Chapter XIX: The Tangled Web Unwoven (2)

And now began her life of aimless wandering. She repaired to Rome, where she found the palace she had rented there, and in which she had left much property, had been stripped by thieves in her absence; while at home every means were taken to set aside the will of the Duke of Kingston. In a handsome vessel, built at her own expense, and in which "there was a drawing-room, a dining-parlour, and other conveniences," and on board of which she put several of the late duke's most valuable pictures, as a present for the Empress of Russia, she sailed for St. Petersburg, where the novelty of an English lady "braving the billows of the Baltic" excited considerable interest, and a handsome mansion was assigned her. The empress treated her with great distinction, but our ambassador had to keep aloof from her in public. She purchased an estate near St. Petersburg for £12,000, and named it Chudleigh, and thereon she erected a distillery for making brandy! Leaving an Englishman in charge, she again returned to Calais, accompanied by a Russian colonel with his wife and children. The former, says an old _Edinburgh Magazine_, _en route_ "took French leave of the duchess, borrowing one of her watches, merely that he might not be at a loss as to the hour of the day, and taking a couple of rings, the brilliance of which would remind him of the charms of the real owner." Repairing to Paris, she bought a residence at Montmartre, with much land about it, and thence she sent much game to the markets; so the people in London alleged that she had become a Russian distiller and a French rabbit-merchant. In the latter affair she had a legal dispute.

In the August of the following year, when she was at dinner, it was announced that a decision had been given against her concerning the French property. She became greatly agitated, and burst a blood-vessel internally. She appeared to recover; but a few days afterwards, on the 26th of the month, when about to rise from bed, she complained of weakness, had some medicine given her, and was conducted to a couch.

"I shall lie here," she said; "I can sleep, and after a sleep I shall be entirely recovered."

She sank gradually back into a profound sleep, and from that slumber she never awakened.

STORY OF A HUSSAR OF THE REGENCY.

Sir Bernard Burke in recording the name of the _last_ baronet of the old line of Craigie in Ayrshire--the parent stock from which the Scottish patriot sprang--Sir Thomas Wallace, says, that he married a daughter of Agnew Lochryan, "by whom he had one son, a captain of the Guards, who pre-deceased him."

This is all the clue that Sir Bernard gives to one of the most extraordinary and wasted, miserable and wandering, lives that ever existed; for this Captain William Wallace (who was never in the Household troops), early in his career, became embroiled--through the famous Mrs. Mary Anne Clark--with those in high places at Court, and with the Horse Guards, most singularly and fatally for himself; but whether in the future, he was in guilt or error personally, or the victim of a most remarkable plot, it is difficult now to tell. Any way, our ambassador at Paris, Sir Charles Stuart, in writing of his affairs in 1819, asserts that "he considers him to have been the victim of a most unfounded and unprecedented persecution."

In the early part of the present century, there was published by a respectable firm in Stationers' Court, a volume of his memoirs, now out of print, or long since bought up for cogent reasons, and from it this paper is chiefly made out, with constructive evidence of his assertions from other sources.

Born in 1788, this heir of an old and honourable line began his military career in 1802, when he joined the army in India, and served in most of the operations of that war, so successfully waged by Wellington (then General Wellesley), against the Mahrattas, and when we were so signally triumphant on the plains of Assaye; and during that time, young Wallace would seem to have won the affection of his brother officers, and the esteem of his superiors. When the power of Scindiah was broken, and the strife was over, he came home for the recovery of his health, which had been seriously injured by service in India. In his eighteenth year, he was on leave of absence in London, at that time when "H.R.H. the Prince Regent," was the source of so much gossip, and the Pavilion at Brighton was the centre of rank and dissipation; when gloomy Old Bond Street was still in its glory as a fashionable lounge, though rivalled by the New and Piccadilly; when the Life Guards still wore Kevenhüller hats, and the Line rejoiced in their pigtails and pipe-clayed breeches.

Habituated to Oriental splendour and profusion, new to the gay world in which he found himself, by nature warm and impetuous, and, as an only son, too liberally supplied with means, young Wallace fell readily, for some time, into the perpetration of many follies, in the midst of which he was appointed to the 15th Hussars, then commanded by the Duke of Cumberland, and noted as one of the most expensive regiments in the service. Soon after, he found himself engaged to marry one of the richest heiresses in England, and, at this period, in the brilliancy of his expectations, with his natural vivacity, and the example of his wealthy and reckless comrades, he plunged into the most prodigal extravagance, incumbering himself with horses, carriages, and dogs to a useless extent.

In vain did his father, the old baronet, remonstrate with him. His love of adventure and impetuous character, led him into many _intrigues d'amour_, and frequent duels, for every regiment and circle had then its "triers and provers" of a young fellow's courage; but by horsewhipping publicly the Marquis of H---- in Hyde Park, and thrashing a gentleman in the Round Room of the Opera House, with several similar offences, won him many enemies. This wild career caused his marriage to be broken off, and as he had calculated upon it, as a means of paying those debts which he had contracted with the profusion of a Timon, a phalanx of creditors took the field against him.

He asserts in his vindication of himself, that his Colonel, the Duke of Cumberland, assumed a haughty right of interference in his private affairs. Perhaps the Royal Duke was only giving him sound advice; but as he could no longer remain in the 15th Hussars, he begged permission to exchange into the 2nd Life Guards with a Mr. Barrington; but the Duke objected to the personal appearance of the latter, while, on the other hand, if we are to believe the portrait of Captain Wallace, engraved by W. Woolnoth in 1821, the latter was a handsome young man, with regular features, pensive eyes, a well-formed mouth and chin, a slight moustache, and hair shorn very short for the days of the Regency.

He then applied to the Duke for permission to exchange into the 10th Hussars; but the prince, offended by his determination to leave his regiment, gave him a peremptory order to rejoin the 15th Hussars, thus arbitrarily cancelling sick leave of absence which he had obtained from the Commander-in-Chief. Conceiving the Colonel's order illegal, he delayed obeying it, and found himself _superseded_, just about the time he was wounded in a duel with a Captain Ross.

The moment he recovered, he laid the case before the kind Duke of York, through the influence of that fine old soldier the Earl of Cathcart, and was restored to rank and pay; but by being gazetted to the 17th Light Dragoons, then under orders for India, the climate of which he dared not face again in consequence of his broken health, he applied for any cavalry corps in the Peninsula, where Moore was then combating Soult, but memorials were in vain, and at this juncture, his evil star gave him an introduction to--Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke.

This lady took the young dragoon so much into her confidence, as rashly to intrust him with a very remarkable correspondence, which, in kinder days, had passed between her, the Duke of York, and Colonel McMahon, and was now to be of vast service to her in the measures she was about to institute against the former.

Wallace was rash enough to boast of possessing these formidable letters; rumour soon reached those in power of the startling fact, and the most strenuous efforts were made to induce their surrender. He thus drew upon himself the indignation of those whose favours he was at that very time soliciting, and whom it was his interest to have conciliated. About this time, he dined, he states, with the Duke of Sussex and other officers at the Neapolitan Club, where he drank freely, as all men did in those days, and losing all caution, was persuaded, by one who accompanied him home, to destroy those letters, on the publicity of which so much depended. This person, he asserts, was Charles Viscount Falkland, who fell in a duel in 1809. Wallace flung them in the fire. The whole merit of their destruction was attributed to the Viscount; and from that hour his entreaties were vain, and the only answer he received from the Horse Guards was a peremptory order to join his regiment.

Again he urged his health in India, and the injuries he had received by his horse falling back upon him when rearing--injuries so severe, that he was borne to the nearest house, that of the Duchess of Roxburghe; again he urged his services in the Mahratta war, and enclosed medical certificates from Drs. Bailey and Heaviside. We have only his own word for the tenor of this correspondence, which ended, however, by the appearance of his name in the Gazette as having _resigned_ His Majesty's Commission.

"It is impossible for me to attribute this unprecedented treatment," he wrote; "to H.R.H. the Commander-in-Chief, whose well-known liberality and kindness to the army in general, I had formerly experienced in the most marked manner myself; but to a false and malicious representation of the transaction itself."

All hope in the Horse Guards seemed over now, yet, in the ardour of his temperament, young Wallace conceived the romantic idea of all-but wresting back his commission, by quitting his sick-room, and joining our army in the Peninsula, as a cavalry volunteer; but his then evil genius preceded him, and by the malice of certain persons never known, his project was nearly defeated on his arrival in Portugal. His appearance in the ranks, divested of all the insignia of an officer, made him the subject of much, and not always friendly conversation; thus at the dinner-table of Sir Charles Stuart, then our Ambassador at Lisbon, he became embroiled with a Captain Fenwick and a Colonel Mackinnon, the former asserting that he had seen him behaving improperly at Plymouth, and the latter that he held certain of his acceptances. To these officers he sent challenges by the Honourable Dudley Carlton (who died in 1820), and received apologies for the assertions, but a prejudice against him remained in the mind of Sir Arthur Wellesley.

As a volunteer trooper, risking every privation and danger, his bravery with the advanced guard at the Lines of Torres Vedras won him the notice, perhaps the pity, of General Sir William Erskine, who took him out of the ranks and placed him in a temporary situation near his person. On every occasion, reconnoitering, foraging, or harassing the enemy, his peculiar position compelled him to be prominent; but the night-guards, without shelter from the cold or rain, brought back his Indian fever, and the once gay Hussar was reduced to the verge of the grave. A return home was necessary, and furnished with such testimonials as he hoped would restore to him the commission he prized so much, and charged with private despatches from Sir William Erskine, he returned to London, where, while his name was placed on the list at the Horse Guards for reappointment (as the Records show, on the 17th December, 1814), he was assailed by a host of creditors, whose attacks were worse than those of the French, so to avoid them he retired into Scotland.

After a time of gloom, disappointment, and useless regret, he effected a compromise with his creditors, but returned to town only to fall into fresh scrapes, and he became, for a time, the victim and slave of one of the famous and fascinating, beautiful and extravagant of the _demi-monde_, whose name it is useless to record; but who had recently come to the metropolis after queening it at Brighton. Having gone to visit his father, Sir Thomas Wallace, who, after being long a prisoner of war in France, was released by the Treaty of Paris, to his rage and mortification, the fair one on whom he had lavished all, eloped with one of his friends; but such was the weakness of his character, that some time after, on going to a masked ball at the Argyll Rooms, accompanied by Colonel Brown, Captain Moore of the Life-Guards, and two other officers, a lady near him, "either fainted, or affected to faint, and fell into the arms of the bystanders." Her mask was removed, and in all her wonderful beauty he saw the woman he had loved and lost! Pity seized him now; he was silly enough to bear her to her carriage, which drove her and his friends to her house, No. 3, Crawford Street, where a mad night of champagne and deep play ensued, and the losses of Wallace were enormous. Other gambling transactions followed with reckless spirits of the Guards, and many of those military idlers whom the Peace had cast upon the town. In one of these a Mr. Bradburne lost so much that he shot himself, and a paragraph in "The Day" announced that he had been "decoyed (to gamble) by Captain W---- and a Mr. A.," and had put a period to his existence in consequence. Action was taken against the Editor, but too late; the story spread with a thousand additions. Wallace certainly held Bradburne's acceptances for £2,200, which he had fairly won in the attempt of the latter to win _his_ money; yet after receiving a promissory note for the amount on Hoare and Co., he threw it into the fire; but his rash career in London had gained him such a host of enemies, that society viewed him coldly, and accompanied by a friend, named Andrews, he left it. "We determined to proceed to the nearest sea-port town," he states, "and there await the favourable moment at which it was agreed we were to be recalled by our friends, to meet the charges and defeat the machinations of our prosecutors. With this view we departed for Calais."

But his friends failed to recall him, for now began the most extraordinary portion of his misfortunes and adventures.

On the 7th March, 1816, they put up at the Hôtel de Bourbon, Rue de la Paix, Paris, waiting news from London, and then, the maître d'hôtel, Monsieur de Marcel, urged him to go to the Hôtel de Valois, which he kept in the Rue de Richelieu, promising to afford better service and accommodation. "There was an eagerness in the manner of this fellow--an importunity beyond all bounds--that struck me with suspicion of some further motive," says Wallace; "I coldly declined his solicitations, but it did not discourage him; he came almost daily and besieged me with entreaties, and bore repulses with a patience that would have astonished me in any one but a Frenchman." Eventually the friends removed to his other hotel on the 19th of March, and Wallace had soon reason to suspect that his escritoire had been opened and his papers examined, by Marcel and some suspicious-looking men, whom he once surprised in his rooms; but they were partly in their host's power by that time, as Mr. Andrews was 1,040 francs in his debt. For this he gave bills upon his mother and Lord Wallscourt, and then left for Madrid with the Count de Gadez; while Wallace, finding that the bad impression against him in London had passed away, set out for England by the way of Brussels, where he was well received by the many English tourists to whom the continent was now open. Unfortunately a friend induced him to revisit Paris, where more than once he saw his former host, Marcel, who always saluted him with marked respect. He then went to Boulogne, and one evening when he was dining with some friends at the Hôtel Charpentier, a party of gendarmes broke into the room and roughly arrested him, at the instance of Marcel, for a debt of 4,000 francs. He was conducted to prison, where, resolving to resist this infamous attempt to extort money, he employed MM. Lessis and Deslandes, an advocate and attorney, to defend him before the _Tribunal de Première Instance Civile_, which--as Marcel was unable to prove his claim--set Wallace at liberty, and awarded him damages for the insult, the motive for which seemed inexplicable to all.

Reflection showed that Marcel had some secret inducement, and that he was the paid agent of powerful enemies elsewhere. This Marcel had been notorious during the Reign of Terror, and only escaped death by having a friend, whose name was _Martel_, executed, by a strange trick, in his place. He became a member of the secret police, and by his denunciations had long "kept the guillotine in the south of France in continual motion, and Bordeaux in perpetual mourning." Such was the agent of the enemies of Wallace, who states, that when leaving the debtor's prison in accordance with the sentence of the Court, he was, to his rage and astonishment, arrested by the _concierge_ on a charge of _robbery_, and was conducted with a "brigade of convicts," under an armed guard, to Paris--everywhere, as an Englishman--taunted and reviled, for Waterloo was fresh in every Frenchman's mind. He had, however, the use of a cabriolet, which deposited him at the prison of La Force, after being insolently treated by the _Procureur du Roi_, and coldly answered by our ambassador; and then his spirit would have sunk but for the kindness of a young Belgian girl, to whom he had become attached, and who had followed him from Brussels. Of this influence he was soon deprived, by being thrust into a cell with nine _galériens_, who robbed him of money supplied to him by kind Deslandes, the advocate, to pay "the right of entry." His valet was denied access to him, and all his letters were intercepted. Then, surrounded by bolts and bars, the dust and dirt of years, and among such ruffians as France can alone produce, he remained in an agony of perplexity till, on the absurd charge of stealing from the Hôtel de Valois three towels and a shoebrush, the property of M. Marcel, eighteen months before, he was arraigned at the _Palais de Justice_, where Marcel appeared in the double capacity of prosecutor and witness; and though "all were anxious to hear the accusation that would banish an Englishman to the galleys," he totally failed to prove it, and once more Wallace was set at liberty.

Boiling with rage, he hastened into the street, resolving to demand redress from our ambassador, Sir Charles Stuart, when he was seized by an armed party, and beaten by them so severely that he would have been killed but for the intervention of an Irish soldier in the French service. He was then dragged back to La Force, into which he was thrown on a new charge--forgery! A few days after, he was thumbscrewed, and brought under escort, before M. Meslin, the _Juge d'Instruction_, for examination; he was denied the use of an interpreter, and no one was suffered to be present but the _greffier_, an intimate friend of Marcel.

He was told that his name was Philip, not William; that he was a Russian, not a Scotsman, and the _Juge_ alluded to many mysterious events to which William was a total stranger. He was declared incorrigible. "_Gendarmes, remenez-le à La Force!_" was the order, and he was marched back to prison. Eventually he was ordered to be released, when his advocate, the Chevalier Duplessis, discovered through Pozzo di Borgo, the Russian ambassador, that he had been arrested in mistake for another person who had forged a draft upon His Excellency. On Wallace appealing to M. Meslin for some satisfaction for all he had undergone, that official only laughed, and ordered him again to La Force, saying there was a new and more serious charge against him! This was an accusation of swindling. He was flung into the dreadful _Bâtiment-neuf_, where his sufferings, like the horrible scenes he witnessed, are beyond all description. The charge was made at the instance of the inevitable and inexorable Marcel! He based it on the old claim of debt. Duplessis treated the prosecution as a nullity; but Marcel procured a judgment against him by default, and he was tried by the _Cour de Premiere Instance_, on the charge of having obtained credit from Marcel through a bill drawn on a _Lord Wallace_. The bill drawn by Mr. Andrews on Lord _Wallscourt_, and on which the name of Wallace did not appear "either as drawer, or acceptor or indorser," was adduced in evidence against him. The charge fell to the ground. Even the _Procureur du Roi_ was warmly in his favour. He was acquitted, and left the court overjoyed.

As he went forth, he was again arrested in virtue of the judgment obtained by Marcel, through default, and thrown into Ste. Pélagie, the King's Bench of Paris, where his place of confinement was so horrible, that he longed to be back again in La Force. He was now almost heart-broken; but as the wretch who persecuted, failed to aliment him, he was released on the 27th January, 1818; but at the gate he was again arrested by order of the Comte d'Angles, the Prefect of Police, in virtue of a _private letter_, and confined "_au secret!_" No human being could have access to him now, and all intercourse with the outer world was denied. His situation was now harrowing in the extreme. "I felt," he says, "all the difference between the misery that has hope to dwell upon, and that which has none." Without a pretext, his captivity would be without an end, it seemed.

But, on the 28th January, 1818, the _concierge_ abruptly announced an order to set him free; and added that M. Marcel was without with a party of gendarmes. He begged permission to remain till sunset; but the agent of the Secret Police, finding that he did not come forth, entered and dragged him out; and along the quays and bridges he was torn by twelve armed men, followed by a vast unpitying multitude, with a handkerchief thrust into his mouth, and then retaken to Ste. Pélagie, on three charges of murder--for assassinating a British General at Valenciennes, and two bankers in Paris!

On these outrageous charges he pined in prison for eighteen months longer, till consumption began to waste him, and all spirit and all desire for life were gone; for though no attempt was made to substantiate them, the _Cour de Premiere Instance_ had reconfirmed to Marcel the power of detaining him as a debtor for life in Ste. Pélagie. Fortunately, about this time he was discovered by an old English friend, who, by ample bribery, prevailed upon that remarkable scoundrel (who thought his victim was dying) to sign a document, relinquishing all claim, if Wallace would abandon all right of counter prosecution. He also added an invitation to take up a residence in _his house_!

On the 6th October, wasted, worn, penniless, and every way destitute, he quitted Ste. Pélagie, and was conveyed to the humble lodging of his faithful valet in the Faubourg St. Marceau, when on the verge of death. In the solitude of his various prisons, how often must this son of luxury, this butterfly of fashion, who, though brave in battle, was but a Bond Street lounger when at home, have felt bitterly that the shaping of his life had gone beyond him now, ere youth was well-nigh past; and that its illusions, hopes, and enthusiasm had also gone for ever.

Nursed by his old valet he gradually recovered strength, and on receiving an affectionate letter from his father urging that the air of his native country would completely restore him, he gladly turned his back on Paris, and its hated police power.

But he would seem never to have got over the shock of all these accusations, as he sank into a premature grave, thus leaving old Sir Thomas Wallace the last of his line, and without an heir to his baronetcy, which was created in 1669.

A WEIRD STORY OF BRUGES.

Six months ago, when in Bruges, that "quaint old town of art and song," as Longfellow styles it--a town all unchanged since the ancient days of Flanders--I became cognisant of the following events, by happening to be present at the examination of the chief actor in them, before one of the two burgomasters who govern the city.

With a Belgian friend, I had been lounging in a window of the club-house that overlooks the spacious square known as the Grande Place (above which towers the wonderful belfry, from whence one may look down on the frontiers of Holland as on a map, and from whence, it is said, the mouth of the Thames may be seen on a clear day), when a police escort, with swords drawn, conducted a prisoner past, towards the Palais de Justice. He was a young man of the better class, apparently, very pale, very sad, and depressed in aspect, very handsome in face, graceful in bearing, and most unlike a criminal. His hands, however, were manacled, and a crowd of workmen and children clattered noisily around him in their wooden sabots.

As the rumour spread that a terrible assassination had just been committed, we followed the escort to the magnificent old hall in that edifice, which was whilom the Palais du Franc de Bruges, and which contains a chimney-piece occupying one entire side of it, with gigantic statues carved in wood, and marble bas-reliefs representing chastely the story of Susannah and the Elders, as the reader may find in his "John Murray."

From that which transpired at the examination of the prisoner, and what I read in a few subsequent numbers of the little local paper named _La Patrie_, I gleaned the substance of the following story, which, in some of its features, reminds one of the case of Oriental metempsychosis mentioned in the _Spectator_--the passing of the soul from body to body, including the influences of mesmeric, crystalline, and magnetic forces, though I do not pretend to know anything of the learned and mysterious jargon concerning those matters; but much of which I heard that day referred to in the Palais de Justice.

A mile or so on the level highway beyond the beautiful round towers of the loopholed and embattled Porte St. Croix, one of the still remaining barriers of the old fortifications, there stands at a little distance from the road, a quaint old Flemish dwelling-house, built of red brick, and almost hidden among chestnut and apple-trees. If we are to believe the "Chronyke Van Vlanderen," it was once a shooting-box of Charles the Bold, and near it Mary of Burgundy received the fall from her horse which proved so fatal. Be all this as it may, it is a house with many pointed gables, strange outshots and beams of quaintly-carved oak; and therein, with his nephew, Hendrik, and an old housekeeper, resided Dr. Van Gansendonck, called Doctor, not from his profession, but for his learning, as he enjoyed the reputation of understanding all languages, living and dead, and being master of every science, human and divine; and was regarded by the simple and religious Brugois, as altogether a miracle of a man in some respects.

Some there were who deemed him a dangerous dupe to his own powers, and these were the clergy especially who, with something of repugnance, drew their black cloaks closer about them when "the doctor" passed them, on the highway or in the narrow unpaved streets as it was notorious that he never crossed the threshold of a church, or was known to lift his hat either to them or to the numerous Madonnas that decorate every street corner, and many a doorway too, in Bruges.

The Herr Doctor, now past his sixtieth year, had, in some respects, decidedly a bad reputation, and a hundred and fifty years ago or so, might have ended his studies amid a blaze of tar-barrels in the Grande Place as a wizard, but in this our age of steam and telegraphy he was viewed as simply a learned eccentric, and as a dabbler in mesmerism, clairvoyance, the odic light, and second sight; but these occult mysteries, which the church condemns, he would seem to have carried to a length that seems strangely out of place in these days of hard facts and practical common-sense.

A forehead high and bald, a head tonsured round by a fringe of silvery hair, eyes keen and quick as those of a rattlesnake--eyes that seemed to glare through his gold-rimmed glasses, made the face of Herr Van Gansendonck so remarkable, that those who saw it never failed to be impressed by its strange expression of intellectual power, tinged with somewhat of insanity; but his visitors were few. His time was chiefly spent in his library; and as he was rich, being proprietor of more than one of those gigantic mills, the sails of which overshadow the grassy ramparts, he could afford to please himself by living as he chose, and seclusion was his choice. He seemed to have but one favourite only--Hendrik--a brother's orphan son, whom he had adopted, educated, and who was to be his heir.

Hendrik was now in his twentieth year, decidedly handsome, but with dreamy blue eyes that had an expression in them one could not easily forget; yet the lad's temperament was poetic and enthusiastic, and now he had but recently returned to Bruges, after undergoing a course of study, and attending those lectures which are given on science, literature, and art at the library of the Museum in Brussels.

The grim old student hailed the return of the younger one with a pleasure that he did not conceal, and there was at least one more in Bruges that did so with joy.

This was Lenora, the daughter of Madame Van Eyck, a widow lady, residing in one of those quaint old houses at the Quai Espagnol. To her he had been betrothed, and the monetary plans of his uncle alone were awaited for their marriage, young though Hendrik was.

Bruges, according to an old monkish rhyme, has ever been celebrated for its pretty girls, but Lenora Van Eyck, a bright blonde of eighteen, was more than pretty--she was charming, with that wonderful bloom of complexion which is so truly Belgian; light, laughing, hazel eyes that were full of merriment, and all her ways and modes of expression piquant and attractive.

She had been one of the six young ladies who, clothed and veiled in white, were selected on the last Corpus Christi day to bear the gilt Madonna through the streets before the bishop. Lenora had been with her family at Blankenburg--the little Brighton of the Brugois--for several weeks after the return of Hendrik to the house of his uncle; and when again they met at their favourite trysting place, the long walk of stately poplars by the canal near the Porte St. Croix, she soon became conscious of a strange and painful change in the bearing, the manner, and the eyes of her lover. Languor seemed to pervade every action; his face had become pale, his eyes more dreamy than ever, and he was unusually taciturn and abstracted.

Why was this? Lenora asked of herself, while she watched him with that keenness of eye and anxiety of heart that are born of love and tenderness, for there was a singular mystery now about the once happy Hendrik that filled her with grave perplexity. Had his love for her changed? His eyes, though sad, were loving in expression as ever, when they met hers--yet even his smile was sad--so very sad!

Again and again, in her most winning way, she would implore Hendrik to reveal to her any secret that weighed upon his mind, but in vain. Why was it, she asked, that he, whom she had left so lively in bearing and happy in spirit, had now become so moody? and why was it that there were times when he seemed to feel himself compelled, as it were, to leave her suddenly and in haste, without a word of explanation, apology, or excuse? She pleaded without avail; Hendrik could but avert his pallid face, or cover his eyes with his hand, as if to shut out some painful vision or crush some worrying thought.

He dared not tell her--lest she should deem him mad, and so shrink from him--that his uncle, the Herr Van Gansendonck, had, mesmerically, acquired a mysterious and terrible influence over him, and that by the mere power of will he could summon him to his presence at all times, wherever he might be, or with whomsoever he was engaged--even with herself; and that he, Hendrik, found himself totally powerless and incapable of effecting his emancipation from the bodily and mental thraldom under which he writhed!

He dared not tell her all this, or, further, that Herr Van Gansendonck had the power to set him asleep on a chair in his library, and then to cause his spirit (for this was alleged in the Palais de Justice) to disengage itself from the body, and go on distant missions through the air for thousands of miles in the course of a few minutes, or that when thus put to sleep, the Herr, by exciting his organ of ideality, could obtain such information as he wished on strange and abstruse subjects.

That he had become a helpless and nerve-shattered mesmeric medium, he thought at times he might confide to her; but even in this his courage failed him, for other and more terrifying convictions were creeping upon him; thus he shrank from telling the girl who loved him so dearly, that when his spiritual essence was despatched to distant lands, the Herr, by the same power, permitted other spirits to enter his body and use its members for purposes of their own. The horror of this idea, it was alleged, made the youth's life insupportable, for on awaking from these strange and involuntary trances, he would at times find on his person cuts and bruises he was all unconscious of receiving; sometimes his purse would be gone, or in its place might be found strange money and letters to and from individuals of whose existence he knew nothing.

All this was done by one whose power he could neither repel nor defy; and now he had the natural dread that if his body was made to obey the behests of these spiritual intruders, he might be led into some horrible predicament--the committal of a dreadful crime. Another might even come in his place and meet Lenora!

One evening as they sat on the grassy rampart that overlooked the great canal, the girl strove to rouse or soothe him by singing with great sweetness one of Jan Van Beer's Flemish songs; but the music of her voice and the poetry of the author of "Zeik Jongeling" fell on Hendrik's ear in vain. When she paused,

"I dreamt of you last night, darling Lenora," said the young man, looking at her with inexpressible tenderness; "but such dreams are so tantalising, even more so than the dreams one has by day."

"All your life seems one hazy dream now, Hendrik," said Lenora somewhat petulantly.

"Forgive me, dearest, you know not what you talk of. My mind, I grant you, is a chaos, full of strange terrors, perplexity, and confusion; and times there are when I fear for my reason," he added wildly, passing a hand over his forehead, and looking aside.

"Dear Hendrik, do not speak thus, I implore you."

"I must--in whom can I confide, if not in you? And yet I dare not--I dare not!"

After a pause he spoke again, but with his eyes fixed, not on her, but on the still, deep water of the shining canal.

"This much I will tell you, Lenora. Yesterday, my uncle sent me on some business of his to the house of an advocate, Père Baas, near the Béguinage, a house in which I had never been before, and I was shown into a room to wait. On looking round, to my astonishment, every article in it--and the room itself--the ceiling, the stove, the windows, and the paintings--especially one by Hans Hemling--were all familiar to me, and I seemed to recognise every object there. 'I was never here before,' thought I; 'and yet I must have been--but when? If so, there is a little window behind this picture, which opens to the garden of the Béguinage.' I turned the picture, and lo! there was the little window in question; I saw through it the garden with all its cherry-trees and two or three béguines flitting about. Oh, Lenora, there is indeed some power beyond matter, proving that the soul is independent of the body!"

"It must have been a dream."

"It was no dream," replied Hendrik gloomily.

"But how do you account for the strange fancy?"

"My disembodied spirit must have been there, sent on some accursed errand by my uncle!"

"But you would die, Hendrik."

"Not if another tenant were at hand," replied Hendrik, gnashing his teeth.

Then the girl wept to hear him, as she naturally deemed it, raving thus.

"Such things cannot be," said she, sobbing.

"My uncle says they may; and the theory is as old as the days of Pythagoras."

"I know nothing of Herr Pythagoras; but this I know, that the Herr Van Ganseudonck is a strange and bad man. Pardon me, dear Hendrik; but he never enters a church door, nor has he been to mass or confession for years. Leave him, and Bruges too, rather than become the victim of such dreadful delusions."

"To do either is to leave and to lose you! I am his heir; and we have but to wait his pleasure--or, it may be, his death, to be so happy," replied Hendrik, sadly: and then they relapsed into silence. With Lenora it was silence induced by sorrow and alarm, while her lover seemed to let his thoughts slip away into dreamland. The sultry summer evening breeze rustled the leaves near them; the honey-bees buzzed and hummed among the wild flowers and buttercups that grew on the old rampart; and far away could be heard the ceaseless chirping of the crickets.

Lenora's head rested on Hendrik's shoulder, and he was lost in thought, though mechanically toying with her hair, which shone like ripples of gold in the light of the setting sun.

He was aware that Lenora had begun to speak to him again; her voice seemed to mingle with the drowsy hum of the bees and the evening chimes or carillons in the distant spires; but he heard as if he heard her not; till suddenly a thrill seemed to pass over him, as a secret and intuitive sense or knowledge that his terrible relation required his immediate presence, made him start from the grassy bank, snatch a hasty kiss, and hurry away by the arch of the Porte St. Croix, leaving Lenora mortified, sorrowful, and utterly bewildered by the abruptness of his departure.

"Oh, how changed he is!" thought she, as she proceeded slowly in the other direction towards her home on the Quai Espagnol.

On two or three occasions the unhappy Hendrik had, what he conceived to be, undoubted proof of his body having been, in the intervals of mesmeric trances, tenanted by another spirit than his own; and this strange and wild conviction caused such intense horror and loathing of his uncle that the expressions to which he gave utterance to more than one of his friends--more than all to Lenora--were recalled, most fatally for himself, at a future time.

One day, in the Rue des Augustines, he was accosted by brother Eusebius, a Capuchin.

"Friend Hendrik," said he, severely and gravely, "was it becoming in you to be roystering as you were yesterday at the low estaminet in the market-place, and with such companions--fellows in blouses and sabots?"

"Impossible, Brother Eusebius; I was not there," faltered Hendrik, as the usual fear crept over him.

"I myself saw you. And, moreover, you looked at me."

"When--at what hour?"

"Six in the evening."

"Six!"

Hendrik felt himself grow pale. He remembered that at that identical time he was under the hands of his uncle. He groaned in sore and dire perplexity, and his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, while the Capuchin continued to address him in tones of rebuke and earnest remonstrance.

"Have I a double-ganger, or am I becoming crazed?" urged Hendrik. "Believe me, Brother Eusebius, I was not there!" he added, piteously and earnestly.

"At the hour of six?" persisted the unbelieving Capuchin.

"I swear to you that at the hour of six I was, and had been for some time, in one of those unaccountable trances in which my uncle has the power to cast me--one of those hours of bodily torpor that have come upon me," he added, while the perspiration poured in bead-drops from his pallid brow. "I awoke about eight. I heard the chimes ringing in the church of St. Giles, and near me sat my uncle, pen in hand, as if in the act of questioning me and committing to paper that which I had been revealing in my magnetic slumber. Oh! am I the victim of necromancy?"

"Scarcely, in this age of the world," replied the Capuchin, but now with more of pity than rebuke in his manner.

"I swear to you by the Holy Blood that I speak the truth!" continued Hendrik, referring to the famous relique of the Brugois in the little chapel near the Hôtel de Ville. "I last remember hearing the voice of my uncle as I sank into sleep; my arms fell powerless by my side; my eyes closed; waves of magnetic fluid or air seemed to flow over me; and my spirit passed away, at his behest, to other lands."

"What madness--what raving is this, Hendrik?" said the sandalled friar, with sadness and severity. "Do you mean to tell me that your uncle is another Cagliostro--a veritable Balsamo?"

"I fear it--I fear it," said Hendrik, with clasped hands.

"Learn first to fear the potations of the estaminet," replied the Capuchin, as he turned coldly and bluntly away, believing that the young man was intoxicated.

On another occasion Hendrik failed to keep an appointment with Lenora Van Eyck, who waited for him anxiously till long past the time named, and then proceeded pensively homeward. As she approached the steep and antique bridge that leads from the Rue des Augustines to the Quai Espagnol she saw Hendrik cross it, and look at her calmly and deliberately the while, but without a glance or smile of recognition. Her heart, which at first had beat happily, now became perplexed as he turned abruptly up the opposite bank of the canal, and dropped into a little skiff, which he proceeded to unmoor, and, in doing so, cut his right hand severely.

"Hendrik! Hendrik!" she called aloud; but he heard her not, and, shipping a pair of sculls, pulled swiftly out of sight.

When next they met, and she upbraided him with this strange conduct, the same emotion of fear that had come over him when confronted by the Capuchin again filled his heart, and he called Heaven to witness that it was not he whom she had seen.

"But here, Hendrik, love, is the wound on your hand," urged the astonished girl.

"I know not how I received it," he moaned, "though aware that a wound is there."

"This passes all comprehension!" said Lenora mournfully. "Oh! Hendrik, I thought a love like ours would never die; yet doubt and terror are destroying it now."

Something like a sob came into Hendrik's throat, and through his clenched teeth he muttered hoarsely and fiercely--

"This kind of life--a double life, it would seem--cannot last for ever. Nothing does last for ever, and the end will come anon." And as he spoke he fixed his moist and now hollow eyes as if on some distant horizon which he alone could see.

"Hendrik!--dearest Hendrik!" urged the girl soothingly, as she caressed his face between her soft and pretty hands, for her heart was full of alarm as well as love; it was a conviction so dreadful, the fear that he was perhaps becoming insane.

"Can over-study at Brussels have made the poor boy ill," thought Lenora, in the solitude of her chamber that night. "Oh! must I give him up after all--after all? Dare I go through life as the wife of one so strange, so wayward, and so moody? No; better be a béguine like Aunt Truey. I am so happy at home. Why do girls marry? and for what do I want to marry?" And as she pondered thus, she sat looking at her white hands, and changing Hendrik's betrothal ring--an opal set with diamonds--from one finger to another, till it slipped from her and rolled away on the varnished floor, whence she snatched it up with a little cry of alarm, for the event seemed ominous of evil. "Oh, I must indeed consult Brother Eusebius about this matter," was her concluding thought, more especially as the Capuchin had told her that 'opals were unlucky.'

And when he dropped in for his post-prandial cup of coffee with her mother that evening, Lenora did take him into her confidence; but the friar only imbibed pinch after pinch of snuff from the huge wooden box which he carried in the sleeve pocket of his brown frock; hinted of what he had seen at the estaminet, and shook his shaven head, adding that "Hendrik Van Gansendonck came of a bad stock, and should be avoided." So the Capuchin was consulted no more on the subject.

Hendrik now broke many appointments made with Lenora. He seemed to be no longer the master of his own actions, and he was so frequently reproached by her for his inattention and unkindness, that he feared to make a promise to her at all, and two entire days passed without their meeting.

Could he tell her that which he now confidently believed to be the case; that Herr Van Gansendonck had cast him into a mesmeric trance, leaving him in that condition, and intending to come back in an hour or so; but, having been summoned away on business, had left him, to all appearance spell-bound and helpless, to the terror of the old housekeeper at the château?

On the third day he met her coming from vespers in the church of the Béguinage, where she had been to visit her Aunt Truey.

Lenora was very pale; her eyes were full of tears, and, as Hendrik could perceive, they were sparkling with resentment. She was in the very summer of her beauty--that age when all girls seem pretty. Hendrik gazed upon her carelessly, and would have kissed her, but the walk was a public one, and the _blanchisseurs_ were busy amid the Minnewater. Lenora was so prettily dressed, too: and most suitably did her silver-grey costume, trimmed with rose-coloured ribbon, become her blonde beauty, her purity of complexion, and fair shining tresses. Fresh, young, and graceful, there was a delicacy and softness in all her air and person, yet anger was apparent in her eyes; and those of Lenora were what a writer has described, as "wonderful golden eyes--eyes which painters dare not imitate, because the colour is so subtle, and the light in them so living--eyes that are called hazel, but are not hazel."

"I now know the reason of your avoiding me in the Rue des Augustines, and also where you were going on that evening in the skiff," said she.

"Lenora, have I not already said----"

"Hendrik," interrupted the girl, with severity, "I have for some time feared that you were crazed; now I find that you are wicked, and that Brother Eusebius was right after all."

"Wicked--my darling!"

"Do not speak to me thus; I have good reason to be most indignant with you," she continued, stamping her little foot on the ground.

"For what, dearest?" asked Hendrik, whose heart was sinking with vague apprehension as usual.

"Cease to twist your moustache, and answer me this: was it right or proper of you to be drinking with soldiers at the Rampart de Caserne last evening?--and worse still, to be toying with and caressing little Mademoiselle Dentelle, the lace-maker, who lives there--toying with her actually in the open street, while mamma and I passed you?" added Lenora, whose eyes were flashing through their tears, though her cheek was pale, as Hendrik's now became.

He was voiceless, and could make neither response nor reply, for he knew that at the time to which he referred he had been, as he simply phrased it, "put to sleep in his kinsman's study," and that on awaking he had found himself not there, but lying on the grassy bank near the Rampart de Caserne, and that, instead of his hat, he found on his head the kepi of a soldier of the 2nd Regiment, then quartered in Bruges, and a pipe, of which he knew nothing, dangling from a button of his coat! The stars were shining, and the dew was on the grass, but how long he had been there, or how he came to be there, were alike mysteries to him.

He felt bitterly the utter hopelessness of urging more to Lenora; yet he attempted to falter out some explanation.

"This is juggling, Hendrik," replied the girl passionately; "another face--another love has come between us, otherwise you would not dare to treat me thus?"

"Your suspicion is false, dearest Lenora," said he. "Oh, pardon me, sweet one! but I feel as if I were in a dream--as if I were some one else, and not myself!"

"Again, dreams!" said Lenora scornfully, as she drew his betrothal ring from her finger, dashed it at his feet, and left him. Night after night had Lenora lain awake, brooding over the change that had come upon Hendrik, weeping the while, with wide-open eyes in the darkness, and now she had come to the firm resolution to dismiss him for ever; but when she left him, silent, stunned, and confounded by the Minnewater, her heart yearned for him again, and she repented her severity, lest his mind might be, as she too justly feared, affected.

And now he, while gazing wistfully after her retiring figure, thought with loathing and horror of the keen visage, the hawk-like nose, the cold, yet clear glittering eyes and gold spectacles of that odious relative to whom he was unhappily indebted even for food and raiment, for his past education, and all his future prospects in life--Lenora included; but who seemed to possess over him a power so unaccountable, so terrible and diabolical! Much of this he said to one or two friends whom he met on his way homeward, and the expressions were also remembered against him in the time that was to come.

Soon after he found himself secretly and imperatively summoned to the presence of the Herr, who--as he afterwards told the Burgomaster in the Palais de Justice--"bade him go sleep," and sent his spirit on some mysterious errand, hundreds of miles away. What happened in the library of that lonely little château outside the Porte St. Croix, while his spiritual essence was thus absent, the unhappy Hendrik never could know; but when it re-entered his body--or when he awoke--he was horrified to find his learned uncle lying dead on the floor amid a pool of blood, his face and throat gashed by dreadful wounds, which had evidently been inflicted by a blood-spotted knife which Hendrik found clutched in his own right hand! Blood gouts were over all his clothes, the pockets of which were found to be stuffed with money, jewels, end other valuables taken from a bureau and desk, which had been burst open and ransacked.