1828. ] The Durrenstein. 263 
spot, apparently quite at its ease, in a tumult, which would have startled 
Zolus himself. The night was falling fast, and we began to fear that 
we should lose sight of the phenomenon before we had determined its 
species. But, as if it heard our wishes, it came forward, and stood 
gazing from the edge of the precipice at the play of the torrent, as it 
tumbled down the magician’s black bosom. The spot would have 
turned the head of a chamois ; yet there stood this imperturbable being 
like a piece of the rock itself. The adventurer now occupied us all ; 
and to ascertain what he was, became the grand business of life for the 
next half hour. A German, once atiaché to the Austrian embassy in 
London, offered to settle the point d-la-mode Anglaise, by a bet of six to 
four, that it was any thing that any body else thought it was not, and 
vice versd. An old Italian envoy offered to make the discovery, by 
cutting the cards in the infallible way by which the Neapolitan ladies 
settle their affairs with destiny for the day, and are secure, from sunrise 
to sunset, against earthquakes, losses at play, the sickness of lapdogs, and 
the faithlessness of cavalicre serventi. A French colonel, who wore the 
croix of St. Louis, and the legion of honour, in amicable conjunction, at 
his button-hole, proposed to settle the doubt by along shot from his 
Tyrolese rifle; arguing, that “as it was utterly impossible that any 
man but a lunatic could venture to such a spot, no harm could be done 
by bringing him down, whom, if he escaped, it was so much gained, 
and if an end was put to him, it was but one madman the less in a world © 
~ where there were so many besides. If it was a bear, we should have a 
couple of capital hams to add to our stock, in a place where another 
day’s confinement would see us starved, unless we should eat the fat 
landlord. And if a demon, our firing at it might be a merit in another 
place, and wipe out a thousand years of purgatory.” 
The brilliant Frenchman had heated himself into so strong a convic- 
tion of the reasonableness of his proposal, that in scorn of our doubts, 
whether firing even at a ghost might not be punishable by law ina 
country so strict in the preservation of its game as Austria, he was 
hammering his flint for action, when the figure made a sudden bound 
from the edge of the gulph, disappeared, was seen again standing on a 
lower shelf of the precipice, again darted down the torrent, re-appeared 
from the side of the ravine, and, rushing across the road, knocked 
furiously at our door, dripping like a water-god. 
_ A little altercation heard without between him and the landlord, who 
probably thought .that he was not likely to benefit much by such an 
arrival, or that his house already contained unmanageable guests enough, 
induced my interference in favour of the laws of hospitality. I went to 
the door, and with many an ominous frown of Herr Michael, invited 
‘the stranger to take shelter for the hour. He was all polite reluctance, 
but the storm allowed of no medium, and he, at last, followed me into 
the presence of my fellow naturalists. As he entered, bowing on all 
sides, and with the language of a man of the world, I saw the French 
sharpshooter blush, at least as much as a Frenchman ever does, quietly 
deposit the rifle in a corner, and give that curiously-expressive glance 
round the circle, which tells how close one has run to the edge of some 
blunder of the first magnitude. ; 
But we kept his secret with honour ; and a fresh bottle, a new bundle 
of faggots, and the loan of my surtout, soon made the circle and its new 
addition the gayest of the gay. -We found this‘scaler of mountains and 
