Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 December 1883 — A Lover Lost by a Kiss. [ARTICLE]

A Lover Lost by a Kiss.

An Austrian nobleman, one of the handsomest and most accomplished young men in Vienna, was passionately in love with a young girl of almost peerless beauty. . She was the daughter of a man of great rank and influence at court, and on these considerations, as well as in regard to her charms, she was followed by a multitude of suitors. She was lovely and amiable, and treated them with an affability which still kept them in her train, although it was generally known that she had avowed a predilection for' the Count, and that preparations were making for their nuptials. The Count was of a refined mind and delicate sensibility; he loved her for heieelf alone—for the virtues which he believed dwelt in a beautiful form. Like a lover of such perfections, he approached her with timidity, and when he touched her a fire shot through his veins that warned him not to invade the sanctuary of her lips. Such were his feelings when one night at the house of his intended father-in-law a party of young people were met to celebrate a certain festival. Several of the young lady’s rejected suitors were present. Forfeits were one of the pastimes, and all went on with the greatest merriment till the Count was commanded by some one to redeem his glove by saluting the cheek of his in-’ tended bride. The Count blushed, trembled, advanced to his mistress, retreated, advanced again and at last, with a tremor that shook every fiber of his frame, with a modest grace he put to his lips the soft ringlet that played upon her cheek, and in evident confusion retired to demand his redeemed pledge. His mistress gayly smiled, and the game went on. One of her rejected suitors, who was of a merry, unthinking disposition, was adjudged by the same indiscreet crier of forfeits, “as his last treat before he hanged himself,” to snatch a kiss from the object of his recent vows. A lively contest ensued between the lady and gentleman—it lasted for a minute—when the lady yielded, though in the midst of a convulsive laugh; and the Count had the mortification, the agony, to see the lips which his delicate would not allow him to touch, kissed with roughness and repetition by another man and one whom he despised. Without a word he rose from his chair, left the room and the house, and by that good-natured kiss the fair boast of Vienna lost her lover. The Count never saw her more. —Each ange. The good resolutions that misfortune begets are too often freighted with tacit conditions which break them up before they have a trial. There was a great deal of candor about the sick darky, who, on being begged in the face of death to forgive his enemy, said: “Es I die, I forgib him, shuah. * But if I lib, dat nigger’s better take care.”