uite certain that the offender could not
escape.

"On the other hand, the unfortunate thief felt very uncomfortable.
Nature had endowed him with rather a remarkable physiognomy, and it
was difficult to find a passport to fit him unless it were made on
purpose; so that out of five or six which he had in his possession,
not one would do. At last he made up his mind to walk out of the
town without a passport, as if he were one of the town's-people
going for a stroll. He accordingly took a cane in his hand, and
lounging along with an affectation of great indifference, approached
a gate at which the Austrians were on guard. But the sentry had his
orders, and when the stranger drew near--

"'Who goes there?' he vociferated.

"'A friend,' answered the thief.

"'Advance, friend!' said the sentry with a significant rattle of his
musket--a sort of intimation that non-compliance might be rewarded
by a bullet.

"The thief walked up to the soldier.

"'Your passport,' demanded the latter.

"'My passport!' repeated the thief in tone of infinite astonishment,
'I have none.'

"'All the better for you,' said the sentry, shouldering his musket.
'If you had _had_ one I should have been obliged to send you into
the guard-house to have it examined, and that would have detained
you a good half hour. But since you have no passport you can't show
one, so you may pass.'

"And the intelligent warrior recommenced his monotonous promenade;
while the thief, profiting by his obliging permission, walked out of
the town."

Mannheim, the scene of Kotzebue's death, and his assassin's execution,
could hardly fail to detain M. Dumas. At Frankfort he applies to a
friend for an introduction to some person likely to give him details
concerning Kotzebue and Sand, and his friend procures him a letter
addressed to Mr Widemann, surgeon, Heidelberg. He has no letter for any
body at Mannheim, and after visiting Kotzebue's house, leaves that town
to proceed to Heidelberg. Just outside Mannheim he causes the postilion
to stop, while he contemplates the place of the mad student's execution,
which goes by the name of "_Sand's Himmelfahrtwiese_," or the meadow of
Sand's ascension to heaven. It is a green meadow intersected by a
rivulet, and situated within a few hundred yards of the town. While
gazing at this field, and trying to conjecture the ex