1827.] A Continental Adventure. 127 



return, and who were too much engaged in extricating her from her 

 position, to note themselves the common ohject of the panic. So inte- 

 resting and extraordinary was her whole appearance, her mien so wild and 

 ardent, the transition from sudden elated expectation to profound despair, 

 so rapid and marked in her eye and accent, and so piteous in their entire 

 expression, that the captain, as he assured me, was transfixed and ab- 

 sorbed by this incident, till the companions of the fair one had disappeared 

 with her; and in the action of a moment, he was again left alone in com- 

 plete silence and solitude. As soon as he was able to rally his thoughts, 

 under the bewildering oppression of his conjectures, he resolved to explore 

 the chamber, imagining that he might discover something which would, 

 serve as a clue to the singular part he was playing in the enigmatical drama 

 of the night. The taper being still in his grasp, he looked narrowly into 

 the corners and closets of the apartment, under the bedstead, and at length, 

 approaching the further bed in the room, which had hitherto escaped his 

 notice, he opened the curtains, and there witnessed what solved at once a 

 part of the mystery. It was a corpse ! the dead body of a man, in 

 a cap and shirt resembling his own, and placed near the wall on tho 

 bed ; and the business of the fair intruders who had roused him from his 

 slumber, it now readily occurred to him, was, according to the custom 

 of the catholic church, that of watching by the dead body till morning. 



My friend confessed to me that, familiar as his profession had rendered 

 him with this exhibition of mortality, the spectacle, under such circum- 

 stances, startled and even momentarily affrighted him. The cause of the 

 alarm of the household, on seeing him, was then apparent : his candles 

 bearer had conducted him to the wrong chamber, and he had been taken 

 either for a ghost, or the re-animated frame of the defunct. It occurred 

 to him, after he had meditated a little, and began also to comprehend the 

 conduct of the distressed female, that he would throw on his clothes, and 

 endeavour to find his way to the lodging of the family in the chateau, for 

 the purpose of a mutual explanation. He had, however, scarcely dressed 

 himself, before the old peasant and his wife, followed by two or three men, 

 ascended the stairs, and though still quaking with fear, had no difficulty in, 

 recognising him. They, at first, eagerly demanded his assistance in this 

 awful emergency ; but contriving to obtain silence, he immediately made 

 known to them the true state of the matter. In the reciprocal eclaircisse- 

 ment which ensued, he learned that the unfortunate girl who had so 

 strongly excited his sympathy, and so much increased his perplexity, was 

 the niece Genevieve of the old pair, and the corpse, the remains of a 

 young soldier to whom she was betrothed, who had died that morning in 

 the chateau, of a sudden illness. The blundering rustic, commissioned to 

 lead the stranger to the chamber designed for him, had selected the first 

 apartment in the same gallery in which he saw the glare of a fire, and 

 which happened to be the one where the dead body was deposited. 



Our traveller retired as quickly as possible, from the earnest apologies^of 

 the worthy pair, to indulge his returning drowsiness in the right chamber. 

 He slept soundly, notwithstanding his adventure rose early ; and, after 

 partaking of a homely but wholesome meal, mounted his horse, and under 

 their instruction gained the turnpike of Pont Saint- Esprit ; learning, how- 

 ever, before his departure, with unfeigned regret, that the bereaved niece 

 had passed the night in alternate stupor and phrenzy. A few months after- 

 wards, on his return from Avignon, he was told by the master of an inn, in 

 the neighbourhood of the chateau, where he stopped to refresh, that the 



