whose value was
enhanced by the previous disasters of the campaign. The favourite of the
French armies, too, had gained that victory. This was another feature of
the rejoicing. Dumourier was one of the people; "no noble, no
aristocrat, no son of landed wealth, no lord of forests and feeder on
privileges." He had been a simple captain of engineers; he was now
conqueror of those Austrian provinces on which France had cast an eager
eye for centuries. That prize, which all the monarchs of France, with
all their titled marshals, had never been able to seize, "the Republic,
with a republican army and a republican general, had won in the first
month of her first invasion."

The garrison, of course, had its fireworks, its salute from the
ramparts, and its _feu de joie_. But, in the midst of the festivity, I
observed Pantoufle's countenance loaded with some mighty secret. He
broke it to me with the air of a man revealing a conspiracy. Taking me
on one side, while the ramparts were blazing with blue-lights, and every
man, woman, and child of the garrison were chattering, huzzaing, and
waltzing round us; he communicated to me the solemn fact, that his heart
had been pierced again. This execution had been done while he was
waiting in Elnathan's counting-house: a young Rachel or Rebecca had
accidentally glanced across his sight, with such inimitable eyes, that
his fate was decided for life. The world was valueless without her; and
my particular advice was requested as to the way in which he was to make
his approaches. I advised a sonnet. He smiled, and acknowledged that he
had anticipated my advice, and had spent an hour of that twilight, dear
to love and the muses, during which he had kept me in all the
discomforts of suspense, devoting all the energies of his soul to the
composition of a song to the beauties of the irresistible Israelite.
Boileau has told the world, that a poet once insisted on his listening
to an ode of his composition, while they were kneeling together at high
mass. Our situation might not be quite as solemn, but the doctor was
quite as pressing; and seated on the corner of a bastion, while the guns
were roaring above our heads, I listened to an effusion in the most
established style of sexagenarian poetry.

"Rachel est sans desirs,
C'est un bouton de rose,
Que la nature arrose,
Et dispose a s'ouvrir.

Dans son cour sans detour,
Il n'est pas jour encore;
Il attend pour eclore
Un r