Only ye who have felt what it is after long years of absence, after buffeting with the wild waves of life, and learning by heart that bitter lesson they call the world, to come back to what was once a home, can form some notion of the mingled emotions of joy and sorrow with which I drew near Reichenau.

As the road grew gradually more steep, and the mountain gorge became narrower and wilder, I found myself at each moment in sight of some well-remembered object. Now it was a well beside which I had often rested; now a cross or a shrine beneath which I had knelt. Here was a rocky eminence I had climbed, to gain a wider view of the winding valley before me; here was a giant oak under which I had sheltered from a storm. Every turn of the way brought up some scene, some incident, or some train of long-forgotten thought of that time when, as a boy, I wandered all alone, weaving fancies of the world, and making myself the hero of a hundred stories. Sad and sorrowful as it is to reckon scores with our hopes and mark how little life has borne out the promises of our youth, yet I cannot help thinking that our grief is nobly recompensed by the very memory of that time, that glorious time, when, shadowed by no scepticism, nor darkened by any distrust, we were happy and hopeful and confiding. It is not alone that we recur to those memories with pleasure, but we are actually better for the doing so. They tell of a time when our hearts were yet uncorrupted, our ambitions were noble, and our aspirations generous. They remind us of a period when the episodes of life rarely outlived the day, and our griefs never endured through half the night. And so comes it that when, in after years, we are tired and careworn by the world, it is not to our experience of mankind we look for support and comfort, but to the time when, in happy innocence, we wandered all alone, peopling space with images of kindness and goodness, and making for ourselves an ideal world, so much better than the real one!

It was sunset. The “Angelus” was ringing as I entered Reichenau, and the postilion—a mountaineer—reverently descended from the saddle, and knelt upon the roadside in silent prayer. How long was it since I had witnessed even so much of devotion! The world in which I had mixed had its occupations of intrigue and plot, its schemes of greatness and wealth and power, but no space for thoughts like those of this poor peasant. Alas! and was I not myself corrupted by their contact? That penitent attitude—that prayerful look—those clasped hands—were now all objects of astonishment to me, when once I had deemed them the fit accompaniment of the hour. Too truly was I changed from what I had been!

Night was falling fast as we reached the bridge, and a light twinkled in the little window which had once been the Herr Robert's. A little further on, I saw the chateau and the terrace; then came the tower of the old church; and as we turned into the Platz, I beheld the arched gateway, and the small diamond-paned window of the little inn. How sadly did they all remind me of my solitary existence! for here, in the midst of every object of my childish memory, was I, friendless and alone. A little crowd gathered around the carriage as I got out. The staring rustics little thought that he who then descended had been, perhaps, their playfellow and companion. The postilion had styled me an “Excellency,” and the landlord received me with all his deference.

I pretended that I should stay a day or two, in expectation of a friend's arrival, and ordered the best rooms in the house; and, as was not unusual in those days, begged the favor of my host's company at supper. The invitation was gladly accepted, and Herr Kirschler entertained me till past midnight with an account of Reichenau and its inhabitants. I affected to know the village as a mere traveller who had passed through it some years back, on my way to Italy; and the host, with true innkeeper memory, remembered me perfectly. I was fatter, or thinner, or browner, or somewhat paler than before, but in other respects little changed. So, at least, he told me, and I accepted the description. I reminded him that when I last came through, the chÂteau had been a school: was it so still?

“Yes; and Monsieur Jost was still the master, although now very old and infirm, and, of course, little able to direct it. In fact, he devoted his time far more to beetles and butterflies than to the boys; and so most of the scholars had left him, and the school was rapidly declining.”

I turned the conversation on Reichenau itself, and asked in a careless tone if strangers ever sought it as a residence. He shook his head sorrowfully, and said rarely, if ever.

“There had,” he added, “been one or two families who had fled thither on the outbreak of the French Revolution, but they had long since taken their departure. One of them,” added he, rising, and opening the window, “one of them lived yonder, where your Excellency sees that old tower; and mean as it looks without, I can assure you it is still poorer within; and yet they were noble,—at least, so it was said here.”

“You cannot remember the name?” said I.

“No; but it is written in one of my old ledgers.”

“Will you do me the kindness to look for it?” said I, “as these things have a deep interest for me, since I have known so many of the exiled families.”

It was in no spirit of curiosity that I made this request; I needed nothing to aid me. There stood the old tower which contained my play-room; there, the little window at which I have sat, silent and alone, whole nights long. It was to conceal my emotion that I wished him away; and scarcely had he left the room, when I hid my face within my hands and sobbed aloud. The search occupied him some time; and when he returned, I had recovered myself sufficiently to escape his notice.

“Well, have you found it?” said I.

“Yes, your Excellency, here it is,—in the lady's own writing too.”

The words were simply the routine entry of travellers in the “police-sheet” of the hotel, stating that Madame la Comtesse de Gabriac, accompanied by son secrÉtaire. Monsieur Raper, had passed two days there, and then departed for———. The word had been written, and then blotted out.

“For where?” asked I.

“That is the strangest point of all,” said he; “for after having taken the places for Milan, and their passports all vised for that city, when day broke they were not to be found. Some peasants, who came to market that day, thought they had seen them on the mountains taking the path to Feldkirch; but wherever they went, they were never heard of more.”

“Do you mean that they had to set out on foot?”

“Parbleu! your Excellency; the route they took can be travelled in no other fashion.”

“But their baggage, their effects”

“They were of the lightest, I assure you,” said he, laughing. “Madame la Comtesse carried hers in a kerchief, and Monsieur le SecrÉtaire had a common soldier's knapsack, and a small bundle in his hand, when he came here.”

I suppose the expression of my face at the ribald tone of this remark must have intimated what I felt, but 'tried to conceal, since he speedily corrected himself, and said, in a voice of apology,—

“It is not, assuredly, at their poverty I would sneer, your Excellency; but for persons of their condition this was not the suitable way to travel.”

“Did they leave no friends behind them who might give a clew to their mysterious departure?”

“Friends! No, your Excellency, they were too proud and too highly born for us of Reichenau,—at least, the Comtesse was; as for Monsieur Raper, poor fellow, he was a teacher at Monsieur Jost's yonder, and rarely seen amongst us.”

“And how do you explain it?—I mean, what explanation was the common one in vogue in the village?”

“As for that, there were all manner of rumors. Some said they had fled from their debts, which was false; for they had sold the little they possessed, and came to pass the two last days here while paying whatever they owed in the village. Some thought that they had been hiding from justice, and that their refuge had been at last discovered; and some, among whom I confess myself one, think that it was with reference to the Count's affairs that they had taken to flight.”

“How do you mean?” asked I.

“Oh, De Gabriac was a 'bad subject,' and, if report speak truly, was implicated in many crimes. One thing is certain: before they had been gone a week, the gensdarmes were here in search of him; they ransacked the lodging for some clew to his hiding-place, and searched the post for letters to or from him.”

“And so you think that it was probably to avoid him that she fled?” said I, hazarding a question, to obtain a fuller admission than he had made.

“That is precisely my opinion; and when I tell your Excellency that it was on receiving a letter from Paris, most probably from him, that she hastily sold off everything, you will possibly be of my mind also.”

“And Gabriac, did he ever appear here again?”

“Some say he did; but it is doubtful. One thing, however, is certain: there was a teacher here in Monsieur Jost's academy, a certain Monsieur Augustin, who gave lessons in mathematics, and the secret police gave him some tidings that made him also leave this; and the report is, that Gabriac was somehow the cause of this. Nobody ever thought ill of Augustin, and it is hard to believe he was Gabriac's accomplice.”

I could perceive, from this reply of the host, that he was “all abroad” as to any real knowledge of events, and had only got some faint glimmerings of the truth. I now suffered him to run on about people and occurrences of which I knew nothing, so as to divert him from any attention to myself, and then betook me to my bed with an anxious mind and a wearied one.

I was up early the next morning, and hastened to the chÂteau, where I found my old master already up, and walking in the garden. He was, indeed, much changed. Time had told heavily on him too, and he seemed far more feeble than I expected to find him. The letter with which I was charged for him invited him to make me any confidential communication he desired to impart, and to regard me as trustworthy in all respects. He read it over, I should think, several times; for he sat down on a bench, and seemed to study it profoundly.

“You shall have the papers,” said he at length; “but I doubt that they will be found of use now. Dumourier's influence is at an end with his old adherents. The party is broken up; and, so far as human foresight can go, the cause is lost.”

“I ought to tell you, Monsieur Jost,” then broke I in, “that although you are speaking to one who will not abuse your confidence, that it is also one who knows nothing of the plan you speak of.”

He appeared to reflect some minutes over my words, and then said,—

“These are matters, however, not for my judgment. If the Prince think well of the scheme, it is enough.”

I saw that this was said unconsciously and to himself, and so I made no remark on it.

“At all events, Monsieur Gervois,” continued he, “let them not build upon many whose names are here. We saw what Dejaunay became t' other day. Jussard is little better than a spy for the First Consul; and as for Gabriac, to whom we all trusted, he would have been even worse than a spy, if his villany had succeeded.”

“You knew him, then, sir?” asked I.

“Knew him! Parbleu! I did know him; and better, too, than most did! I always said he would play the traitor,—not to one, but to every cause. He was false to all, sir,” said he, with increasing bitterness,—“to his King; to that King's enemies; to the Convention; to the 'Emigration;' to the nobles; to the people: false everywhere and to every one! False to her who bore his name, and to her whom he led away to ruin,—that poor girl, whose father's chivalrous loyalty alone might have protected her—How do you call him?—the Marquis de Bresinart? No, not him; I mean that old loyalist leader who lived near Valence.”

“Not the Marquis de Nipernois?” said I, in trembling eagerness.

“The same; the Marquis de Nipernois, to whose daughter he was once betrothed, and whose fair fame and name he has tarnished forever!”

“You do not mean that Gabriac was the seducer of Madame de Bertin?” said I.

“The world knows it as well as I do; and although one alone ever dared to deny it, and branded the tale with the epithet of base scandal, she came at last to see its truth; and her broken heart was the last of his triumphs!”

“You speak of the Countess,—his wife?”

He grasped my hand within one of his own, and pressed the other across his eyes, unable to speak, through emotion. Nor were my feelings less moved. What a terrible revelation was this! Misfortune upon misfortune, and De Gabriac the cause of all!

For a moment I thought of declaring myself to be his old pupil, and the child who had called that dear Comtesse “mother;” but the morbid shame with which I remembered what I then was, stopped me, and I was silent.

“You know, of course, whither she went from this, and what became of her?” asked I, anxiously.

“Yes. I had two letters from her,—at long intervals, though; the last, when about to sail for Halifax—”

“For Halifax!—gone to America?”

“Even so. She said that the Old World had been long unkind to her, and that she would try the New! and then as their only friend in Hamburg was dead—”

“They were at Hamburg!—you did not say that?” said I.

“Yes, to be sure. Monsieur Raper, who was a worthy, good man, and a smart scholar besides, had obtained the place of correspondence clerk in a rich mercantile house in that city, where he lived with credit, till the death of the head of the firm. After that, I believe the house ceased business, or broke up. At all events, Raper was thrown on the world again, and resolved to emigrate. I suppose if Monsieur Geysiger had lived—”

“Geysiger!—is that the name you said?”

“Ay; Adam Geysiger,—the great house of Geysiger, Mersman, and Dorth, of Hamburg, the first merchants of that city.”

Though he continued to talk on, I heard no more; my thoughts become confused, and my head felt turning with the intense effort to collect myself. Geysiger? thought I; the very house where I had been at Hamburg,—where I had overheard the project of a plan against myself! Could it be, that through all my disguise of name and condition, that they knew me? With what increase of terror did this discovery come upon me! If they have, indeed, recognized me, it may be that some scheme is laid against my life. I could not tell how or whence this suspicion came; but, doubtless, some chance word let drop before me in my infancy, and dormant since in my mind, now rushed forth to my recollection with all the power of a fact!

I questioned the old man about this Geysiger,—where he had lived, whom he had married, and so on; but he only knew that his wife had been an actress. I did not ask for more. The identity was at once established. I next tried to find out if any relations of friendship or intimacy had subsisted between the Comtesse and Madame de Geysiger; but, on the contrary, he told me they had not met nor known each other when she wrote to him; and her stay after that in Hamburg was very brief. I wearied him with asking to repeat for me several circumstances of these strange revelations; nor was it till I saw him fatigued and half exhausted that I could prevail on myself to cease. I had now loitered here to the last limit of my time; and, with an affectionate leave of my kind old master, I left Reichenau to make my way with all speed to England.