ence. Troops were then assembled in all
haste by government, and sent to invest the frontier. Trains filled with
soldiers were incessantly running up and down the newly-constructed
railway. The streets of the capital were filled with uniforms, and the
drum every where heard. The army, of course, was all at once in the
ascendant. The officers ran here and there, full of business, buying
maps, and drinking toasts in all sorts of wines. The soldiers wrote home
to get money if possible, and to send more or less loving greetings to
their sweethearts. Numberless young clerks grew pale; numberless mothers
knit strong stockings through their tears, and providently made lint for
their poor sons; numberless fathers spoke with an unsteady voice of the
duty of fighting for king and country, and braced themselves up by
remembering the damage they had in their day done to that wicked
Napoleon.

It was on a sunny autumn morning that the first positive intelligence of
the Polish insurrection reached the capital. Dark rumors had indeed
excited the inhabitants on the previous evening, and crowds of anxious
men of business and scared idlers were crowding the railway terminus. No
sooner was the office of T. O. Schroeter open, than in rushed Mr. Braun,
the agent, and breathlessly related (not without a certain inward
complacency, such as the possessor of the least agreeable news
invariably betrays) that the whole of Poland and Galicia, as well as
several border provinces, were in open insurrection, numerous quiet
commercial travelers and peaceable officials surprised and murdered, and
numerous towns set fire to.

This intelligence threw Anton into the greatest consternation, and with
good cause. A short time before, an enterprising Galician merchant had
undertaken to dispatch an unusually large order to the firm; and, as is
the custom of the country, he had already received the largest part of
the sum due to him for it (nearly twenty thousand dollars) in other
goods. The wagons that were to bring the merchandise must now, Anton
reckoned, be just in the heart of the disturbed district. Moreover,
another caravan, laden with colonial produce, and on its way to Galicia,
must be on the very confines of the enemy's land. And, what was still
worse, a large portion of the business of the house, and of the credit
granted it, was carried on in, and depended upon, this very part of the
country. Much--nay, every thing, he apprehended, would be endange