again! Time flew on; the journals announced the fall of the Trocadero;
the surrender of Cadiz, and the restoration of Ferdinand; yet there came
no news from Henri! Then did the gentle girl sink into all the
despondency of disappointment; and as day after day passed and brought
no tidings of her lover, her beauty and her health suffered alike, she
languished and pined till she scarce retained the semblance of her
former self.

At last came a letter; it was from Spain, but it was written in a
stranger's hand, and its sable appendages bespoke the fatal nature of
its contents. It was from a brother officer of Henri, stating that his
regiment had been foremost in the attack, and that the Trocadero, the
last resource of the Constitutionalists, had been carried with the loss
of but few killed; but, alas! among that few, was Henri! He was shot
through the body while leading his men to the assault. He fell instantly
dead, and the writer expressed his desire that the sad intelligence
should be conveyed as gently as possible to Rosalie.

Unhappily, by one of those chances which often occur, as if to aggravate
misfortune, it was Rosalie who received the fatal letter from the
postman's hands! She tore it open; read its dreadful contents; and with
a wild and frenzied shriek, fell senseless to the ground! She was borne
to her bed, where every care and attention was bestowed; but her illness
rapidly assumed a threatening and a dangerous character. A fever seized
her frame; she became at once delirious; nor did reason again resume her
throne; and it was not till after months of suffering and agony, that
she recovered, if that could be called recovery, which gave back a
deformed and hapless lunatic, bereft of intellect and of beauty, in
place of the once gay and fascinating Rosalie. The dread aberration of
intellect was attributed by her medical attendants to the fatal and