twenty years in as many weeks, and he was already, to the eye, a worn
and broken-down officer of veterans. He could not stir a pace without
crutches; and his hip had been so shattered and distorted that it was
painful to see him move. It was well that Beatrice was in her grave. No
doubt she would have exhibited the noble constancy of a pure, angelic,
and true love;--but she was spared that longer and heavier trial.

Alvinzi, like a stricken deer, betook himself, with decayed hopes and an
aching bosom, to a retired valley near Burgersdorf, about ten miles from
Vienna. Here he took a small fishing cottage, near a lone and lovely
stream, which flowed across a few velvet meadows, amid deep dells
and still woods; and here he threw himself on the beautiful bosom of
nature as on that of a mother. Here, for the first time, he was made
acquainted, by a letter and a packet from the aged and desolate Adony,
of the melancholy end of the lovely Beatrice. The packet contained a
small cross which she had always worn, her miniature, and her psalter.

The traveller who may now wander into the little valley, near
Burgersdorf, where Alvinzi dwelt, will find the cypress, planted upon
his grave the day after his funeral, only three years' growth; and if he
go and sit under the tree, beneath which Alvinzi reposed his withered
and broken frame for thirty summers, will perhaps agree with the
narrator of this mournful story, that mercy was mingled in his bitter
cup, and that

Society is all but rude,
To that delicious solitude.


The peasants of that valley tell, with a superstitious awe, that Alvinzi