Page:The genius - Carl Grosse tr Joseph Trapp 1796.djvu/136

 He uttered two names, which the whole company with great applause, declared to be rightly guessed.

—"Now tell me, pretty wag," pursued the show-man, "what nobleman is in the company." The bird very plainly answered, "Don Carlos de Grandez," I was quite thunderstruck, and every eye being directed to me, quitted the crowd, remounted my horse, and precipitately gallopped out of the town.

"Unhappy Carlos," said I to myself, "there is no place on earth where thou can st shelter thyself from thy persecuting fate; no "spot, where the arms of those mysterious strangers do not extend to, where they do not catch thee in their snares. How will it then be, if thou fallest into their vindictive hands? What new torments will they invent," to punish thy disobedience, what new arts devise to dupe thee with thy own folly?/ Believing them in thy reach, thou wilt only grasp the phantom of thy fancy—and power! what will it avail thee? two feeble arms of an enervated frame; against a thousand daring