by his own hand. The murderer was watching beside his victim!

At intervals he strove against the horror by which he was oppressed; he endeavoured to rally the pride of his sex and of his strength. What could he fear? The dead are powerless over the living; and yet, fiercer and sharper came the memory that his crime had been gratuitous, for had he not been told that the death which he had given must ere long have come? "A little sooner, or a little later," had said the man of science. Oh, had he only waited, promised, temporised; but all was now too late! She lay there cold, pale, stark, within a few paces of him, and tears of blood could not recall the dead!

It was the close of autumn, and as the sun set masses of lurid and sulphureous clouds gathered upon the western horizon, but save an occasional sweep of wind which moaned through the funereal trees, all remained still, buried in that ringing silence which may be heard; and the moon, as yet untouched by the rising vapours, gleamed on the narrow window of the cell, and cast upon the floor the quivering shadows of the trees beside it. But at length came midnight, the moon was veiled in clouds, and a sweeping wind rushed through the long grass upon the graves, and swayed to and fro the tall branches of the yews and cypresses; next came the sound of falling rain,-large, heavy drops, which plashed upon the foliage, and then fell with a sullen reverberation upon the dry and thirsty earth. Gradually the storm increased; and ere long, as the thunder began to growl hoarsely in the distance, it beat angrily against the diamond panes, and dropped in a shower from the eaves of the little building. Elric breathed more freely. This elemental warfare was more congenial to his troubled spirit than the fearful silence by which it had been preceded. He tried to think of Mina; but as though her pure and innocent image could not blend with the objects around him, he found it impossible to pursue a continuous chain of thought. Once more he bent over the book before him, but as he turned the page a sudden light filled the narrow chamber, and through the sheeted glare sprang a

fierce flash, which for a moment seemed to destroy his power of vision. He rose hurriedly from his chair; the thunder appeared to be bursting over his head, the lightning danced like fiery demons across the floor, the wind howled and roared in the wide chimney; and suddenly, as he stood there, aghast and consciencestricken, a sharp blast penetrating through some aperture in the walls, extinguished his solitary lamp. At this instant the bell rang.

"The Bell!" shouted the young count, like a maniac,—“THE BELL! And then, gaining strength from his excess of horror, he laughed as wildly as he had spoken. "Fool

that I am! Is not such a wind as this enough to shake the very edifice from its foundation? and am I scared because it has vibrated along a wire? Has not the same blast put out my lamp? All is still again. My own thoughts have made a coward of me!"

As he uttered these words, another and a brighter flash shot through the casement and ran along the wire, and again the bell rang out; but his eye had been upon it, and he could no longer cheat himself into the belief that he had endeavoured to create. The fiery vapour had disappeared, but still louder and louder rang the bell, as though pulled by a hand of agony.

Elric sank helpless to his knees. At every successive flash he saw the violent motion of the bell which hung above him, and as the darkness again gathered about the cell, he still heard the maddening peal, which seemed to split his brain.

"Light! light!" he moaned at last, as he rose painfully from the floor. "I must have light, or I shall become a raving maniac."

"

And then he strove to re-illumine the lamp; but his shaking hand ill obeyed the impulse of his frenzied will. And still, without the intermission of a second, the bell rang on. At length he obtained a light, and staggering to the wall, he fixed his eyes upon the frightful wire.

"It stretches," he muttered, unconsciously; "still it stretches, and there is no wind now; there is a lull. Some one must be pulling it from the other chamber, and if so, it must be

His voice became extinct; he could not utter the name of his sister.

With a frantic gesture he seized the lamp and turned towards the door which opened into the deathchamber, and still the bell rang on, without the cessation of an instant. A short passage parted the two cells, and as he staggered onwards he was compelled to cling to the wall, for his knees knocked together, and he could scarcely support himself. At length he reached the inner door, and desperately flung it open. A chill like that which escapes from a vault fell upon his brow, and the sound of the bell pursued him still. He moved a pace forward, retreated, again advanced, and, finally, by a mighty effort, sprang into the centre of the chamber. One shrill and piercing cry escaped him, and the lamp fell from his hand.

"You are then here ?" murmured a low and feeble voice.

"You,

Elric von Königstein, the renegade from honour, the sororicide, the would-be murderer! Yours is the affection which watches over my last hours on earth? The same hand which mixed the deadly draught is ready to lay me in the grave?"

As the words fell upon his ear, a vivid flash filled the room, and the count saw his sister sitting upright wrapped in her death-clothes. A deep groan escaped him.

"That draught was scarcely swallowed," pursued the voice, ere I detected that it had been tampered with; but it was then too late to save myself, and, for the honour of our name, I shrank from denouncing you, though I felt at once that you were the murderer. But you were coward as well as sororicide. You

have subjected me to all the agonies of death, and have not merely condemned me to an after-life of suffering, but of suffering to us both, for I shall live on under the knowledge of the fate to which you destined me, and you beneath my irrevocable

curse.

The last few sentences were uttered feebly and gaspingly, as though the strength of the speaker were spent, and then a heavy fall upon the bed betrayed to the horrorstricken Elric that some fresh catastrophe had occurred.

With the energy of despair he rushed from the room, and hastened to procure a light. A frightful spectacle met him on his return. Stephanie lay across the bed, with a portion of her funeral-dress displaced. The arm with which she had rung the fatal bell was that from which her medical attendant had striven to procure blood during her insensibility, and which, in preparing her for the grave, had been unbound. The violent exertion to which it had been subjected, added to the power of the poison that still lurked in her veins, had opened the wound, and ere the young count returned with the lamp she was indeed a corpse, with her white burial-garments dabbled in blood. The scene told its own tale on the morrow. She had partially awakened, and the result was evident. None knew, save he who watched beside her, that the fatal bell had rung!

The curse worked. Madness seized upon the wretched Elric, and for years he was a raving lunatic, who might at any moment be lashed into frenzy by the mere ringing of a bell.

THE Conquest of Italy had, as we have seen, placed Napoleon on a pedestal of fame which already overshadowed the government of the Republic. The power of his popularity weighed heavily on the Directors; and as he was 66 moody and dissatisfied, and brooding over the prospect of inactivity," they were as anxious to find him employment as he was to obtain it. The peace so lately concluded left, however, no opening for military exertion on the continent of Europe; and as Napoleon, though named general of the army of England, declined after a brief survey of the ports of the Channel, to venture on the invasion of the hostile island, attention was turned to a different quarter.

The French government had already, under Louis XV., contemplated the occupation of Egypt. The Directory were also desirous of making conquests in the East, and, some time before Napoleon's expedition, had ordered Admiral Bruyez to surprise Malta, -a plan which the knights foiled, by refusing to admit his four ships into the harbour of La Valette. During the Italian campaigns Napoleon had more than once proposed to seize the Turkish province of Albania; at a later period he turned his thoughts towards Egypt, and now both the general and Directory resolved to carry this last plan into execution. That so unprincipled an act of aggression could not be defended by the slightest shadow or semblance of justice, troubled the projectors as little as the executors of the undertaking.

The details of the expedition belong not to our subject. Treachery and cowardice opened the gates of Malta to the Republican forces; and in Egypt an army of 40,000 French veterans could experience but little opposition from a few undisciplined

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Turks and Mamelukes; the military operations cannot, therefore, be reckoned among the principal campaigns of Napoleon. Biographers assure us that he governed the conquered province with so much ability, as to obtain from the inhabitants the title of the Just Sultan." On examination it proves, however, that his conduct was so rapacious and oppressive, so directly at variance with all the long-established customs of the East, that it maddened the people and drove them into open rebellion. The ruthless barbarity by which the insurrections were crushed, and the sanguinary cruelty which marked his subsequent conduct, are fully attested by his own letters.

Defeated at Acre, disappointed, perhaps, in his expectations of founding a splendid Eastern empire, he deserted his army-left them by stealth in a foreign land, beset with difficulties and cut off from all communication with their native country. Preceded by the bulletin of a victory he had achieved over some Turks who had landed at Aboukir, he arrived in France after a long and tedious passage, and his first reception on landing already told him that he was the undisputed lord of the soil. His journey to the capital was a continued triumph, and the intelligence of his arrival was hailed with acclamations in every part of the country.

This was Napoleon's first illomened return to Paris, after sacrificing thousands to his ambition and forsaking the remains of the gallant army entrusted to his care: but we shall see him again returning, vampire-like, to seek for more victims, after burying hundreds of thousands beneath the snows of Russia. The fresh victims are granted and led to death, and he appears again a lonely deserter from the slaughter-scene of

and their resources completely at her disposal; Spain was a submissive and tributary ally; and Genoa formed an advanced post towards Italy. The long-continued contest had given her warlike armies, commanded by experienced officers; the campaign of 1799, at one time so disastrous, had ended as fortunately as gloriously. The Russians had been forced altogether out of the field, and England had withdrawn her troops from the Continent. The Republican armies that had been victorious in Switzerland and Holland could now be united to those which were opposing Austria, and it was hardly to be expected that the imperial power could maintain a singlehanded contest against forces which had just vanquished the troops of the three powers combined. Austria, it is true, still retained possession of Italy, but, as we shall see presently, the occupation of Switzerland by the French more than counterbalanced that advantage. With the hopes of victory which the possession of such vast means naturally inspired, anxious, no doubt, to reconquer Italy, the theatre of his first exploits, and to fix his power by new triumphs, Napoleon determined to strike with might and main against the Austrians. Nor were the means wanting.

Under the Directory, General Jourdan had already perfected the fatal law of conscription, which placed at the disposal of government the whole male population of France, and obliged every man capable of bearing arms to do military duty. A decree of the Consul, executed with rigour and aided by the enthusiasm of the moment, brought 160,000 men to the colours, including 30,000 old and experienced soldiers whose discharges were cancelled, and who were again called upon to take service.

Ten thousand French and 20,000 Batavians were stationed under Augereau in Holland, in order to protect that country against the attack of the English. The frontier, as high as Coblentz, required few troops, as the neutrality of Northern Germany could be depended upon. The former armies, of the Rhine and of Switzerland, were united and placed under the orders of General Moreau, who soon found himself at the head of 130,000 men. At the commence

ment of the year Massena had already taken the command of the army of Italy, composed of the remnants of the broken bands so often defeated by Suvaroff, and amounting in all to about 45,000 men. These troops were cooped up in Genoa and the Riviera, and were almost in a total state of disorganisation.

An army of Reserve, composed of 30,000 conscripts and of different corps from the interior of France, assembled at Dijon, from whence the armies could be reinforced or supported at need. The mustering and organisation of the troops, with every preparation necessary to render them fit for immediate service, was carried on with the energy and alacrity of a military goverment having the goodwill and all the resources of the country at its absolute disposal, and well aware that its power and permanence depended principally on victory and conquest.

Besides troops in the Tyrol, AuIstria had two formidable armies in the field; the one on the Rhine, the other in Italy. The Archduke Charles, dissatisfied with the treatment he had experienced from the Aulic Council during the previous campaign, had resigned the command of the first, and was succeeded by Marshal Kray, a bold and active officer, who, at the commencement of operations, found himself at the head of about 75,000 men. The Austrian army of Italy was still stronger; it consisted of 110,000 men, and was under the command of Marshal Melas, a distinguished veteran of the Austrian school, but bending already under the chilling weight of seventy-six years,-an age at which few retain the energy and activity necessary for directing and carrying into effect the dangerous, trying, and varying operations of war. Deduct

ing the troops stationed in Tuscany, the Venetian States and the Romagna, the disposable force under the orders of Melas amounted to about 90,000 men. Leaving 40,000 of these in Piedmont and Lombardy to guard the fortresses and to watch the frontiers of Switzerland, which, as the country was now in the possession of the French, flanked the whole Itali theatre of war, the aged comma advanced with the rest against and the Riviera.