ible punctuality; and Schneider used to
make country excursions in search of offenders with this fellow, as
a provost-marshal, at his back. In the meantime, having entered my
sixteenth year, and being a proper lad of my age, I had joined a
regiment of cavalry, and was scampering now after the Austrians
who menaced us, and now threatening the Emigres, who were banded at
Coblentz. My love for my dear cousin increased as my whiskers grew; and
when I was scarcely seventeen, I thought myself man enough to marry her,
and to cut the throat of any one who should venture to say me nay.

I need not tell you that during my absence at Strasburg, great changes
had occurred in our little village, and somewhat of the revolutionary
rage had penetrated even to that quiet and distant place. The hideous
"Fete of the Supreme Being" had been celebrated at Paris; the practice
of our ancient religion was forbidden; its professors were most of them
in concealment, or in exile, or had expiated on the scaffold their crime
of Christianity. In our poor village my uncle's church was closed, and
he, himself, an inmate in my brother's house, only owing his safety to
his great popularity among his former flock, and the influence of Edward
Ancel.

The latter had taken in the Revolution a somewhat prominent part; that
is, he had engaged in many contracts for the army, attended the clubs
regularly, corresponded with the authorities of his department, and was
loud in his denunciations of the aristocrats in the neighborhood. But
owing, perhaps, to the German origin of the peasantry, and their quiet
and rustic lives, the revolutionary fury which prevailed in the cities
had hardly reached the country people. The occasional visit of a
commissary from Paris or Strasburg served to keep the flame alive, and
to remind the rural swains of the existence of a Republic in France.

Now and then, when I could gain a week's leave of absence, I returned to
the village, and was received with tolerable politeness by my uncle, and
with a warmer feeling by his daughter.

I won't describe to you the progress of our love, or the wrath of my
uncle Edward, when he discovered that it still continued. He swore and
he stormed; he locked Mary into her chamber, and vowed that he would
withdraw the allowance he made me, if ever I ventured near her. His
daughter, he said, should never marry a hopeless, penniless subaltern;
and Mary declared she would not marry without his consent. W