and weary of
disappointed affections, and alienated from the world, to change her
name, abjure her rank, and take the veil in one of the Italian convents
connected with her family. I should thus have lost her for ever. She had
waited on this eventful day only for the return of her domestic. His
arrest on the night before had deranged her plans; and when he had
returned, his mixture of French verbiage and Irish raptures, his
guard-house terrors and his Castle feasting, formed a melange so
unintelligible, that she was compelled to believe him under the
influence of a spell--that spell which is supposed to inspire so much of
the wit and wisdom of one of the cleverest and most _bizarre_ regions of
a moonstruck world. Even my note only added to her perplexity. It was
given by Monsieur Hannibal with such a magniloquent description of the
palace in which he found me, and which he fully believed to be my
own--of the royal retinue surrounding my steps--of my staff of
glittering officers, and the battalions and brigades of my body-guard;
that while she smiled at his narrative, she was perfectly convinced of
his derangement. But all this had luckily produced delay; and the hour
came when her past anxieties were to be exchanged for the faith and
fondness of one who knew her infinite value, and was determined to
devote his life to embellishing and cheering every hour of her
existence.

We were married; and I had the delight and honour of introducing
Clotilde into a circle of rank and lustre equal to the highest of her
native country. The monarchy of France was long since in the tomb; its
nobility were wanderers over the face of the earth. The fortunes, the
hopes, the honours, all but the name of her distinguished family, had
gone down in the general wreck. But now was given to me the joyous duty
of replacing, by the purest and fondest of all rights, all that the
chances of the world had taken away. I thought her countenance lovelier
than ever. It exhibited some slight evidence of the deep and exhausting
trials which she had so long endured; it was pale, yet the paleness
reminded me of the exquisite hue of some of those fine sculptures which
the Italian chisel has given for the admiration of mankind. Its
expression, too, had assumed a loftier character than even when its
first glance struck my young imagination. It had shared something of the
elevation of a mind noble by nature, but rendered still loftier and more
intellectual by be