nearly perfect. If these symptoms of delicate health, did not prevent this
fair girl from being amused at the volubility and arguments of the
different orators, she oftener manifested apprehension at finding herself
the companion of creatures so untrained, so violent, so exacting, and so
grossly ignorant. A young man, wearing the roquelaure and other similar
appendages of a Swiss in foreign military service, a character to excite
neither observation nor comment in that age, stood at her elbow,
answering the questions that from time to time were addressed to him by
the others, in a manner to show he was an intimate acquaintance, though
there were signs about his travelling equipage to prove he was not exactly
of their ordinary society. Of all who were not immediately engaged in the
boisterous discussion at the gate, this young soldier, who was commonly
addressed by those near him as Monsieur Sigismund, was much the most
interested in its progress. Though of herculean frame, and evidently of
unusual physical force, he was singularly agitated. His cheek, which had
not yet lost the freshness due to the mountain air, would, at times,
become pale as that of the wilting flower near him; while at others, the
blood rushed across his brow in a torrent that seemed to threaten a
rupture of the starting vessels in which it so tumultuously flowed. Unless
addressed, however, he said nothing; his distress gradually subsiding,
until it was merely betrayed by the convulsive writhings of his fingers,
which unconsciously grasped the hilt of his sword.

The uproar had now continued for some time: throats were getting sore,
tongues clammy, voices hoarse, and words incoherent, when a sudden check
was given to the useless clamor by an incident quite in unison with the
disturbance itself. Two enormous dogs were in attendance hard by,
apparently awaiting the movements of their respective masters, who were
lost to view in the mass of heads and bodies that stopped the passage of
the gate. One of these animals was covered with a short, thick coating of