had taken for a star must be a large fire,
but could not understand how it could be so high up in the air.
"Postilion, what fire is that before us yonder?" I asked the man
who was driving me. "Oh! why, that's not a fire; it's the beacon
tower of R--sitten." "R--sitten!" Directly the postilion mentioned
the name all the experiences of the eventful autumn days which I had
spent there recurred to my mind with lifelike reality. I saw the
Baron--Seraphina--and also the remarkably eccentric old aunts--myself
as well, with my bare milk-white face, my hair elegantly curled and
powdered, and wearing a delicate sky-blue coat--nay, I saw myself in my
love-sick folly, sighing like a furnace, and making lugubrious odes on
my mistress's eyebrows. The sombre, melancholy mood into which these
memories plunged me was relieved by the bright recollection of V----'s
genial jokes, shooting up like flashes of coloured light, and I found
them now still more entertaining than they had been so long ago.
Thus agitated by pain mingled with much peculiar pleasure, I reached
R--sitten early in the morning and got out of the coach in front of the
post-house, where it had stopped I recognised the house as that of the
land-steward; I inquired after him. "Begging your pardon," said the
clerk of the post-house, taking his pipe from his mouth and giving his
night-cap a tilt, "begging your pardon; there is no land-steward here;
this is a Royal Government office, and the Herr Administrator is still
asleep." On making further inquiries I learnt that Freiherr Roderick
von R----, the last lord of the entail, had died sixteen years before
without descendants, and that the entail in accordance with the terms
of the original deeds had now escheated to the state. I went up to the
castle; it was a mere heap of ruins. I was informed by an old peasant,
who came out of the fir-forest, and with whom I entered into
conversation, that a large portion of the stones had been employed in
the construction of the beacon-tower. He also could tell the story of
the ghost which was said to have haunted the castle, and he affirmed
that people often heard unearthly cries and lamentations amongst the
stones, especially at full moon.

Poor short-sighted old Roderick! What a malignant destiny did you
conjure up to destroy with the breath of poison, in the first moments
of its growth, that race which you intended to plant with firm roots to
last on till eternity!