Strolling with my German friend through the lovely cemetery of Munich, we paused to rest on a bench in the fragrant shade of a blossoming linden. Around us the sculptured monuments gleamed purely against the living green of turf and foliage, while rare and lovely flowers and shrubs made this God's acre more resembling a garden of pleasure than a city of the dead.

      Directly facing us extended a shadowy vista, an arch of interlacing branches, at the farther end of which stood a small stone house surrounded by an iron railing, and hall covered with ivy.

      "What is that building?" I inquired of my friend.

      "That is the dead-house, where, according to a law of Munich and some other of our German cities, the bodies of the newly dead are kept for three days before they are allowed to be interred. It is a precaution against burying alive."

      "Do the subjects ever revive?"

      "Sometimes. There is a story of this sort connected with the house which you see there. I think it was in 1835 that there suddenly appeared upon the French stage an actor hitherto unknown — a star of the most brilliant lustre. This was a man, young, handsome, talented, who, by sheer force of genius alone, took the theatrical public of Paris by storm. He was known on the stage was Paul Arnande.

      "Among those who nightly thronged to the theatre to wonder at and worship this brilliant genius was the Baron G⸻ of Munich. Among the representatives of the old and decayed Bohemian nobility he was known as the most haughty and conservative. Having no son, he had in his childhood betrothed his only daughter to the Count Von M⸻, noble, rich and influential, but worldly and dissipated, and also past middle age. The young lady, whoso age was eighteen, had just completed her education at one of the convents of Paris, and it was partly to take her home that her father had come to Paris.

      "One evening the Baron took his daughter to the theatre. Paul Arnande appeared in the character of a prince. This young man was of ordinary citizen-parentage, yet nature had made him every inch a nobleman. He looked, spoke and acted as though born in the purple. In one of his impassioned utterances he lifted his eyes above, and they remained arrested, and for an instant fixed, as by magic. They had met a pair of deep, violet-blue eyes, tender and tearful with the feeling exerted by his impassioned words, and, who knows? by his youthful grace and beauty. Two ardent, impassioned young hearts, before untouched by love, had met and answered each to the other, and sprang together in indissoluble union!

      On the following evening Paul Arnande s eyes searched in vain for the lovely face, with its perfect features and its rippling, golden hair. His playing on this night, it was observed, was not so good as usual. But on the night following the same vision of youthful loveliness again dawned upon his sight, the same violet-blue eyes again met his, and then Paul Arnande thrilled and electrified the house with his performance. It was not acting; it was the exalted, passionate outpouring of an aroused soul. Such intense earnestness as breathed in his words, such expression as lighted up the rarely beautiful face, pale though it was as marble, and such tenderness of tone as thrilled to the very hearts of the audience! 'Marvelous acting! Marvelous genius!' said the public; and they bowed down and worshiped with that exuberant, excitable fervor which the Parisians accord their idols, of whatever kind. At the same time the lovely and high-born young German lady had also claimed her worshipers. Beauty such as hers, fresh, rare, and brilliant, could not escape attention; and, at the jealous suggestion of Count Von M⸻, her father took her back to Munich, where preparations for the wedding were speedily commenced.

      Then, suddenly as it had appeared, the brilliant, comet-like theatrical star also disappeared from the Paris horizon. Declining he most tempting and extravagant offers, Arnande disappeared from the sight of the wondering world.

      There were those who declared that they had seen and recognized him in Munich. There was one who followed him in the twilight, to be sure of his identity, and who saw him enter the cathedral, and there kneel and watch with ardent, worshiping eyes the form, not of the Scriptural Madonna, but of the lovely young daughter of Baron G⸻, who, with her elderly nurse or her grim and stately duenna of an aunt, came daily to kneel at the holy shrine. And the same eyes saw a rosebud dropped, and a slip of paper left where the young girl had knelt; and then this secret witness at least was at no loss to account for the disappearance of the young actor from the stage.

      "I cannot tell you further how those young lovers met and communed. It is only known by the young girl's own declaration to her furious father when he discovered the matter that no touch, no word even, had ever passed between the two. To occasionally see each other — to communicate by a flower or a note — or, what is more powerful still, by a look or a sign — this was all that lay in their power, for the social barrier between them was too great over to be overstepped.

      "There was a furious scene on the part of the father, harsh and cruel words were spoken, and the young girl was strictly secluded, watched and guarded in her own home until the arrival of the wedding-day.

      "On that fatal evening her old nurse — Heaven knows how she was bribed — secretly delivered to her a tiny note from Arnande. And when the bride, pale and passionless as a statue, was all dressed and ready for the ceremony, she begged those around her to leave her alone for a moment, in order that she might in solitude pray and compose herself.

      "When, at the expiration of fifteen minutes, receiving no answer to their summons, the family became alarmed and forced open the door, they beheld a strange and touching sight. The young bride knelt by her couch, her head resting on her folded arms, as if asleep, her hand clasping an open note — an impassioned, despairing farewell from the youth she loved. Dead, said the old physician, quite dead. The burthen of her agony had been too great for her to bear, and her heart had broken.

      On the night following this sad event the cathedral-bell had chimed midnight, when a man entered the cemetery of Munich, and, gliding like a shadow along its main avenue, turned down the vista which you see there, and knocked at the door of the dead-house. A feeble, white-haired old man slowly answered the summons.

      "'Who knocks here at this hour?'

      "'It is I. I implore you to permit me to enter.'

      "The light of the lamp swinging above the arched gateway shone upon the white face of Paul Arnande. Surely, said the old man afterwards, no face of the dead within these walls was ever whiter or more marble-like in its fixed repose.

      "'My son, have you a permit?'

      "'None. Still I implore you, for the sake of the Blessed Madonna, to let me in!'

      "'My son, I warn you that no one may enter there but those who have a claim or a permit. Who is it that you would see?'

      "'One who was all the world to me — one who was my life.' He turned and laid his hand upon the shoulder of the old watchman. 'Father, you were once young. For the sake of her whom you loved in your youth — for the sake of the blessing it will bring you hereafter — let me see my lost love.      "So he passed in at the mysterious door, closing it behind him. But, through the little window between, the old man, watching in doubt and misgiving, saw what followed.

      "The apartment was dimly lighted by a lamp suspended from the ceiling. Its light fell full upon one form there — a slender, graceful form, robed in white satin, with a veil of fine lace flowing over her from beneath a crown of snowy blossoms. Paul kneeled reverentially on the floor, took one of the alabaster hands in both his own, and gazed long and earnestly upon the fair face. It was the first time he had ever touched her; and, dead though she was, a magnetic thrill seemed to pass through his frame and enter into the still form before him, and he felt as though a virtue had passed out of him.

      Thus he knelt for a long time, until the old man thought it his duty to arouse him. Then he arose and bent over the body, and for the first time pressed a long and ardent yet pure and reverential kiss upon the dead but still fresh lips.

      "Suddenly, as he did so, he started. Then he gave a cry, whereat the old watchman rushed into the dead-room. Paul Arnande, on his knees, was supporting the head of the form before him — the form which a moment before had looked like a corpse, but which now, with open, dreamy eyes and parted lips, showed the hues of life slowly flushing into lip and cheek.

      "The watchman was prepared for the situation. Restoratives were at hand and immediately administered. Perhaps they were not needed. Perhaps the electric life she had received from the touch of her lover was sufficient to magnetize into full force the latent life in the fair body. But in a very short time the young girl was sitting up, supported in the arms of her lover, and — but ah! who may attempt to picture such joy?

      "'Remain here,' said the old watchman to Paul, 'while I hasten to inform her friends.'

      "But Paul arrested him.

      "'Stay!' he commanded sharply. 'Stay! They will take her from me, and she is mine! I have brought her from another world, I have snatched her from the very grasp of death, and none shall dare to claim her now.'

      "'Ah,' she murmured imploringly, 'save me — take me away to where they cannot find me!'

      "A great joy seemed for a moment to brighten in Paul Arnande's eyes. The next he uttered a cry — a shriek rather — so sudden and sharp, and so full of despairing agony, that the watchman declared he had never heard aught resembling it. Fearing that the young man's joy had unsettled his mind, and that he was going mad, the old watchman rushed forth to seek for assistance.

      "When he returned, accompanied by a physician, truly it was a strange and unexpected sight presented to them.

      "The young girl, in her rich bridal-robes, was alive, and kneeling beside the form of Paul Arnande. There he lay in all his young, manly beauty, stiff and dead In the place of her whom he had probably rescued from the grave.

      "Upon investigation it was discovered that he had, in his anguish and despair, administered to himself a slow poison, and had then repaired to the dead-house in order to die by the side of her whom he loved.

      "In his joy at her revival to life he had for a time forgotten that death was already working in his own veins. It was the recollection of this that had drawn from him the sharp shriek of agony and despair.

      "Thus there was lost to the world a great genius. And thus the noble Abbey of Quedlenburg gained to itself the fairest and purest nun that ever lived and died within its walls."