The Austrians were, however, compelled finally to retreat, that same evening, from the ground which they had so resolutely contested:—the movement was made in fine order, and they carried off all their wounded in safety. Upon a crowded wagon lay Julius Alvinzi; living, indeed, but a living wreck, and his recovery despaired of. He had been wounded in six places, and lay motionless and insensible; his servant walking by his side in silent trouble. As the remains of his regiment marched slowly back upon Mantua, and passed the convoy of the wounded close to the gates, you might have heard the name of Alvinzi singled out by the men for more deep and particular lamentation. He had been their friend, their pride, their example; and their eyes were turned upon the wagon on which he lay with an expression of sadness too stern and severe for tears.

The news of this disastrous battle was communicated to Count Adony at Salzburgh in a letter from his cousin the Count Zichy. Beatrice and her father were sitting in his library after night-fall, each occupied with a book, under the calm, soft light of a lamp which hung a little above them, when this letter was brought in. He read it eagerly and rapidly to himself; and then, with a grateful exclamation for the safety of Zichy, and those officers with whom he was more especially acquainted, he again read it aloud to Beatrice. It ran as follows:—

"MY DEAR AND HONOURED COUSIN,

"We are all doing our best; but, I am sorry to say, we are losing everything except our honour. Fortune is with these Frenchmen. Of six hundred swords, with which I marched from Salzburgh ten weeks ago, only two hundred and twenty remain to me. We lost, in the battle of yesterday, nearly three hundred killed and wounded. I never saw our men fight better: the enemy opposed to us were fairly beaten at the sword's point; and we took a battery of twelve guns, which tried to cover their discomfiture; but we conquered only to retire. I have not a word to say against old Wurmser: he is a clear headed, tough-hearted veteran, but these French generals are too young for him. I am quite well, but had a narrow escape; two horses were killed under me, and a grape shot passed through my cap.

"Tell dear Beatrice, I have got that engraving of the Madonna del Rosario of Domenichino which she wanted. I picked it up at Verona; thanks to poor Alvinzi, by the way. Though you, neither of you, saw nor knew much of this youth, you have so often heard me speak of his worth, that you will be sorry for me when I tell you that I have lost him; and, in him, my best and most zealous officer. He is covered with wounds, and cannot live through the night;—the noble fellow was struck down within a yard of the enemy's guns. Of others, whom you may remember, Kreiner, Zetter, and Hartmann, are killed; and several are wounded: Kalmann and Hettinger very severely.—You shall hear from me again soon; but matters look very unpromising.

"Your faithful and loving cousin,

CASIMIR ZICHY."

"Read the letter again, father," said Beatrice, with a tone such as he had never heard from her before; "read it again," she cried, "pray read it again!—'my best and most zealous officer,'—is it not so?—'covered with wounds, and cannot live through the night,'—is it not so?—Father, I loved this Alvinzi.—Ah! yes, I loved him well—now better than ever;—but I knew it would be thus the very day on which I first saw him:—read it again,—pray do?"—and, with a still-bewilderment of eye, she took it from her trembling father, and read it slowly to herself. "Give me this letter, father;" and she put it in her bosom: and there it lay,—there it lay through a long and nervous illness, which mercifully terminated in her death.

For a long time she was enabled to govern and controul her feelings, and was silent, and, to outward seeming, resigned. She often remarked to her father, that she could, and did, say daily upon her knees, "Thy will be done,"—but that tears always followed that sincere, but mournful, exercise. However her frame at last gave way—she sunk into great weakness of body, and her mind became affected.

Her father watched her with unceasing solicitude throughout her sufferings; but he was often driven from her chamber by the agony of his emotions, as she read over the fatal letter, or sung, which she did continually, that mournful song of Thecla.

The world it is empty, the heart will die, There's nothing to wish for beneath the sky: Thou Holy One, call Thy child away— I've lived and loved; and that was to-day— Make ready my grave-clothes to-morrow.

Such was the early and melancholy close of a young life of the loveliest promise. The severe and sudden horror struck hard upon her fine mind, and drove it mournfully astray. Her heart was so broken that she could not live on. But Julius Alvinzi did not then or so perish: for seventeen weeks he lay upon a hospital bed in Mantua, helpless as an infant; and finally recovered so much of health as gave him again the common promise of life. He was afterwards sent to pass the long period of his convalescence at Venice; but the Julius Alvinzi, who rode forth from Salzburgh, was no longer to be recognised: crippled in his limbs—his fine countenance disfigured by deep and unsightly scars—his complexion pale—his hair turned grey with suffering. He had already stepped on twenty years in as many weeks, and he was already, to the eye, a worn and broken-down officer of veterans. He could not stir a pace without crutches; and his hip had been so shattered and distorted that it was painful to see him move. It was well that Beatrice was in her grave. No doubt she would have exhibited the noble constancy of a pure, angelic, and true love;—but she was spared that longer and heavier trial.

Alvinzi, like a stricken deer, betook himself, with decayed hopes and an aching bosom, to a retired valley near Burgersdorf, about ten miles from Vienna. Here he took a small fishing cottage, near a lone and lovely stream, which flowed across a few velvet meadows, amid deep dells and still woods; and here he threw himself on the beautiful bosom of nature as on that of a mother. Here, for the first time, he was made acquainted, by a letter and a packet from the aged and desolate Adony, of the melancholy end of the lovely Beatrice. The packet contained a small cross which she had always worn, her miniature, and her psalter.

The traveller who may now wander into the little valley, near Burgersdorf, where Alvinzi dwelt, will find the cypress, planted upon his grave the day after his funeral, only three years' growth; and if he go and sit under the tree, beneath which Alvinzi reposed his withered and broken frame for thirty summers, will perhaps agree with the narrator of this mournful story, that mercy was mingled in his bitter cup, and that

Society is all but rude, To that delicious solitude.

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The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 582, December 22, 1832

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