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The battle of Aspern was fought on the 22d of May, to-day is the 3d of July; and in the mean time nothing has been done. The enemy remained quietly on the island of Lobau, nursing his wounded, reorganizing his troops, erecting TETES-DE-PONT, and building bridges; and the generalissimo stood with his whole army on the bank of the Danube, and took great pains to watch in idleness the busy enemy.
Stephen's Church, in Vienna more than forty years ago, to find that what I sought most eagerly in the superb landscape was not the steep Kahlenberg, not the plumy woods of Schönbrunn, not the Danube pouring grandly eastward, nor the picturesque city at my feet; but the little hamlets just outside the suburbs, and the wide-stretching grain-field close by, turning yellow under the July sun, where Napoleon fought the battles of Aspern and Wagram.
No, there was no resentment, nothing hard or vindictive in poor Miss Tita; for when, later, I sent her in exchange for the portrait of Jeffrey Aspern a larger sum of money than I had hoped to be able to gather for her, writing to her that I had sold the picture, she kept it with thanks; she never sent it back. I wrote to her that I had sold the picture, but I admitted to Mrs.
"At Castle Ebersdorf, my dear colonel. Surely you know that, after the battle of Aspern, when Napoleon left his exhausted and conquered army on the island of Lobau, and went to Castle Ebersdorf himself to enjoy a refreshing sleep after his first great defeat." "Yes, that sleep was really singular enough," said Mariage thoughtfully.
I exclaimed, laughing. "I don't compare I don't compare. If I did that I should have given everything up long ago." I liked to think that this was a subtle allusion to the rapture she had known in the society of Jeffrey Aspern though it was true that such an allusion would have accorded ill with the wish I imputed to her to keep him buried in her soul.
The passage had been safely accomplished during the previous night exactly as had been planned, a feint against Aspern having thrown the Austrians on a false scent.
I was so unfortunate as to be twice victorious during the present campaign, while he was twice defeated; I beat the French at Sacile and St. Boniface, while he lost the battles of Landshut and Ratisbon. This is a crime which the archduke will never forgive me, and for which he will revenge himself." "Perhaps he thinks that he took a noble and glorious revenge at the battle of Aspern?"
My eccentric private errand became a part of the general romance and the general glory I felt even a mystic companionship, a moral fraternity with all those who in the past had been in the service of art. They had worked for beauty, for a devotion; and what else was I doing? That element was in everything that Jeffrey Aspern had written, and I was only bringing it to the light.
It seemed to me from one moment to another that I could not wait longer that I really must take a sounding. In nine cases out of ten it's a volume of Jeffrey Aspern." I watched her well as I pronounced that name but I saw nothing wonderful. Why should I indeed was not Jeffrey Aspern the property of the human race? "Oh, we read him we HAVE read him," she quietly replied.
Finally, after an obstinate stand, the Austrians fell back in good order, effectively covering their retreat by a murderous artillery fire. A total loss of some 50,000 men, apportioned nearly equally on either side, was the chief result of this terrible day. It was not remarkable for brilliant tactics; and, as at Aspern, the Austrians fully equalled their foes in courage.
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