tress. To the old
who were stricken with sickness or the helplessness of age she used to
read for hours together. Every little pathway led her to some office of
charity or kindness, till the "good Fraeulein" became a village byword,
and her name was treasured and her footstep welcomed in every cottage
around.

Her humble dress, her more humble manner, took nothing from the
deference they yielded her. They felt too intensely the inborn
superiority of her nature to think of any equality between them, and
they venerated her with something like devotion. A physician to the
sick, a nurse to the bedridden, a teacher to the ignorant, a blessing
and an example to all, Nelly's hours were but too short for the calls
of her duties, and, in her care for others, she had no time to bestow on
her own sorrows.

As for Hanserl, he worked from daylight to dusk. Already the little
garden, weed-grown and uncared-for before, was as blooming as his former
one at the Alten Schloss. Under Nelly's guidance many a device was
executed that seemed almost miraculous to the simple neighbors; and the
lichen-clad rocks, the waving water-lilies or trellised creepers, which,
in the wild wantonness of nature they had never noticed, now struck
them as the very creations of genius. Even old Andy was not forgotten in
their schemes of happiness; and the old huntsman used to spend hours in
the effort to tame a young fox a peasant had brought him,--a labor not
the less interesting that its progress suffered many a check, and that
many a laugh arose at the backslidings of the pupil.

And now we leave them for a brief season, all occupied and all happy;
nor do we like the fate that calls us away to other and very different
associates.

CHAPTER XXIV. FLORENCE.

It was of a calm but starless night in winter that Florence was
illuminated in honor of a victory over the Austrian troops at Goito.
Never was patriotic ardor higher,--never were stronger the hopes of
Italian independence. From the hour of their retreat from Milan, the
imperial forces had met with little but reverses, and, as day by day
they fell back towards the Tyrol Alps, the hosts of their enemies
swelled and increased around them; and from Genoa to the Adriatic all
Italy was in march to battle. It is not to speculate on the passable
current of events, nor yet to dwell on the causes of that memorable
failure, by which dissentient councils and false faith--the weakness
of good men and the a