He liked, and thought it worth while pleasing. Whom few resemble 'neath the sun.* His sister, the young baroness, was passionately fond of him, and he was much attached to her. Their mother was proud of both her children, for Hortense was as handsome as her brother, but of a more even temper, and not apt to live in the clouds, as he did sometimes. Madame de Florennes, however, was a common-place person, with no elevation of mind, and not at all intellectual like her son and daughter. She was quite a woman of the world, strict in observing all les bienséances of society, and faultless in her dress, which was, indeed, a study of more importance in her eyes than any science could have been; she knew, to a nicety, the quantity of rouge suitable to one a little on the shady side of life, and never wore any colour or costume that was not becoming. She had got her only daughter well married, and was anxious to find a good parti for her son-a search which he allowed her to prosecute, though he did not even take the trouble of discussing the subject with her, or canvassing the merits of the objects in question. Madame de Florennes wished her son to be married from selfish motives; for she hoped that, as un homme de famille," he would put some curb on his extravagance, which was at times not a little inconvenient to her. 66 His sister also wished Alphonse to marry; but her anxiety was to secure a happy home and agreeable domestic ties for him. She certainly had never thought of her friend Agatha as a sister-in-law, for she fancied that she was not brilliant enough to please her excitable brother; but she was delighted to find that Alphonse seemed to like her, and to take pleasure in her society. Agatha, though lively in conversation, was no flirt, and she did not take any pains to attract the attention of Mr. de Florennes, therefore he was the more willing to pay attention to her, and to make himself agreeable. After having met each other frequently during some months at Baron Vanderhoven's château near Louvain, and after having been a good deal together in Brussels, the intimacy between Alphonse and Agatha seemed to have assumed quite a decided tone, but it was not until a later period that the éclaircissement took place. Early in the autumn, Baron Vanderhoven and Hortense proposed an excursion up the Rhine, on which Madame de Florennes, Alphonse, and Agatha were invited to accompany them. Great was Agatha's delight at seeing again the well-remembered bridge of boats at Cologne, and the "academic groves" of Bonn. But the far-famed Drachenfels was to her the place of the greatest interest, for it was in ascending it that Alphonse laid aside his usual air of badinage, and told her of his love for her. Hortense, her mother, and husband, had gone up on ponies, but Alphonse had begged Agatha to saunter up the hill with him, that she might have more time to admire the varied foliage of the trees that skirted each side of the winding road which led to the ruins of the castle above, and the glimpses caught here and there of the blue Rhine sparkling beneath. Truth to tell, however, neither the trees nor the river were admired as * Journal of a Tour through Belgium and on the Rhine. they ought to have been by a sentimental German damsel; for Agatha only saw the handsome expressive countenance of her lover, as she drank in the melody of his voice, and allowed herself to be half supported by his encircling arm. And Alphonse! He felt then that the wildest solitude would be a paradise with the lovely girl, whose purity of mind and sincerity of affection he could not doubt. It was very long before they reached the top of the hill; and they found Madame de Florennes, who was not blessed with a patient disposition, very fidgety, and much inclined to scold them for loitering, as they had done, on the way up. But Alphonse half knelt so playfully at her feet to sue for pardon, and kissed her hand so gracefully, that she could not but abandon her ill humour. She did not seem to suspect, however, that anything particular had taken place during the tête-à-tête; but the more clear-sighted Hortense observed, at a glance, the traces of emotion on the features of her brother and her friend. She and the good baron were rejoiced afterwards to hear of their engagement, for Agatha had accepted Alphonse, while his mother secretly lamented that he had not selected some richer, or at least more fashionable young lady for his wife; but she made no opposition to his choice, probably well knowing that opposition would be of no avail. No travellers could ever have enjoyed a trip up the Rhine more than Alphonse and Agatha did; they saw everything en couleur de rose, and they found Baden-Baden, as it had been described to them, a little Eden, with its beautiful walks and picturesque drives. Alphonse only wished that they could have had the place to themselves, but it was very full, and people of all nations crowded the saloons of the Conversation House. VI. 66 AMONG the English visitors at Baden-Baden was a young lady who was said to have a very large fortune, and at her own command. Her chaperone was a widow, who, having lived a good deal abroad, spoke French and German, and who seemed anxious to enhance her own consequence by spreading about the report of her young friend's wealth. On her authority it was rumoured that Miss Wells was possessed of 100,000l. Of course she had no lack of admirers, for Baden-Baden generally abounds in fortune-hunters. But Miss Wells did not seem to care for those who fluttered round her; she wanted to make a conquest, and the homage of all these French, German, and English admirers who swarmed about her, had been too easily won-it was her money, not her they worshipped. She envied Agatha the one solitary cavalier who seemed devoted to her, and was piqued that he would not swell her train. Alphonse did not admire Miss Mary Wells at all, and always called her "the Iceberg." She was more like a statue moved by machinery than a creature of life and impulse. Her figure was tall, but somewhat angular; her features were faultless, but their total want of animation prevented her from being beautiful. She was as cold and pale as white marble; her very eyes had, in general, a stony look; she wore a set ET smile, and there was no intelligence in her smooth fair brow. She had fair hair, not bad eyebrows, and a white, well-formed throat, but her hands and feet were large; in fact, she was altogether on a large scale, and short men looked pigmies when they danced with her. Alphonse saw her efforts to attract him, and laughed at them, assuring Agatha that he would rather marry her without a sou than that Miss Wells if she had a million of money. Nevertheless, as time wore on, he thawed a little towards "the Iceberg," and Agatha commended him for being so good natured as to dance with her once or twice. Thus lauded, he carried his good nature a little farther, and was actually seen returning from a moonlight stroll which he had been taking alone with her on the little acclivity behind the Conversation House! Did Agatha also approve of this? Perhaps not, but she wisely made no remark on it. Miss Wells and her chaperone always tried to join the De Florennes's party, and they contrived to fasten themselves upon Alphonse and his friends on their visit to the remarkable dungeens under the NEUE SCHLOSS, the palace at which the Duke of Baden and his family occasionally reside, and which stands on a height overlooking the town of Baden. These sad memorials of guilt and suffering form one of the sights of Baden-Baden. Descending, with candles in their hands, by a narrow winding staircase under a tower of the palace, and passing by the remains of an old Roman bath, they were conducted by the guide to those low, gloomy vaults where the cheering rays of the sun, the balmy breath of heaven, never entered, but all was darkness, mystery, and desolation. This entrance, dismal as it is, has only been made in modern times. The dungeons were originally only accessible by an opening at a great height above, through which, down a sort of perpendicular shaft, it is said that the unhappy prisoners, bound and blindfolded, were conveyed in some kind of chair or machine, worked by a windlass, into the frightful dungeons below, hewn out of the solid rock on which the ducal castle stands. This shaft, through which escape was impossible, served also to convey air to those subterranean prisons, which consist of small vaulted chambers, the largest forming the JUDGMENT HALL. Here the judges sat on stone benches, the remains of which may still be traced, as may also some small remnants of the apparatus for the instruments of torture, in the vault which was called the RACK CHAMBER. It is said that there was, in ancient times, a subterranean passage which led from the Hall of Judgment to the ALTE SCHLOSS, an old ruined castle on the summit of the hill above, which was the residence of the Duke of Baden's ancestors in the middle ages; but that passage, if it ever existed, is now walled up. Adjoining the Judgment Hall is a narrow passage, the scene of that terrible punishment entitled "Le Baiser de la Vierge." The wretched victim who was condemned to this frightful fate was led along that passage, and compelled to kiss a statue of the Virgin Mary, placed in a niche in the massive wall. No sooner did the miserable being step forward than the flooring, a trap-door, gave way beneath his feet, and he fell to a great depth below upon a revolving machine studded with lances and sharp instruments, by which he was literally torn to pieces. Horrible! that the mind of man could conceive such tortures for his fellow-man! There was something inexpressibly sad in the sound of the heavy door which closed on these abodes of misery. The doors of the cells were composed of solid slabs of stone, fully eight or ten inches thick; some of them still remain, and add to the melancholy and awe with which are viewed these monuments of the cruelty, the injustice, and the tyranny of ages gone by. Agatha and Hortense shuddered at the thought of what must have been the feelings of the unhappy victim when he heard that sound, and knew that that heavy door had closed on him for ever, shutting him out from upper earth, from home, from hope, from life, and devoting him to tortures of mind and body, aggravated by darkness, mystery, and despair! "Ah!" exclaimed Agatha, "well might Dante's lines have been inscribed above yon fatal door Lasciate ogni Speranza voi ch' entrate !" "Well indeed!" replied Baron Vanderhoven, who was not only interested in the scene around him, but was also making a comparison in his own mind between the strong impression it seemed to make upon his wife and her friend, who were pale with emotion, and the smiling apathy of "the Iceberg," who looked with the utmost indifference on these mementoes of a fearful past, and which appeared to awe even the frivolous Madame de Florennes. Happily, the power of committing such outrages on humanity no longer exists. Civilisation has tempered the awards of justice, and laws have checked the licence of unbridled passion and calculating villany. The rack, the torture-chamber, the secret subterranean prison, no longer immolate their helpless victims; the dungeons of Baden are entered only by the curious, perhaps the thoughtless, visitor; the reign of demons has ceased in these now tenantless underground recesses; but, does not the power of the great enemy of mankind still too often triumph, not far from the same spot, over the hearts and actions of men? Go to yonder brilliantly illuminated saloons, pass through yonder gay and moving throng, approach yonder crowded tables, and see what is doing there! Behold Yon heaps of silver and of gold! His damning trade the reckless gamester plies, How can the young, and fair, And innocent, seek gaiety within The walls that grant protection to such sin! It is even more melancholy to glance at these frightful gaming-tables than to wander by torchlight through the rock-prisons of Baden. How intensely does passion display itself in the countenances of the victims of the gambling-table! How fatal are the results of that seducing vice! After a six weeks' sojourn at Baden-Baden, the baron thought it was time to wend their way homewards, and Alphonse agreed more readily to leave the fascinations of that favourite place of resort than his sister. had expected, for she had remarked, with regret, that he did not always pass the rouge-et-noir tables with stoical indifference, but not unfrequently joined the players. Agatha also saw this with some uneasiness, and always exerted her influence to withdraw him from their vicinity, while Miss Mary Wells encouraged him to play by often asking him to put down a few thalers for her. "I trust," said Hortense one day to Agatha, for she did not choose to animadvert in the slightest degree on her brother either to her husband or her mother—“I trust that Alphonse, who is so very excitable, and takes such sudden fancies, may not rush headlong into a passion for gambling; it would be downright ruin to him, for his means would not stand the drains of a gambling-table, and his pride would prevent him from drawing back if he were either winning much or losing much." 'I have often heard him condemn the vice of gambling," said Agatha, “and I think, notwithstanding his impulsive temper, that he has enough of moral courage to resist the temptation to do what his judgment disapproves." "Alas! I fear he is not always guided by his better judgment," replied his sister. "I cannot forget one winter he spent in Paris. I am sorry to say he plunged headlong into all the wild gaiety of that dissipated capital, and his expenses were frightful; but all of a sudden he became disgusted with the life he was leading, and sick of the folly around him—and what do you think he did? He actually went to a monastery of La Trappe, near Lisle, where the superior was a connexion of ours, and where one or two of the junior monks had been school companions of his, and there he remained practising most of their austerities for three months! My mother was miserable lest he should become a monk himself, and most thankful we were when the solitary fit passed off, and he returned to Brussels and to active life. But when he is married to you, dear Agatha," she continued, "all will be well, for you will keep him in the right path. My mother, though so fond of him, is not the person to guide him." “Ah! I fear I should be still less capable of doing so than Madame de Florennes. How could I attempt to guide one so clever as Alphonse ?" "Your quiet good sense will sober him down when he gets into his flighty fits, and your cheerful conversation will enliven him when he falls into his melancholy moods. I hope to see dear Alphonse quite a rational being when he has you for his kind monitress." The day for their departure was fixed, and the morning before Alphonse asked his sister, carelessly, if she did not think he ought to leave a P.P.C. card for "the Iceberg." Hortense said he might as well do so, and he departed for that purpose; but he did not return to dinner, and the evening was pretty well advanced before he joined his own party at the Conversation House. No sooner did he make his appearance than his mother assailed him with a torrent of inquiries as to where he had been, and with whom he had been, and cross-questioned him until she elicited that he had spent the day with Miss Mary Wells and her chaperone. "I thought you were only going to leave a card?" said Madame de Florennes. "So I had intended," he replied, glancing towards Agatha, "but I met Miss Wells at the door of her hotel; I could not thrust the card into |