HERR PETER HEIDIGGER was, for many years of his life, considered one of the wealthiest burghers in Dantzic. He exported rye, and he imported brandy in quantities, and with profits, quite unprecedented in that most mercantile city; and though he never possessed an acre of land in his life, he reaped a most abundant harvest from that of others. It cannot be denied that there were some reverend greybeards amongst his neighbours, who, when they remembered that he once swept his master's shop, and listened to the marvellous stories of his wealth, shrugged their shoulders, and thought a great deal more about honesty, ways and means, &c., than they ventured to articulate; but there are always detractors buzzing about the rich, like bees round a bottle of treacle; so, as long as Peter kept and increased his gold, none of his associates paid any attention to these inuendos; for they were all men of his own calling, and made ample allowance for the adroitness of a clever trader.

Indeed, of what consequence was it to anybody, whether the wealthy merchant had risen from the humble occupation of shop-sweeping? If some few elderly people remembered it, he himself had forgotten it long ago; and if many marvelled how he got his money, nobody could doubt that he spent it nobly, for there was not a man in Dantzic who was more jovial and hospitable, kept a better table, drank more wine, had a comelier wife, or finer children, than Peter Heidigger. But of all these blessings and advantages, except the two last, he was at length deprived, by a sad reverse of fortune, in a much shorter space of time than they had cost him to acquire.

The

His ships were lost, his corn in a hard winter, upon which, from the universal prognostications of famine, he had anticipated an enormous profit, was converted by legions of mice into powder and chaff. following year an old man, whilst setting traps for the depredators, dropped a light from his candle on a bundle of straw, and the old man, the straw, the mice, and, worse than all, the whole of the unfortunate

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merchant's stock in trade, were soon a heap of ashes. Poor Peter was from that moment nearly a beggar; but though his acquaintance cut him in the street, the paupers forgot to bow to him at the church-doors, and some considerate friend sent him an anonymous present of a broomshank, not one of his offspring would die, and Mrs Heidigger went on most industriously presenting him with a duodecimo edition of himself, once a year, till he had the proud gratification of being the father of fifteen lovely children.

It is the nature of man, that whilst he is ceaselessly craving further gifts, he is seldom grateful for those he already possesses, and Peter was no exception to the rule; for, whilst he mourned with deep regret over all he had lost, he would most willingly have resigned to Providence the disposal of these remaining treasures. But Heaven, which knows the fallacy of mortal wishes too well to hearken unto them, wisely ordered it otherwise, and they all grew up and prospered, and were accounted as comely a little troop of lads and maidens as could be found in any town or city of the empire.

Lilla, his eldest daughter, was as beauteous a girl at eighteen as the eye could behold,-modest, sweet-tempered, and well-favoured; and many were the tender glances cast at her by the young gallants of all ranks, as she walked by her mother's side to church on a Sunday, with a nosegay in one hand and a prayer-book in the other, and her neatlyflowered gown and white silk apron, just short enough to show the best turned foot and ankle within ten leagues round the city. It may readily be supposed that at Lilla's age all did not sigh in vain, and, though penniless as she was, more sighed than thought of wedlock, yet one at least was true. This was Carl von Laben, a young student; and it soon became quite manifest to his jealous rivals that he was the favoured swain. If she happened to look up from her book during service-time, by some chance or other their eyes were sure to meet, and then it was observed that as invariably the maiden blushed quite as deep as the crimson binding of the said missal; if Carl chose another fair partner in the evening dance, she was sure to forget the figure, and throw the whole of the performers into confusion by her awkwardness; and once, when her nosegay came untied, by pure accident, as she was passing by him on the public walk, and he collected and restored her the flowers with a captivating air, she was seen to reward him with one of her sweetest smiles; and some said, that she never returned him a note of a very tender nature which he contrived most adroitly to slip amongst the rose leaves on the same occasion.

All this could have but one ending; and in spite of the tattle of innumerable old envious gossips, and the spiteful inuendos of young ones, Carl and Lilla went on loving each other more and more, from day to day, till, at the end of six months, the young man having secured the maiden's consent, took courage and proposed for her, in all due form and solemnity, to her very respectable father, Peter Heidigger. Now, this worthy merchant had never been in love in his life, and had, therefore, no sympathy for the feeling in others. He knew no rhetoric but in pounds, shillings, and pence; and though he understood the language of figures, had never spoken that of the eyes. Besides, the awful consequences of matrimony which daily stared him in the face, made him particularly backward in encouraging others to enter into the holy state, without a comfortable provision beforehand; so when the young man_talked about

"elective affinities," and the devotion of his life to his adored Lilla, he plumply asked him what settlement he could make.

The student, for students will talk nonsense in such cases as well as other people, talked about a mine richer than Golconda, but, alas! it was only a mine of love, and Peter Heidigger knew as well as many others to his cost, that mines of any metal are but sorry and uncertain possessions, so he cut the matter short by saying, that he would rather see his daughter hanged than throw her away upon a beggar. However, when he found that the young Von Laben had a rich uncle in France, from whom he had great expectations, he relaxed somewhat in the firmness of his refusal, and it was understood before they parted, that if in one month his relative would settle something handsome upon him, he might renew his addresses, but that otherwise, he begged his face might never darken his doors again; for Peter was too old in money matters, not to know that old gentlemen's promises are but paltry security; and with this poor Carl was obliged to be satisfied, though it must be confessed, that after he had despatched his letters to France, he did find means to console himself during his suspense, by a few private interviews with his adored Lilla, though how they managed the business is beyond my power to relate. The month of expectation went slowly enough to the lovers, as all such months have done to such persons from time immemorial, and its termination brought nothing but disappointment, and an aggravation of trouble.

Instead of the expected letter from his uncle, Carl received, with surprise, only a strange-looking epistle directed in an unknown hand, and when he had impatiently torn it open, his horror was extreme to read therein, not the promises he had anticipated from his kind relative, but the heart-rending story of his death. He had been murdered only a few days before it was written, no one knew how, or could positively say by whom, and instead of dying possessed of great riches, as was universally supposed would be the case, not a sous was found in his house, nor any paper or memorandum to intimate where money was deposited. All his coffers were broken open, his books and manuscripts were rifled, and the robber had disappeared with everything of value.

The student was in despair, and little short of madness, when Peter Heidigger treated the whole tale as a fabrication, and turned him without ceremony out of his house, as soon as he heard it, without so much as allowing him a glance of poor Lilla, though she was listening to all that passed through the keyhole, with a beating and anxious heart. Nevertheless, the unfortunate lovers found means to meet as before, and it was agreed between them, as a last resource, that Carl should immediately depart for France, endeavour to trace the murderers of his uncle, and if possible recover some part of his property. Poor things! they were too young to be aware that gold like quicksilver is a difficult thing to catch when it is once set a-running. This was all they could do, so that night they parted with many tears, and more vows of constancy, and Carl went home to prepare for his journey, and the maiden to weep till he came back again.

All the young men in Dantzic were heartily glad when they heard of the student's departure, and there were more glances shot at Lilla during service on the following Sunday than would have melted a millstone. Peter Heidigger knew nothing of all this, but he was equally delighted at the dismissal of the penniless student, for more reasons than one.

He

hated learning and all its professors, and above all, he hated poverty, and he had set his mind upon his daughter's becoming the wife of a rich Russian merchant, who had shown unequivocal marks of his approbation of the maiden.

This man, who professed to be a native of the dominions of the Czar, had come only a short time before to Dantzic, and his establishment and mode of life justified the reports of his immense wealth. He took the largest house to be procured in the city, he furnished it in the most splendid style, he hired servants without number, and indulged in the then rare luxury of a carriage and horses. His wines were better than Peter Heidigger's had ever been in the days of his glory, and his cook was inimitable. His own dress was magnificent, setting off to the utmost advantage a very handsome face and person, and though apparently nearly forty, it was soon ascertained by admiring spinsters that he was without a wife. Happy discovery for the despairing virgins, in a somewhat monotonous circle of society, where all the beaux were unfortunately either too old or too young.

Can it be wondered at, that such a man, in less than a week after his arrival, was the universal theme of discourse in every house in Dantzic? The girls pronounced him divine, the men would willingly have called him a cheat, but he paid for every thing in ready money; his servants spread abroad that he was the most generous of men, and the unmarried women, whose bloom was somewhat passed, decided that he was not quite so young as he looked, though there was but one thing about him with which they could find a fault, and that was a little round odd-looking velvet cap which he wore perpetually on his head. But even this was soon got over, and it was in the course of a week universally decided by the fair sex to be exceedingly becoming.

It was quickly known that the name of this captivating stranger was Orloff; but nobody could discover where he came from, nor who he was. One old lady who had relations in Moscow wrote to ask if he had ever been heard of there, but could gain no intelligence, and after many equally fruitless inquiries, and innumerable conjectures, it remained undecided, whether the mysterious merchant was a Prince in disguise, an excommunicated Cardinal, or the Grand Sultan himself.

Though Peter Heidigger felt a little jealous of his splendour, his admiration for wealth, which had not diminished with its loss, induced him to be amongst the first of those who called to bid him welcome to the city; nor can it be denied, that the thrifty burgher went with a secret hope of deriving profit, in some way or other, from his new acquaintance, whose glances at Lilla had not escaped his observation. His wife likewise, who knew what she was about, strongly urged him to repeat the visit, so he put on his best suit, and forgetting every thing about the broomshank, and his humbled fortunes, he knocked at Monsieur Orloff's door for the second time, and being received with wonderful courtesy, took courage and asked him to dinner. The great man condescendingly accepted the invitation, and though, when the appointed day arrived, he found but humble fare, he overlooked everything but Lilla's beauty.

Mrs Heidigger was in ecstacies with her guest; he was the politest man alive, though he did keep his little cap on his head all dinner time; he praised her cooking, whispered his admiration of her eldest daughter in her ear, patted half a dozen of her fifteen children upon the head, squeezed the hand of the respectable lady herself, and looked as if he