he young man: "but how different did I interpret their brazen
voices, when for the first time they reached my ear, and guided me to
my love; and now that I depart disconsolate, and without object, the
same tones follow me! They celebrated the birth of my hope, and now
ring its knell. It is the picture of life!" he added, as he took a last
farewell of the town in the valley beneath, and turned his horse away:
"it is, indeed, the picture of life! These same sounds float over
cradle and coffin; and the bells of the chapel of my house which rang a
merry peal at my baptism, will also accompany the last of the
Sturmfeders to the grave."

The mountain now became steeper; and Albert, whom the reader will have
recognised as the young cavalier, allowed his horse to have his own
way. Upon quitting Ulm, he had determined to return to his home in
Franconia, and there wait events, or at any rate the expiration of the
fourteen days' truce he had promised his friend Fronsberg. His heart
naturally would lead him to Lichtenstein, the contrary way to the path
he was now pursuing; yet he felt he had chosen the one most honourable
to his engagements. The balance, however, between the two was very
equally poised, and had he had a friend to decide for him and convince
him that he was now a free agent to travel whither he pleased, provided
he took no part in the contest for fourteen days, he felt that the bent
of his inclinations would turn the scale in favour of the neighbourhood
of his love. The comparison between his present situation and the
former position which he had held only a few days back, did not tend to
cheer his spirits. Sudden changes--violent emotions--his confinement on
the day before--and, above all, the pain of taking leave of men who had
his welfare at heart, produced recollections which almost unmanned him.

Dieterick von Kraft, above all, bewailed his departure. From the first
moment of their acquaintance in the room of the town hall when they
pledged each other in a bumper, to the last hour when they bid adieu in
a parting cup, that excellent friend had manifested the same
uninterrupted good feeling towards him. And how had he requited his
kindness? Occupied solely with self, he had but partially expressed his
sense of obligation to him; and to the honest, straightforward
Breitenstein, who, as well as Fronsberg, had held him up as their
favourite in the army, what return had he made? Truly there is nothing
more painful