Memorials and Other Papers, vol 2 | Page 8

dialogue into an inner
room, hoping to have found the quiet and the warmth which were now
become so needful to her repose. But the antique stove was too much
out of repair to be used with benefit; the wood-work was decayed, and
admitted currents of cold air; and, above all, from the slightness of the
partitions, the noise and tumult in a house occupied by soldiers and
travellers proved so incessant, that, after taking refreshments with her
attendants, she resolved to adjourn for the night to her coach; which
afforded much superior resources, both in warmth and in freedom from
noise.

The carriage of the countess was one of those which had been posted at
an angle of the encampment, and on that side terminated the line of
defences; for a deep mass of wood, which commenced where the
carriages ceased, seemed to present a natural protection on that side
against the approach of cavalry; in reality, from the quantity of tangled
roots, and the inequalities of the ground, it appeared difficult for a
single horseman to advance even a few yards without falling. And upon
this side it had been judged sufficient to post a single sentinel.
Assured by the many precautions adopted, and by the cheerful language
of the officer on guard, who attended her to the carriage door, Paulina,
with one attendant, took her seat in the coach, where she had the means
of fencing herself sufficiently from the cold by the weighty robes of
minever and ermine which her ample wardrobe afforded; and the large
dimensions of the coach enabled her to turn it to the use of a sofa or
couch.
Youth and health sleep well; and with all the means and appliances of
the Lady Paulina, wearied besides as she had been with the fatigue of a
day's march, performed over roads almost impassable from roughness,
there was little reason to think that she would miss the benefit of her
natural advantages. Yet sleep failed to come, or came only by fugitive
snatches, which presented her with tumultuous dreams,--sometimes of
the emperor's court in Vienna, sometimes of the vast succession of
troubled scenes and fierce faces that had passed before her since she
had quitted that city. At one moment she beheld the travelling
equipages and far-stretching array of her own party, with their military
escort filing off by torchlight under the gateway of ancient cities; at
another, the ruined villages, with their dismantled cottages,--doors and
windows torn off, walls scorched with fire, and a few gaunt dogs, with
a wolf-like ferocity in their bloodshot eyes, prowling about the
ruins,--objects that had really so often afflicted her heart. Waking from
those distressing spectacles, she would fall into a fitful doze, which
presented her with remembrances still more alarming: bands of fierce
deserters, that eyed her travelling party with a savage rapacity which
did not confess any powerful sense of inferiority; and in the very fields
which they had once cultivated, now silent and tranquil from utter

desolation, the mouldering bodies of the unoffending peasants, left
un-honored with the rites of sepulture, in many places from the mere
extermination of the whole rural population of their neighborhood. To
these succeeded a wild chaos of figures, in which the dress and tawny
features of Bohemian gypsies conspicuously prevailed, just as she had
seen them of late making war on all parties alike; and, in the person of
their leader, her fancy suddenly restored to her a vivid resemblance of
their suspicious host at their present quarters, and of the malicious gaze
with which he had disconcerted her.
A sudden movement of the carriage awakened her, and, by the light of
a lamp suspended from a projecting bough of a tree, she beheld, on
looking out, the sallow countenance of the very man whose image had
so recently infested her dreams. The light being considerably nearer to
him than to herself, she could see without being distinctly seen; and,
having already heard the very strong presumptions against this man's
honesty which had been urged by the officer, and without reply from
the suspected party, she now determined to watch him.

CHAPTER III.
The night was pitch dark, and Paulina felt a momentary terror creep
over her as she looked into the massy blackness of the dark alleys
which ran up into the woods, forced into deeper shade under the glare
of the lamps from the encampment. She now reflected with some alarm
that the forest commenced at this point, stretching away (as she had
been told) in some directions upwards of fifty miles; and that, if the
post occupied by their encampment should be inaccessible on this side
to cavalry, it might, however, happen that persons with the worst
designs could easily penetrate on foot from the