bsided, and I was summoned to my post at the
entrance to the place where the lovely Juliet lay entranced. The
pasteboard gate gave way to knocks enforced with an energy which called
down rapturous applause; and in all the tortures of a broken heart,
rewarded by a profusion of handkerchiefs applied to bright eyes, and a
strong scent of hartshorn round the house, I summoned my fair bride to
my arms. There was no reply. I again invoked her; still silent. Her
trance was evidently of the deepest order. I rose from the ground, where
I had been "taking the measure of my unmade grave," and approaching the
bier, ventured to drop a despairing hand upon her pillow. To my utter
surprise, it was vacant. If I had been another Shakspeare, the situation
was a fine one for a display of original genius. But I was paralyzed. A
sense of the general embarrassment was my first impression, and I was
absolutely struck dumb. But this was soon shaken off. My next was a
sense of the particular burlesque of my situation; I burst out into
laughter, in which the whole house joined; and throwing down my mattock,
rushed off the stage. My theatrical dream was broken up for ever.

* * * * *

But weightier matters now absorbed the universal interest. The
disappearance of the heroine from the stage was speedily accounted for
by her flight in the carriage whose wheels had disturbed my study. But
where fled, why, and with whom? We now found other defalcations in our
numbers; the Chevalier Paul Charlatanski, a gallant Polish exile, who
contrived to pass a very pleasant time on the merit of his misfortunes,
a man of enormous mustaches and calamities, was also missing. His valet,
his valise, every atom that ever appertained to him, had vanished; the
clearance was complete. The confusion now thickened. I never saw the
master of the mansion in such a rage before. Pistols and post-chaises
were in instant requisition. He vowed that the honour of his house was
involved in the transaction, and that nothing should tempt him to
slumber until he had brought the fugitive fair one to the arms of her
noble family; my Juliet being the ward of a duke, and being also
entitled to about twenty thousand pounds a-year on her coming of age.

As for the unlucky, or rather the lucky, Chevalier, nothing human ever
received a hotter shower of surmise and sarcasm. That he was "an
impostor, a swindler, a spy," was the Earl's conviction, declared in the