but Sybilla herself? A little sister nun (that gay one
with the red lips) had pointed out to the Colonel and Ulric the way to
Sister Agnes's dungeon, and, indeed, had been the means of making her
situation known to the Lutheran chief.

"The convent is suppressed with a vengeance," says Mr. Warrington. "We
end our first act with the burning of the place, the roars of triumph
of the soldiery, and the outcries of the nuns. They had best go change
their dresses immediately, for they will have to be court ladies in the
next act--as you will see." Here the gentlemen talked the matter over.
If the piece were to be done at Drury Lane, Mrs. Pritchard would hardly
like to be Lady Abbess, as she doth but appear in the first act. Miss
Pritchard might make a pretty Sybilla, and Miss Gates the attendant
nun. Mr. Garrick was scarce tall enough for Carpezan--though, when he
is excited, nobody ever thinks of him but as big as a grenadier. Mr.
Johnson owns Woodward will be a good Ulric, as he plays the Mercutio
parts very gaily; and so, by one and t'other, the audience fancies the
play already on the boards, and casts the characters.

In act the second, Carpezan has married Sybilla. He has enriched himself
in the wars, has been ennobled by the Emperor, and lives at his castle
on the Danube in state and splendour.

But, truth to say, though married, rich, and ennobled, the Lord Carpezan
was not happy. It may be that in his wild life, as leader of condottieri
on both sides, he had committed crimes which agitated his mind with
remorse. It may be that his rough soldier-manners consorted ill with his
imperious highborn bride. She led him such a life--I am narrating as
it were the Warrington manuscript, which is too long to print in
entire--taunting him with his low birth, his vulgar companions, whom the
old soldier loved to see about him, and so forth--that there were
times when he rather wished that he had never rescued this lovely,
quarrelsome, wayward vixen from the oubliette out of which he fished
her. After the bustle of the first act this is a quiet one, and passed
chiefly in quarrelling between the Baron and Baroness Carpezan, until
horns blow, and it is announced that the young King of Bohemia and
Hungary is coming bunting that way.

Act III. is passed at Prague, whither his Majesty has invited Lord
Carpezan and his wife, with noble offers of preferment to the latter.
From Baron he shall be promoted to be Count, from Colonel he sh