaching Paris, the poor, fated girl concealed all the ravages of death with care; her heart was sad, but her lips were smiling. She wished to conceal the truth from her father to the end. One day, while she was weeping and hiding her tears, she said to him with an air of gayety: 'You know that I am going to the ball to-morrow, and I want to appear well-dressed there. I want a pearl necklace, and shall look for it when I wake up to-morrow morning.'
"She went to the ball. As she set out with her mother, Rouget Delisle, a musician more celebrated at that time than Grétry, said rapturously: 'Ah, Grétry, you are a happy man! What a charming girl! what sweetness and grace!' 'Yes,' said Grétry, in a whisper, 'she is beautiful and still more amiable; she is going to the ball, but in a few weeks we shall follow her together to the cemetery!' 'What a horrible idea! You are losing your senses!' 'Would I were not losing my heart! I had three daughters; she is the only left to me, but already I must weep for her!'
"A few days after this ball, she took to her bed, and fell into a sad but beautiful delirium. She had found her sisters again in this world; she walked with them hand in hand; she waltzed in the same saloon; she danced in the same quadrille; she took them to the play: all the while recounting to them her imaginary loves. What a picture for Grétry! 'She had,' he says in his Memoirs, some serene moments before death.—She took my hand, and that of her mother, and with a sweet smile, 'I see well,' she murmured, 'that we must bear our destiny; I do not fear death; but what is to become of you two?' She was propped up by her pillow while she spoke with us for the last time. She was laid back, then closed her beautiful eyes, and went to join her sisters!
"Grétry is very eloquent in his grief. There Is in this part of his Memoirs a cry which came from his heart, and wrings our own. 'Oh, my friends,' he exclaims, throwing down the pen, 'a tear, a tear upon the beloved tomb of my three lovely flowers, predestined to die, like those of the good Italian monk.'"
A MODEL TRAVELLER.
One of the most readable of living travellers is certainly our own Bayard Taylor, who is now somewhere in the interior of the African continent, and whose letters in the Tribune are every where perused with the greatest satisfaction. Worthy to be named along with him is the German, Frederick Gerstäcker, whose adventures form one of the most interesting features in that cyclopediac journal, the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung. It is now some two years since Gerstäcker set out upon his present explorations. The backwoods of the United States furnished a broad field for his love of a wild and changeful life, and gave full play to his passion for the study of human character in all its out of the way phases. His accounts of these regions were touched with the most vivid colors; not Cooper nor Irving has more truly reproduced the grand and savage features of American scenery, or the reckless generous daring of the rude backwoodsman, than Gerstäcker, writing, from some chance hut, his nocturnal landing place on the shore of some mighty river in Nebraska or Arkansas. Next we hear of him in South America, and then in California, passing a winter among the miners of the remotest districts, digging gold, hunting, trafficking, fighting in case of need like the rest, and every where sending home the most lively daguerreotypes of the country, the people, and his own adventures among them. Finally, having seen all that was in California, he takes passage for the Sandwich Islands, where he remains long enough to exhaust all the romance remaining, and to gather every sort of useful information. From there he set out upon an indefinite voyage on board of a whaler going to the Southern seas in search of oil. Chance, however, brings him up at Australia: and he at once sets about travelling through the settled portions of the Continent, taking the luck of the day every where with exhaustless good humour, and never getting low spirited, no matter how untoward the mishaps encountered. Less elegant and poetic than Taylor, he dashes ahead with a more perfect indifference to consequences, and a more utter reliance on coming out all right in the end. In his last letter, he gives an account of a voyage in a canoe from Albury, on the upper waters of Hume River, down to Melbourne, at its mouth. He had got out of funds, and was thus obliged to set out on this route contrary to the advice of the settlers at Albury, who represented to him that the danger of being killed and eaten by the natives along shore, who had never come in contact with whites, was inevitable, and that they would be sure to destroy him before he reached his destination. This was, however, only an additional inducement to the trip. While making preparations for it, he fell in with a young fellow-countryman in the settlement, who desired to make the same journey, and who was willing to encounter the risks of the river rather than pay the heavy expenses of the trip by land. They accordingly proceeded to dig a canoe out of a caoutchouc tree, furnished themselves with paddles, a frying-pan, blankets, some crackers, sugar, salt, tea, and powder, and embarked. The river was shallow, and full of windings and sandbanks, sunken caoutchouc trees had planted the stream with frequent snags, and often heavy masses of fallen timber, still adhering to the earth at its roots, and thus preserving its vitality, and flourishing with all the luxuriance of a primitive tropical forest, covered the only part of the channel where the water was deep enough to admit of the passage of their canoe. Thus they toiled on day by day, often getting out into the water to help their vessel over shallows, or to pick up the ducks that Gerstäcker shot, which furnished the only meat for their daily meals. Cloudy or fair, cold or warm, rain or sunshine, found Gerstäcker still in the same flow of spirits, and the notes of his daily experiences show him bearing ill-luck almost as gaily as good. After they had gone some 400 miles, however, their journey by the river came to a sudden end by the oversetting of their canoe, and the loss of almost all their equipments. Gerstäcker saved his rifle and the ammunition that was upon his person; but the remaining powder was spoiled, and the provisions and part of the blankets and clothing were carried away by the current. The canoe sunk, but by holding upon the rope as they jumped out upon the overhanging trunks of trees, the voyagers succeeded in dragging it up again, and freeing it from water. Then one of them dived to the bottom, and managed to bring up the frying-pan and tea-canister. They also recovered part of their blankets, and then, with the frying-pan for their sole paddle, renewed their voyage till they found a good camping-place, where they built a roaring fire to dry themselves, and finally discovered that in the operations of the day each had utterly ruined his shoes, so that they were afterwards forced to go barefoot. In this way they continued for some days, paddling with their frying-pan, and going ashore to get a duck occasionally shot by Gerstäcker. This was often exceedingly painful, from the stubble of the grass along the banks, burnt over by fires accidentally set by the natives. Luckily, through the whole they did not come in contact with the savages at all. At last they reached a settlement, where they swapped their canoe for a couple pair of shoes, and started on foot for the rest of the way. Gerstäcker had for some time desired to get rid of his companion, who was wilful, and by no means a helper in their difficulties. They now came to Woolshed, a place 180 miles distant from Melbourne, whence there were two roads to their destination; the one was perfectly free from the savages, the other was dangerous. Here Gerstäcker separated from his companion, giving him the safe road, and, with his rifle on his arm and his knapsack slung upon his shoulders, struck off alone into the forest-path light-hearted as a boy, and sure, whatever might happen, of enjoying a fresher and healthier excitement in that journey through the woods of Australia than the dwellers in crowded cities enjoy in all their lives.