a cordon of observation around her; and he attached her lover to his own particular suite. Availing himself, shortly after, of an occasion for his presence in Bavaria, he directed the princess to make the strong castle of Marksburg her residence; and he departed on his distant expedition, taking the Raugraf Henry along with him. Maria he left under the care of his sister, Elizabeth, queen of the Sicilies, with private instructions to watch her closely: her lover he specially directed to accompany himself, placing a spy upon his every action, and causing each word which dropped from his lips to be recorded against him. Thus stood matters at the commencement of that inauspicious journey.

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder," according to the adage; and even so it was with the hapless princess. Despite the durance in which she lived-despite the system of espionage to which she was subjected--despite the keen, close observation of her keeper, the Queen of the Sicilies--a woman herself—a woman, too, who had lived so long in the sunny south, and who, therefore, necessarily knew so intimately all the forms, if not the substance, of intrigue--she managed to keep up a correspondence with the Raugraf. The way in which she managed it was at once most ingenious and most daring. By some means, at present unexplained, the periodical packet of letters despatched to her husband always contained one or more missives of a tender nature for her lover. This daring deceit was carried on for a considerable while; but it was at last discovered in a way equally novel and unexpected. In her haste to avoid observation, she one day superscribed the letter addressed to her husband with her lover's name, and that addressed to the Raugraf with the name of his lord, her husband. The fatal missive reached Ludwig's hands in due time: he read it; the fate of the unfortunate princess was sealed.

The equanimity of the injured husband wholly forsook him, when this proof of his beloved wife's infidelity burst upon his soul. He slew the bearer of the billet on the spot; and he would have performed the office of executioner with his own hands on the Raugraf Henry, if that youth had not, fortunately for himself, been absent at the time on a hunting expedition. Within an hour Ludwig was on his road to the Rhine; and

from that moment until he reached Marksburg, he never relaxed in his speed, or tarried an unnecessary instant on his rapid journey.

He entered the ante-chamber of his wife's apartments; and his first act was to hurl her confidant, Helike, from the open window upon the dreadful precipice below. He next slew her attendants, and all those who were about her person. This was the work of only a few moments. Their bodies he commanded

to be cast from the towers of the castle into the rocky chasms at its rear, which was done accordingly. He then sought out his wife, who, quite ignorant of the awful tragedy which had been enacted so close at hand, sate buried in thoughts of her unholy love, in her most private chamber. He stood before her; the room was filled with grim and gory men-at-arms. She rose to meet him;-she advanced towards where he stood;-she made to embrace him. But he waved her back with his hand; and, at the same moment, two executioners, stripped to the waist, one bearing a bright, heavy axe, the other a coil of rope, interposed between them.

"My husband!-God of Heaven!-What's this?' she stammered-her fair cheek flushing now with the most lovely red, and anon rivalling that of a corpse in deathly paleness."What is this? What may it mean? say, my lord, say!" "Know ye this, false woman?" replied the pfalzgraf, holding forth to view her letter to the Raugraf. "Know ye this?" "God have mercy upon me," exclaimed the princess; "I'm lost!"

:

She said no other word: the pfalzgraf continued :"Know ye this, falsest of women? Know ye this?" His voice sounded in her ears like the last trump as he went on. "Is this the faith and truth you swore to me at the altar of that God you now so vainly invoke? While I was absent for the weal of my people, you were defiling my bed: while I was extirpating robbers in my dominions, you were encouraging a thief worse than the worst of them and while I was protecting the public, you were encouraging a villain to plunder me of all I most valued -perhaps, also, to deprive me of my life. Your Ægistus has already regicide blood in his veins :* you would be his Clytem

* The Raugraf was lineally descended from Otto von Wittlesbach, who assassinated the Emperor Philip of Suabia, for refusing him his daughter in

nestra; and, haply, you would help him to mount my throne over my corpse. But the justice of Heaven hath overtaken you; and now you are caught in your own net. This letter is your condemnation. In right of my sovereign power, and of the honour of my house, I therefore adjudge you to suffer death. Prepare, then, for your instant doom. And you, headsman ! do your duty."

The princess bowed her head: at one stroke it rolled along the ensanguined floor. Great was the grief and deep the dismay of all present at the sight.

"Bury the body," spake the pfalzgraf. "Give her remains all the honours due to royalty."

He then left the chamber, and was never seen to smile more. The remainder of his reign was one series of troubles consequent upon this rash act. Henry, the Raugraf, who had escaped the fate of his unfortunate mistress, went about from court to court exciting a feeling of horror and a spirit of hatred against him whom he had injured; all Germany was in commotion on account of such unheard-of severity; and the neighbouring princes of Europe hesitated not to express their abhorrence of the cruel haste with which the Pfalzgraf had proceeded in this matter. His own subjects, too, revolted at the idea of being governed by such a master; and serious discontents took rise in various parts of his territory. These were originated or fomented by the relatives of the deceased Maria, or by the friends and connexions of the Raugraf Henry, her lover; and they naturally gave Ludwig the greatest uneasiness and anxiety. To make head against them the more effectually, however, he determined on marrying again; and, will it be believed?—but who can doubt it that has read the history of Henry the Eighth of England?-he actually found a woman willing to unite herself with him. Accordingly, he espoused Matilda, daughter of Rudolph von Hapsburg, emperor of Germany; and from thenceforward, the power of that famous house prevented his foes from troubling him ever more.

It is said that he repented his precipitancy in regard to his

marriage. She had been promised to him previous to Philip's accession to the imperial throne. The assassination took place at Altenburg, near Bamberg, A. D. 1208.

first wife; and, to appease his conscience, it is stated that he founded the nunnery of Fürstenfeld, or, according to others, Fürstenthal, in her honour.

He died soon after, leaving his dominions to his two sons, Ludwig and Frederic, who never knew peace with one another while they lived.

Marksburg is now used as a state-prison for the grand duchy of Nassau; but it is very seldom tenanted, and never has been crowded with political offenders.

PETERSPEY.

At a short distance up the Rhine, on the opposite shore of that river, stands the hamlet of Peterspey, one of four places whose names have a similar termination-Niederspey, Oberspey, Osterspey, and Peterspey. The derivation of this affix has long set antiquarians at fault; but it is generally believed to take rise from the circumstance of certain watch-towers (specula) having been established by the Romans on the several sites of these hamlets, when that powerful and politic people held possession of the adjacent country. One of the few incidents connected with these places, occurred, according to the authority of the following legend, in Peterspey. It is annexed to the present scant notice of that place.

*

THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE.

Twelve disbanded soldiers at the conclusion of the thirty years' war, found themselves wandering along the shores of the Rhine, late in the evening, close by Peterspey. They had passed through Boppard, where they could obtain no shelter for the night, because they were without means of paying for it; and they sought in the villages that charity which had been denied them in the town. But the long war had desolated the homes and hardened the hearts of all; and these weary wretches were, therefore, refused by one and by the other. They were fain, in this strait, to take refuge in a ruined barn which stood near the river.

A.D. 1648.

The season was midwinter; it was the beginning of the new year (A.D. 1649), and the weather was intensely cold. Anxiety, and the pangs of hunger, prevented sleep; the poor fellows, therefore, endeavoured to beguile the weary hours until morning by telling stories. Many tales were told, and many strange adventures related; but one or two only, more interesting than the others, shall be given here.

"Ah!" said the first narrator, a young man who had but recently joined the army of Tilly; "ah!" said he, "if we only had the Gallows Mannikin' in our possession we need not care for any one."

"Who is he?

"Who is he?

Mannikin ?"

Who is he?" asked the others.

What! have you never heard of the Gallows

"Never!" answered his companions.

"Well, then, I'll tell you all about him," replied he. "Listen."

"It is a well-known tradition, and one implicitly believed in my native place, near Magdeburg; that when a man who is a thief by inheritance-that is to say, whose father, and grandfather, and great-grandfather before him—three generations of his family have been thieves; or whose mother has been a thief while she carried him in her womb; or whose mother has had an irrepressible longing to steal something during her pregnancy of him ;--it is the tradition, I say, that if such man, being pure of body, and free from all contact with woman in his lifetime, should be hung,―at the foot of the gallows whereon his last breath was exhaled, will spring up a plant of hideous form, known as the Alraun or Gallows Mannikin.'* It is quite an unsightly object to look at; and it has broad, dark green leaves, with a single yellow flower. That plant, however, has great power;

*This is one of the wildest superstitions of the German mythus. "Where," the tradition says, "" a single exudation from the dying man falls, a particle of urine-aut sperma in terram effundit,-there springs the Alraun, or Gallows Mannikin."