e
rolled over and over in the midst of the ballroom, the music going
ten miles an hour, 800 pairs of eyes fixed upon us, a cursed shriek of
laughter bursting out from all sides. Heavens! how clear I heard it, as
we went on rolling and rolling! "My child! my Dorothea!" shrieked out
Madame Speck, rushing forward, and as soon as she had breath to do
so, Dorothea of course screamed too; then she fainted, then she was
disentangled from out my spurs, and borne off by a bevy of tittering
women. "Clumsy brute!" said Madame Speck, turning her fat back upon me.
I remained upon my seant, wild, ghastly, looking about. It was all up
with me--I knew it was. I wished I could have died there, and I wish so
still.

Klingenspohr married her, that is the long and short; but before that
event I placed a sabre-cut across the young scoundrel's nose, which
destroyed HIS beauty for ever.

O Dorothea! you can't forgive me--you oughtn't to forgive me; but I love
you madly still.

My next flame was Ottilia: but let us keep her for another number; my
feelings overpower me at present.

OTTILIA.

CHAPTER I.

THE ALBUM--THE MEDITERRANEAN HEATH.

Travelling some little time back in a wild part of Connemara, where
I had been for fishing and seal-shooting, I had the good luck to get
admission to the chateau of a hospitable Irish gentleman, and to procure
some news of my once dear Ottilia.

Yes, of no other than Ottilia v. Schlippenschlopp, the Muse of
Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel, the friendly little town far away in
Sachsenland,--where old Speck built the town pump, where Klingenspohr
was slashed across the nose,--where Dorothea rolled over and over in
that horrible waltz with Fitz-Boo--Psha!--away with the recollection;
but wasn't it strange to get news of Ottilia in the wildest corner of
Ireland, where I never should have thought to hear her gentle name?
Walking on that very Urrisbeg Mountain under whose shadow I heard
Ottilia's name, Mackay, the learned author of the "Flora Patlandica,"
discovered the Mediterranean heath,--such a flower as I have often
plucked on the sides of Vesuvius, and as Proserpine, no doubt, amused
herself in gathering as she strayed in the fields of Enna. Here it
is--the self-same flower, peering out at the Atlantic from Roundstone
Bay; here, too, in this wild lonely place, nestles the fragrant memory
of my Ottilia!

In a word, after a day on Ballylynch Lake (where, with a brown fly and
a single hair, I ki