第192章

THE WARNING.

The French hunted throughout the Tyrol for the unfortunate men who had hitherto been the heroes of the fatherland, but who, since their cause had succumbed, were called rebels and traitors. The soldiers who were in search of this noble game, for which large rewards were offered to them, had already succeeded in arresting one of the heroes of the Tyrol: Peter Mayer had fallen into their hands, and, having been tried by a military commission at Botzen, was shot. But they had been unable as yet to discover the hiding-places of the other insurgent leaders, despite the large prices which the government had set upon their heads. Joseph Speckbacher, for whom the soldiers were hunting most eagerly, had disappeared. The French and Bavarians ransacked every house where they suspected he might be concealed; they inflicted the heaviest fines and most cruel tortures on the friends of the fugitive chief, because they would not betray the place where their beloved commander was concealed; but all was in vain. Joseph Speckbacher had disappeared, and so had Father Haspinger and Anthony Wallner. [Footnote: Speckbacher had fled to the higher mountains, where, on one of the summits of the Eisgletscher, in a cavern discovered by him in former times when pursuing the chamois, he lay for several weeks in the depth of winter, supported by salt provisions, eaten raw, lest the smoke of a fire should betray his place of concealment to his pursuers.

Happening one day, in the beginning of March, to walk to the entrance for a few minutes to enjoy the ascending sun, an avalanche, descending from the summit of the mountain above, swept him along with it, down to the distance of half a mile on the slope beneath, and dislocated his hip-bone in the fall. Unable now to stand, surrounded only by ice and snow, tracked on every side by ruthless pursuers, his situation was, to all appearance, desperate; but even then the unconquerable energy of his mind and the incorruptible fidelity of his friends saved him from destruction. Summoning up all his courage, he contrived to drag himself along the snow for several leagues, during the night, to the village of Volderberg, where, to avoid discovery, he crept into the stable. His faithful friend gave him a kind reception, and carried him on his back to Rinn, where his wife and children were, and where Zoppel, his devoted domestic, concealed him in a hole in the cowhouse, beneath where the cattle stood, though beyond the reach of their feet, where he was covered up with cow-dung and fodder, and remained for two months, till his leg was set and he was able to walk. The town was full of Bavarian troops; but this extraordinary place of concealment was never discovered, even when the Bavarian dragoons, as was frequently the case, were in the stable looking after their horses. Zoppel did not even inform Speckbacher's wife of her Husband's return, lest her emotions or visits to the place might betray his place of concealment. At length, in the beginning of May, the Bavarian soldiers having left the house, Speckbacher was lifted from his living grave and restored to his wife and children. As soon as he was able to walk, he set out, and, journeying chiefly in the night, through the wildest and most secluded Alps, by Dux and the sources of the Salza, he passed the Styrian Alps, where he crossed the frontier and reached Vienna in safety. There he was soon after joined by his family and liberally provided for.

Haspinger succeeded in escaping into Switzerland, whence he travelled by cross-paths through Friuli and Carinthia to Vienna, where he received protection from the emperor.]

General Broussier was especially exasperated at the last named, the valiant commander of Windisch-Matrey, and he had promised a reward of one thousand ducats to him who would arrest "that dangerous demagogue and bandit-chief, Anthony Aichberger-Wallner," and deliver him to the French authorities. But Wallner and his two sons, who, although hardly above the age of boyhood, had seemed to the French authorities so dangerous that they had set prices upon their heads, were not to be found anywhere. Schroepfel, Wallner's faithful servant, had taken the boys into the mountains, where he stayed with them; after nightfall he went down to Matrey to fetch provisions for the lonely fugitives.

Anthony Wallner's fine house was silent and deserted now. Only his wife and his daughter Eliza lived in it, and they passed their days in dreary loneliness and incessant fear and anguish. Eliza Wallner was alone, all alone and joyless. She had not seen her beloved Elza since the day when she was married. She herself had started the same night with Haspinger for her father's headquarters. Elza had remained with her young husband in Innspruck, where her father died on the following day; and after the old Baron had been buried, Elza had accompanied her husband to Munich. From thence she wrote from time to time letters overflowing with fervent tenderness to her beloved friend, and these letters were the only sunbeams which illuminated Eliza's cheerless life; these letters told her of her friend's happiness, of her attachment to her young husband, who treated her with the utmost kindness and tenderness.

Eliza had received this afternoon another letter from her friend;with a melancholy smile she read Elza's description of her domestic happiness, and her eyes had unconsciously filled with tears which rolled slowly down her pale cheeks. She dried them quickly, but her mother, who sat opposite her near the lamp and seemed to be busily sewing, had already seen them.

"Why do you weep, Lizzie?" she asked. "Have you got bad news from Elza?"Eliza shook her head with a mournful smile. "No, dear mother," she said; "thank God, my Elza is happy and well, and that is my only joy.""And yet you weep, Eliza?"

"Did I weep, then?" she asked. "It was probably a tear of joy at my Elza's happiness.""No, Lizzie, it was no tear of joy," cried her mother, mournfully.