holding in his hand a blazing torch. They welcomed the enraptured Ar- nold and his Countess with a hyme- neal chant, and accompanied them to the foot of the altar, where the aged priest greeted the happy pair with a benevolent and approving smile. He joined their hands, and in deep and impressive tones proceeded to bestow upon them the final benediction. At this moment the bridegroom thought he heard a voice whispering the fatal questions in his ear, " Arnold ! Who are you ? And who is your bride ?" He turned hastily round to look at his beauteous Cordula, and, oh hor- ror ! her bloom and freshness had dis- appeared ; she was pale and deathlike as a marble statue, and the position in which she reclined before the altar, was that of the Egyptian Sphinx. Glancing hastily at the priest and chorister, the alarmed student beheld the fiendish smile of Mephistopheles lurking on the old man's lips, and the boy, before so different, was now the very image of the laughing Florestan. " No, by all that's sacred ! Cordula ! thou art no human being ;" exclaim- ed the gasping and horror-struck Ar- nold, as he started on his feet. The Countess uttered a wild and unearth- ly shriek, and in an instant the torch- es, lamps, and tapers were extinguish- ed by a fearful gust which swept with blasting speed over the lake and island. The bride, and priest, and choristers disappeared, and the stars were veiled in darkness, the giant's harp broke out in loud and wailing murmurs, the rain streamed down in torrents, hot lightnings hissed, and horrid thunders rolled around the heavens. The sleep- ing waters of the lake rose up in mad- ness, enormous waves threw up their foaming tops, on which the lantern- boats, magnified by the diseased vision of Arnold into sphinxes of colossal bulk, floated like argosies. Pointing their monstrous paws and eyes of livid flame at the crazed and breathless stu- dent, they jeered him with devilish grins, and in voices which rung through the hurricane like Indian gongs, tore his distempered ears with the horrid enigmas, "Who are you? And who am I ?" The agonized youth was on the brink of absolute insanity : his brain collapsed with horror, his joints shook, his arteries swelled almost to bursting, and every fibre of his frame was racked with torture. He felt the foundations of the little island looscn-
QOct.
ing beneath him, and it was too evi- dent that it could not long resist the repeated shocks of the agitated and rising waters. Exerting his last re- mains of strength and consciousness, he clung to the highest of the marble steps, and awaited his inevitable fate in silent agony. Soon a loftier wave rushed up the staircase, drenched the luckless Arnold to the skin, tore up the solid marble, and covered the highest level of the tottering islet. Clinging with the last energies of de- spair to a contiguous shrub, the breath- less and half-drowned youth regained his feet after the wave receded, and as quickly as the darkness would permit, sought a tree, in the branches of which he might attain at least a temporary refuge. He succeeded in finding a stem strong enough to support him, but his powers were so exhausted, that he could ascend only a few feet above the ground. Again the lightning bla- zed upon the lake, and by its flitting glare, Arnold beheld the boiling la- byrinth of waters articulate with life, and all the slimy worms and bloated reptiles of the Nile gliding and qui- vering with open jaws around him. With an inarticulate shriek of horror he made a final and desperate effort to escape the teeming waters, and suc- ceeded in gaining a higher branch. Vain hope ! succeeding waves covered the yielding island, and the bending tree tottered and creaked beneath its trembling occupant. A monstrous gust came on with lightning speed, and lashed the waters of the lake to fiercer efforts ; the giant's harp rang out, and pealed, and laboured in 'the storm, louder than battle-trumpets ; and, at length, a mountain- wave, rising above the head of the devoted Arnold, swept man, and tree, and island into the yawning gulf.
At this awful moment a shrill voice shouted in the ear of Arnold, " You have dropped your stick into the garden, sir !" Opening his eyes, the amazed student found himself seated by moonlight in his verandah, and the old woman who took care of his apartments standing by him with the Sphinx stick in her hand. " Thank God !" exclaimed the inexpressibly re- lieved youth, as he wiped his stream- ing forehead, and threw his stick into the garden well " Thank God ! 'twas but a midsummer-night's dream, and that cursed Sphinx was nothing but a nightmare."
