were no telegraphs, she could not hear any thing about the battle until all was happily over; but the thought of her beloved was at all times mixed with a secret fear, because of the danger to which he was daily and hourly exposed, even without an actual battle, which all the piety inculcated by her education could not teach her to overcome. When at length a letter from Moritz arrived, addressed to the countess, in which he mentioned his good fortune in modest terms-when she had to read this letter, from which, through all the enforced ceremoniousness of a rigid etiquette, there spoke a genuine warmth of feeling to her parents, she could hardly contain herself. It was so sudden, with such unexpected rapidity, that she saw herself brought nearer to the end which the beloved one had called up before her soul. From day to day she hoped that her mother would notice the state of agitation which she was in, the feverish restlessness in which she had lived since Moritz's departure, but so entirely foreign to the good old lady's comprehension was the state of a "carnal love," that it never entered her mind that her modest daughter, brought up in the love of a heavenly Saviour, could bear in her heart the image of an earthly man, before he had formally solicited her hand of her parents. The count came rather nearer to the matter. He asked the countess one night, while they were retiring, whether she did not think Agatha had exhibited, since Baron Hohenhorst's departure, rather more restlessness and excitement than would be likely to be caused by mere Christian pity on account of the dangers to which the young man was exposed. But the countess, in the first place, was rather vexed by

the expression, "mere Christian pity." She explained to her husband in a long speech, and in her usual not very concise manner, that Christian compassion was the warmest of all feelings. He was tired, and could have wished that he had not said any thing, so as to be able to sleep; but when she tried to prove to him, in the second place, that Christian compassion ought not to be mingled with a carnal anxiety, which ill befitted the sinner redeemed by grace and the blood of Christ, who ought to rest therein like an infant in its cradle, full of trust in God, and resignation to His will, he felt dimly that by this last argument she accepted, in reality, his own view. Being, however, fully accustomed to consider his wife wiser than himself, he readily agreed to every thing, and thus could go quietly to sleep.

The victory at Mollwitz was followed by the occupation of Breslau and the surrender of Brieg. Otherwise, however, the war was carried on only by small skirmishes, and more than a year passed before another regular battle was fought, which finally turned the scale in favor of the conqueror. The king was right in not fully trusting Saxony, although it had apparently allied itself to him. He therefore considered it advisable to keep watch of the northeastern frontier, where Polish troops were rallying. Hence the camp at Glogau, which had been broken up two weeks after the battle of Mollwitz, had to be pitched again six weeks later, and the regiment to which Moritz's company belonged, with several others, was ordered thither.

CHAPTER VI.

ΟΝ ΤΟ THE GOAL.

WITH the beginning of spring the Promnitz family had returned to their rural castle, where all its several members felt more at home than in town. The count went fishing and trolling in the daytime; in the evening he made up his accounts with the steward, or had Agatha read to him from Arḍnt's "True Christianity." The ladies, too, had returned to their old occupations, the household resumed its regular routine, the school flourished as before, and every thing was again as it had been the previous spring, the more that, to the regret of the peasants, who had profited by the presence of the soldiers, the camp had been broken up, and, with the exception of the garrison at Glogau, there were no longer any Prussian troops in the vicinity. Agatha alone was transformed, as it were. state of her soul beamed from her eyes and ennobled her features. Love had proved a Pygmalion for her.

The

The family had moved out in May. Already in the beginning of June, Prussian troops again appeared in the neighborhood, and were cordially welcomed by the inhabitants. The military discipline enforced was

so strict that the count and his household were but little disturbed in their quiet life. But a circumstance occurred which soon brought them more into contact with the outer world.

The fields, which had been covered with the tents of the former camp, had been used for this purpose in winter without much injury to their owners. But now, in spring, they had been ploughed and sowed; and the hopes of support of several families rested upon them. The owners, therefore, entered a protest, and would not be satisfied with the indemnity offered. to them, when they were called upon again to give up the fields on which their prosperity depended. It was known that Silesia was not to be treated as hostile territory, and great consideration was used in trying to induce the peasants to yield.

The latter applied, as in all cases of difficulty, to Count Promnitz. He talked the matter over with his wife, who made the generous proposition that, in order not to injure these poor people, and at the same time remain on good terms with the Prussian authorities, they themselves should make a sacrifice; that they should offer one of their own fields, which, on account of its stony soil, had but little value, and an adjoining meadow, as a site for the camp, and hand over the compensation to the quartermasters: for she advised her husband by no means to appear as a tradesman in this matter, but to maintain his full dignity as count of the empire. And this warning would hardly have been necessary, for Count Casimir was no less generous than she. Moreover, he was glad of an opportunity of obliging a government which he was

soon to call his own; for, after the battle of Mollwitz, no one doubted that lower Silesia at least would be yielded to Prussia when peace was concluded.

The count, therefore, immediately entered into negotiations with the officers concerned in the matter, and his proposition was accepted with polite thanks. He came into contact, on this occasion, with a Count Nastitz, who filled the rank of major, and who made the most disagreeable impression upon him; a middleaged man of colossal build, with a dusky-red face, on which wild passions had left their mark. His comrades knew him to be a coarse, arrogant fellow; but as he was man of the world enough to hide his character, which was immoral besides, by the veil with which the customs of elegant society superficially cover even the lowest vices, the worst features of his inner man did not immediately appear before the count, except that his constant swearing, and the profane expressions with which his lips overflowed, were excessively repugnant to the former.

But, when the two gentlemen met again shortly after, Nastitz took evident pains to restrain himself also in this respect before the "pietists," and pleaded the excuse of having fallen into bad habits, hardly to be avoided in the field, which the count would probably remember from the time of his own former war experience. And for this war experience, the major manifested a special interest; envied the count for having fought under Prince Eugène of Savoy and against the Turks, and exercised so much skill in flattering the worthy old gentleman's innocent little weaknesses, that he half conciliated him. When, therefore, the