afterwards, in the fluctuations of her feelings with regard to her approaching change of life, this idea, vague and slight as had been its texture, did supervene—and give her heart a pang far more than proportioned to its previous weight. And that it was annihilated, she could not, for a moment, doubt. Self-deception could not reach that point. The Count von Oberfeldt, proud even among his proud countrymen, never could marry one who had been an actress-that she knew.

And as she reflected thus, the bitter idea again and again would cross her, that all the world would know her to be Oberfeldt's mistress! —that, whatever praise or admiration they might give to her talents, they would be like those she had attracted in the state from which Adrian had drawn her-unmixed with respect, nay even mingled with contempt. These sensations she had not felt for years-she had escaped from them, she had thought, for ever;-they now recurred with tenfold intensity and bitterness. The pride of her spirit had, probably, been increased by the constant mortifications to which

it had been exposed. Latterly it had been lulled. The fierce bitterness into which her disposition was fast hardening when Oberfeldt first met with her, had been softened, or rather obscured, by the supervention of the gentler affections. Respect, consideration, kindness, delicate courtesy-she had always experienced from Adrian. Her love for him was not impassioned only, but fond and tender in the extreme. She had, thus, no cause of irritation, and her harsher feelings accordingly fell into a dormant state. I do not mean that they now revived to the full;-she felt only flashes of them, more intense, perhaps, in themselves, as might naturally be supposed,-but still only flashes, instead of their being, as before, her predominant mood of mind.

In these alternate feelings-on the one side, of eagerness for distinction, of desire to shew gratitude to her benefactor, and to give pleasure to the man she loved,-and, on the other, of the more gloomy and harsh dispositions I have just detailed, the days rapidly passed away which were to precede her appearance on the stage.

CHAPTER VIII.

Il faut se rendre à ce palais magique
Où les beaux vers, la danse, la musique,
L'art de tromper les yeux par les couleurs,
L'art plus heureux de séduire les cœurs,
De cent plaisirs font un plaisir unique.

VOLTAIRE.

THE night of her debût at length arrived. The feelings with which she regarded its approach continued to be various and complicated. A person of her extreme natural advantages, personal and mental, could not but be conscious, nay vain, of them ;-nor was it unnatural for one of her youth-(I will not add her sex, for the feeling is common to both) to feel pleasure at an opportunity for their display. Her recent acquirements, also, had still the gloss of newness among their charms-and while they rendered her original powers both greater and more available, the novelty of their possession gave them even extrinsic value in her eyes, and made their

exhibition doubly gratifying to her pride. But, on the other hand, there was too near an affinity between the step she was about to take, and her former course of life, hated and despised at the time, and now abjured for ever, for her anticipations, soaring and triumphant as they were, to be wholly unmixed with sensations of reluctance and mortification. She recollected the plaudits which had rung in her ears, when her place of exhibition had been the booths of provincial fairs, and the remembrance almost poisoned the gratification with which she looked to the applauses of the cultivated judges before whom she was now to appear. Occasionally, also, fears of failure flitted across her mind. But these were rare. Self-confidence had, from the circumstances of her life, necessarily shot up with all her qualities good and bad!—and the gnothi seauton, in her instance, gave to her view talents too cultivated, powers too real and great, for her alarms for the result to be more than those passing vapours which, at moments, and for moments, will cloud even the most sanguine spirit.

The night arrived. The whole Court was

crowded into the theatre; for the secluded manner in which Mabel had lived at Dresdenthe occasional rare and brief glimpses which some few had obtained of her-and the reports which had gained currency, chiefly through the medium of her masters, of her extreme genius and accomplishment, had alike contributed to raise expectation to its tiptoe pitch. As in all cases, mystery encreased interest—and, as in all cases, the mystery itself was exaggerated by all manner of vague and contradictory rumours. Even the King had been able to obtain no satisfactory accounts of her. Eager admirer as he was of beauty, and unceasingly as he sought the excitement of novelty, his curiosity was doubly raised by the difficulty he had found in gratifying it-and this, in fact, had been the chief motive for his so strongly urging Oberfeldt to fulfil his original resolution.

The piece in which she was to appear was, as has already been hinted, an Opera which had recently been produced at Paris, and was now to be represented in Germany for the first time. The subject fitted it peculiarly for the introduction of music, and for the displays of