Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

world, and my babes will be fatherless! I shall have no refuge in this land but Naples. I must return to my father's home, beggared and desolate. Let me not find that the sword of the noble king of France has made that home a ruin, and stained that hearth with the blood of my kindred !"

Charles raised the fair mourner: he was touched with her beauty, her eloquent tears, and her youth. He promised all that she asked; his sword should be sheathed, her father should not be molested in his old age; he would himself protect her right. Charles promised all that she asked, and she trusted to his word, for she was a woman, and knew nought of the power of ambition to blunt and deaden every kindly feeling. But Ludovico looked on, and a smile curled his proud look, for he was better versed in the ways of the world. Charles plighted his word, and speaking some fair-seeming words to Galeazzo, he turned, and with all his train retreated.

But this visit produced an effect they perhaps did not intend. Faint and failing was every breath that Galeazzo drew, and this excitement but hastened the crisis of his disorder. Isabel would call in no assistance; she listened in trembling, yet subdued agony, to every half-broken word that fell from the lips, which in time past had vowed unto her the sweet vow of love; she herself would close the eyes which in time past had spoken to her things unutterably tender.

Long and weary was the vigil, that night, of the gentle lady; but her courage and her patience never for a moment failed, and she had her reward; for the closing eyes fixed on her their last look of lingering love." My children! my Isabel !" were the last

words of the prince; the only words that broke that night on the stillness of the chamber of death.

The usurper flourished for many years after this; his plans were successful, and his sword was victorious; but at last retribution fell upon him. Sick and lonely, he too was laid upon his death-bed in a dark and wretched prison room in the castle of Loches. He was there utterly desolate, for neither relative nor friend clung to his fallen fortunes. He tossed on his unblest couch through weary days and fevered nights; -but of all the visions of those whom he had injured in bye-gone days, which came now thronging to torment, each armed with a separate power to call forth signs and groans of anguish, the one which possessed a double power to terrify and wound, was the vision of a fair young creature and two hapless children !—whom he had deprived of father and protector!-whom he had robbed of state, station, and of inheritance!

EVENING THE FOURTH.

-What happy gale

Blows you to Padua here?

SHAKESPARE.

INTRODUCTORY LETTER.

Padua.

I AM afraid, dear Minna, that you, who so love to hear and to read of hill and forest scenery,-who acknowledge to feeling more interest in a wild flower or mountain shrub, than in the fate of nations, will be somewhat disappointed at seeing my letters continually dated from one or another populous city, and treating principally of life in its artificial state, and of life's busy actors. You must pardon me; we travel rapidly from town to town, and it is not my fault that Sir Mark chooses rather to rest for the time being in a commodious hotel, than in a cottage by the roadside, or in a forest cave. Neither, indeed, am I quite sure that I have romance enough about me to disapprove of his very sensible proceeding.

Besides, bipeds, be they good, bad, or indifferent, are in any case more interesting than the fairest picture of inanimate nature. Fellow pilgrims with ourselves, journeying along the same rugged path towards the same peaceful haven ; fellow sharers of the divine spark of immortality, which raises man to an immeasurable superiority over all other inhabitants of this round globe,-we are bound to feel deeply for the hopes and fears, and joys and sorrows of every child of earth. And it is a strong, as well as a beautiful tie with which every man feels himself linked to his brethren, though perhaps it is a tie which they, who have sorrowed most, are the most ready to acknowledge. The happy are sufficient unto themselves; it is not until the blow has fallen-and sooner or later it comes to all-which shows us the vanity of earth's fairest promises, the nothingness of earth's brightest dreams, that we cling to every creature's sympathy, and tracing our own life in that of another -the hope, the disappointment, the calm endurance— acknowledge with a sort of mournful satisfaction, that we share but the common lot, and feel that every child of sorrow is, with peculiar emphasis of meaning, a fellow-creature. Therefore is it that I dread to go into a gallery of paintings with Harry Dormer; for he is a connoisseur, devoted with all the enthusiasm of a young and ardent mind to his art; and while he stands entranced before some exquisite morceau of inconceivable antiquity,-a thumb, by Tintoretto-an eye-lash, by Domenichino-the twig of an owlet's nest, by Aldovrandus Magnus, I turn aside, albeit with fear and trembling, to look at some half finished daub, -a child playing at a cottage door,-a girl kneeling at

« ÎnapoiContinuă »