He had not been wounded, had distinguished himself in the action and had just entered Leipzic, where he was expecting to spend the night at headquarters and would consequently be out of the way of all danger. This letter, reassuring as it was, did not serve to remove Wilhelmine's apprehensions, who, noticing that it was dated at three o'clock, persisted in believing that her lover had died at five.
The unfortunate girl was not mistaken. It soon became known that Julius had been intrusted with an order to deliver; he had left Leipzic at half-past four, and three-fourths of a league from the city, on the other side of the Elster, one of the enemy's stragglers had fired at him, from his hiding-place in a ditch, and killed him. The ball, on its way to the young man's heart, had pierced Wilhelmine's portrait and destroyed it.
"And what became of the poor young lady?" I asked Madame de Strahlenheim.
"Oh! she was very, very ill. She is married now to M. de Werner, the councilor, and should you ever go to Dessau she will show you Julius' portrait."
"All that is the work of the devil," said the abbé, who had been sleeping with one eye open during Madame de Strahlenheim's story. "He who used to make the old pagan oracles talk can very well cause the eyes of a portrait to move when he sees fit. It is less than twenty years ago that an Englishman was choked to death by a statue at Tivoli."
"By a statue!" I exclaimed; "and how was that?"
"It was an English milord who had been making excavations at Tivoli. He had dug up a statue of one
