1828.) The Durrenstein. 269 
How I felt at the moment, I have no power to explain. I hope that, on 
all suitable occasions, I should not want nerve; but the sensation was 
less like any thing that I could call alarm, than a feeling of complete 
helplessness. In the perfect possession of my senses and my understand- 
ing, I yet found that the physical powers were extinguished—perfectly 
paralyzed ; as if flesh and blood were not made to abide the presence of 
such a being. I sat gazing on her as she advanced. I could not have 
spoken, nor moved a muscle, for the crown of Austria. Her words were 
brief, and in a tone of singular mildness, yet which penetrated me like 
a cold weapon. She reproved me ‘ for the haughly presumption which 
had doubted of her power, and declared, as a sign of her displeasure, 
that, when next I saw her, I should know that she was come for ven- 
geance.’ 
« She vanished even while my eyes were fixed on her—the solid wall of 
rock received her, and she was gone. What was scarcely less surprising to 
me, was the sudden recovery of my limbs. Their past feebleness seemed 
to be made up for by supernatural strength: at all events, whether in 
the strength of frenzy or terror, I darted from the cavern, sprang the 
precipice, and swam the torrent—to any one of which no bribe of earth 
could have tempted me half an hour before. I here found the hospi- 
tality to which I acknowledge myself so deeply indebted ; and I began 
to hope that the vision had been merely one of those fantasies that play 
on the mind, exhausted by the considerable fatigue that I had undergone 
since morning, and shaping the absurdities of superstition into reality. 
«« But the glare upon the wall of this chamber, seconded by a certain 
indescribable sensation as if danger were near—such a sensation as a 
blind man may experience who knows that he is treading on the edge of 
a gulph, without knowing on which side of him it lies—told me that the 
time of the visitation was come. ‘The figure that passed over the ceiling 
decided the question. It was, in every feature, the one that I had seen 
come forth from the solid block of marble, which opened and closed, as 
if it had been a curtain shaken by the wind.” He paused, and his 
wandering eye seemed involuntarily searching for the phenomenon. 
Then, with an effort to smile, he resumed :— 
« If I have exhibited any perturbation, I trust that it was not unmanly, 
nor beyond the natural embarrassment of finding one’s-self in so peculiar 
a position. You will forgive me, I know, for my talking no more on this 
painful subject. I perhaps have already said more than I ought, when 
the very presence of this extraordinary being may be visible the next 
moment.” 
His voice sank, and he sat in an attitude of the deepest dejection ; his 
countenance grew yet more depressed than when it first shocked us, 
and I insisted on his trying to rest. We actually feared for the life of 
this interesting and unfortunate man, whether the victim of his own 
heated fancy, of fever, or of fact, still alike unfortunate and in danger. 
As I assisted him to the door, he turned, and said, almost in a tone of 
despair, “ If you should find me by to-morrow, gentlemen, under the 
circumstances to which I have alluded, deprived of my faculties, or even 
beyond all the sufferings that can depress the human heart, do me the 
justice to believe that I deeply thank you for your forbearance with my 
strange malady ; and do me the farther justice to believe that I fell a 
victim to a desire of doing public service.—To you, Sir,” said he to me, 
“I leave the painful but friendly task of acquainting my relatives in 
