under that exhibition of courtesy and modest dignity with which he
first earnestly declined the honor in favor of older officers, and then
finally complied with what he found to be the sincere wish of the
company, by frankly accepting it. Paulina had grown up amongst military
men, and had been early trained to a sympathy with military merit,--the
very court of the emperor had something of the complexion of a camp,--
and the object of her own youthful choice was elevated in her eyes, if
it were at all possible that he should be so, by this ratification of
his claims on the part of those whom she looked up to as the most
competent judges.

Before nine o'clock the van of the party was in motion; then, with a
short interval, came all the carriages of every description, and the
Papenheim dragoons as a rear-guard. About eleven the sun began to burst
out, and illuminated, with the cheerful crimson of a frosty morning,
those horizontal draperies of mist which had previously stifled his
beams. The extremity of the cold was a good deal abated by this time,
and Paulina, alighting from her carriage, mounted a led horse, which
gave her the opportunity, so much wished for by them both, of
conversing freely with Maximilian. For a long time the interest and
animation of their reciprocal communications, and the magnitude of the
events since they had parted, affecting either or both of them
directly, or in the persons of their friends, had the natural effect of
banishing any dejection which nearer and more pressing concerns would
else have called forth. But, in the midst of this factitious animation,
and the happiness which otherwise so undisguisedly possessed Maximilian
at their unexpected reunion, it shocked Paulina to observe in her lover
a degree of gravity almost amounting to sadness, which argued in a
soldier of his gallantry some overpowering sense of danger. In fact,
upon being pressed to say the worst, Maximilian frankly avowed that he