The Project Gutenberg eBook of The libertine; vol. 2 [of 4]

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Title: The libertine; vol. 2 [of 4]

Author: Charlotte Dacre

Release date: August 22, 2026 [eBook #79426]

Language: English

Original publication: London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1807

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79426

Credits: Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIBERTINE; VOL. 2 [OF 4] ***

CHAPTER XI., XII., XIII., XIV., XV., XVI., XVII.

THE

LIBERTINE,

IN FOUR VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

G. Sidney, Printer,

Northumberland Street, Strand.

THE

LIBERTINE;

BY

CHARLOTTE DACRE,

BETTER KNOWN AS

ROSA MATILDA,

AUTHOR OF

Hours of Solitude, Nun of St. Omer’s, Zofloya, &c.

IN FOUR VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

THIRD EDITION.

She came; she found her hero:—silent she roll’d her sad eyes; she was pale as a watry cloud that rises from the lake to the beam of the moon. Few were her days on Cona.— — — — — Her soul was fixed on Oscar; the son of Caruth was the youth of her love. She forgot the blood of her father, and loved the hand that slew him!

OSSIAN.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR T. CADELL AND W. DAVIES, STRAND.

1807.

THE

LIBERTINE.

CHAPTER XI.

GABRIELLE saw, and lamented, the degradation of Angelo: “Alas,” thought she, “me, who loved him, he voluntarily abandoned;—and her, who would destroy him, he cannot resign.” He still persisted in visiting Oriana, and since he would so persist, Gabrielle would still accompany him. Though she disdained the infatuation by which he was swayed, she determined to be his guardian angel, and save him from further mischief that might be meditating against him, for the sake of his child,—for his own sake,—and for the love she had once borne him, perhaps bore him still.

How much did she now secretly rejoice, that she had not, in the first instance, precipitately divulged to him the discoveries she had made; the weak Angelo might have disregarded, or, entangled as he was, have discredited her assertions; even if, for a moment, he had listened, the artifices of Oriana would have soon driven from his mind all doubts against herself; and how did Oriana attain this ascendancy? She was neither surprisingly beautiful, accomplished, nor sensible. The modest Gabrielle, when, with all the humility of self-appreciation, she compared their respective merits, could not but behold herself the superior, weighed down, and degraded, as she felt, by guilt and shame.

“He must, then, love Oriana,” thought she, “for her contempt of feeling, principle, and virtue; he must love her for that boldness of character which perseveres, unshrinkingly, in the path of vice, and which induces her, as he conceives, to sacrifice for him all self-estimation and respect. If such is the way to the heart of Angelo, I, alas, shall never regain it; but, no, no, he cannot be for ever dead to all that is noble, to the superiority of virtue; he is only dazzled for a time, by the meteor glare of passion.—Let me, then, still watch over him;—let me save him from threatening danger, and see if his heart be inaccessible, even of gratitude.”

The defeat of the plot arranged between Fiorenza and the Genoese, so far from inducing them to resign all thoughts of mischief against Angelo, served only to sharpen against him the malice and ferocity of the former. Though, in the first instance, he had desired his death, only from an idea of the benefit that would accrue in consequence to himself, he, now that he had escaped, thirsted for his blood; for no one whom his death-dealing eye had marked, had ever escaped the bravo Fiorenza.

“He shall die a thousand times for this,” he emphatically observed to Oriana; and to that unprincipled, and subjugated woman, he, with bitter invectives, attributed the failure of their attempt. She, however, neither daring, nor having sufficient virtue, to desire to rebel against the will of the tyrant who ruled her, fervently promised to be more collected at a future period, and to lend her every power to the achievement of his purpose; nay, to strike, if he required it, with her own hand, the fatal blow.

“No, no, I shall take surer aim than by the hand of a woman,” he scornfully observed; “my plan I shall impart to you when I deem it necessary.”

Oriana began to hate her despotic lover; but she feared him likewise; and, though she would gladly have fled from him, she well knew he would have traced her, even into the depths of the earth, if there she could have hidden, and that life would have been the forfeit of her bold desertion. Meantime, her hatred of him, and indifference towards Angelo, increasing daily, left room in her heart for the indulgence of a warmer sentiment, or rather sensation, which she cherished, at once, for its novelty, and for the pleasure she derived from it;—this sensation was love, as far as it might be thus denominated in her breast, for the youthful Eugene. She pressed his visits with an unceasing anxiety, and, for his sake, sometimes those of Angelo; her conduct towards him, when alone, was sufficiently unequivocal, and she no longer hesitated to express to him, in the most animated terms, the tenderness with which he had inspired her.

Had it not been for the fixed resolution of Gabrielle to remain always near Angelo, she would, at the earliest discovery of the sentiments of Oriana, have kept at a perpetual distance from her house. But stronger interests than those of self, armed her with patience, to bear the pain and embarrassment which her behaviour frequently gave her.

Though Angelo continued still his visits to Oriana, they were less frequent than formerly; nor, except when animated by the juice of the Tuscan grape, was he so tender—so impassioned—or, so lavish of his admiration;—not even when the absence of other society rendered reserve unnecessary. This change of demeanor was no secret to Fiorenza; and it only impelled him to hasten his measures, lest, verging from coolness to disgust, and from disgust to hatred of his lovely mistress, he should ultimately forsake her altogether, and thus rob him of his intended prey.

In truth, Angelo, however he might wish it, could not drive from his mind the remembrance of that eventful night, when the fair Oriana had appeared to so much disadvantage; it perpetually recurred to him, even in moments when he was most inclined to forget it; and, when she bestowed upon him smiles full of innocence and love, he remembered, with an unpleasant feeling, that just so she had smiled and looked, on that very night. In short, so frank was the nature of Angelo, that the least ground for suspicion made him wretched; he could not endure to harbour it, yet could not either divest himself of it; he longed to say to his mistress, “Oriana, explain to me the scene that passed that night.”

Yet, although dissatisfied, tormented occasionally by doubts or vague suspicion, he kept his thoughts secret from Eugene, for he dreaded least his penetration should at once convince him of their just foundation, and of his folly in continuing to be deceived.

It happened one morning, that Gabrielle, having been sent by the restless Angelo on some frivolous occasion to the house of his mistress, hearing that Oriana was in her dressing room, proceeded thither, and, opening the door somewhat abruptly, found her in tears, with a countenance of rage; notwithstanding which, Fiorenza, seated beside her, was looking on with mingled indignation and contempt. As Eugene made his appearance, Oriana started, and retired to a window; but Fiorenza, rising without apparent embarrassment, observed to Eugene, “Eugene, I leave you with my sister; she has been somewhat refractory to my will, but perhaps your good sense may succeed in teaching her, that it is her duty to obey the will of her brother.” As he uttered these words, Oriana turned round, and cast a glance on him without speaking; he preserved his countenance unchanged, and quitted the room.

No sooner was the door closed, than Oriana beckoned Eugene towards her, who immediately approached;—Oriana laid her finger on her lip, and motioned that he should ascertain, by examination, that Fiorenza was not within hearing. Eugene, opening the door, and looking out, convinced her that no one was nigh, feeling a degree of impatience to know what she could have to communicate. Oriana, then taking his hand, said, “Eugene, to what do you conceive the basest of all wretches, the bravo Fiorenza,—yes Eugene, you may look at me with surprise, the bravo Fiorenza, has desired you to enjoin my acquiescence in?”

“I cannot imagine, indeed,” replied Gabrielle.

“Then hear me;—to the murder of your dearest friend, the count Angelo D’Albini.”

“Good Heaven!” exclaimed Gabrielle, with horror, “what injury has the count Angelo D’Albini ever committed against Fiorenza de Vinci?”

“He hates him, and that alone would be sufficient; but there are other causes which induce him to desire his death;—and—Eugene, dare I trust you?”—

“I think you may,” returned Gabrielle.

“Well, then,” pursued Oriana, drawing her chair closer to that of Eugene, “Fiorenza is not my brother, thank heaven!”

This Gabrielle well knew; she affected no surprise, but, seeming to pay the most implicit attention, Oriana continued—

“He is not my brother; he calls himself my lover; but he is, in reality, the most despotic of masters; I tremble in his presence; he treats me like an abject slave; and, but that he considers that I may do him service, and am too contemptible to do him ill, he would long since have taken my life. Fiorenza was formerly a bravo for hire; he is still a bravo in his heart, and ever ready to commit, for his own ends, that which he once executed to serve the ends of others. In short, Eugene, not to trouble you with unnecessary details,” and here the artful Genoese avoided all mention of herself, likely to depreciate her with her auditor, “he is now bent on taking the life of the Count; he detests him, he is jealous of him; and has besides other motives, which it would be useless, at present, to expatiate on to you; he has peremptorily urged me to compliance; and, in case of refusal, threatened me, that he will carry to the ears of the Count, the most dangerous insinuations against me; and that, fly whither I may to escape, he will pursue me, and take my life. Oh! Eugene,” she passionately continued, “to deprive the Count of existence, merely to lead a life of misery with such a wretch as Fiorenza, it is that which I cannot endure;—but for you, for you, dear Eugene, I could, without pain, destroy them both.”

Gabrielle felt curdling horror creep through her veins, at the depravity of this unhappy woman. It was not the murder then of the innocent Angelo, which appalled her; it was the idea only of continuing for life with a man she now detested, and who perhaps, had he been as amiable as he was infamous, her fickle nature would have wearied of in the same length of time. For Eugene, whom she now preferred, she was ready to go any lengths, and hereafter, for another, she would have sacrificed him.

“Speak, Eugene,” she pursued, pressing his hand, “say, do you think you could always love me, provided I became your’s? Do you think that, quitting Italy, and flying to another country, you could be happy with me?—If Angelo were to die—I should be rich—if Fiorenza were no longer living, I should be unrestrained;—— I am indifferent to the first, and the last I hate.”

While Gabrielle felt strong desire to fly from the presence of such a fiend, she felt, at the same time, the necessity of curbing the impulse, and concealing the horror and disgust with which she was inspired, she wished to preserve from danger the threatened Angelo; it was requisite, therefore, to hear all that Oriana had to say; it was necessary she should propose her plans, and be wholly unreserved, or a single impatient exclamation, an unrestrained expression of disgust or indignation, might defeat, beyond repair, the great aim she had in view: and, causing Oriana, disappointed and contemned, to take part with Fiorenza, their plans would be changed and a dreadful blow might be struck, when least it was expected.

When, therefore, she found that the Genoese remained silent, as if in expectation of some reply to what she had been saying, she answered with as much composure as she could assume, “I am grateful, fair Oriana, for the confidence you have reposed in me, and you could not possibly have advanced a stronger claim on my regard, with respect to what you have urged respecting an immediate arrangement between ourselves; I can only for the present observe, I must have time for consideration. The Count D’Albini was the friend of my unaided youth; he has heaped benefits upon me, and it would grieve me that he should die,” she added—her voice involuntarily faltering at the last word.

Finding herself not absolutely repulsed by him, for whom she had conceived so strong a passion, the delighted Oriana eagerly kissed and pressed his hand to her lips, when Gabrielle, desirous of moderating the transports of a gratitude so hateful to her, said, “But, Oriana, you have not yet been sufficiently explicit; it is intended, you say, to take the life of the Count; you have not informed me by what means.”

“The means are precisely such as a bravo would have recourse to; easy from habit, well tried by experience, the means are, assassination!” Gabrielle was silent from dismay, and a dreadful anxiety least all her ingenuity and courage should be incompetent to save the unguarded Angelo.

Oriana proceeded. “Claudio and Piombino, hireling ruffians, and former associates of Fiorenza, are the persons fixed on to complete the deed: he has promised them a hundred zechins each, if they do their business well; for he considers that, by the death of the Count, he should be enabled to do that and more; and, if they fail, provided it be through accident alone, fifty each. To-morrow night, when the Count departs hence, they await him, in the Strado di Toledo; they will distinguish him by his black cloak, and the white feather in his hat. Fiorenza will, as usual, accompany him part of the way, to obviate all suspicion of himself; and the word for the signal of attack will be—Hark!—Thus, Eugene, have I imparted to you all; for from you would I disguise nothing;—I leave to your discretion the mode of procedure; what you determine I will abide by.—Save the Count, if you will, from the fate intended for him,—but promise me, that Fiorenza—shall die, and that you will be mine.”

“Promise me, Oriana,” answered Gabrielle, with firmness, “that, however you see me act to-morrow night, you will not interfere; and promise to retain secret from every one what you have imparted to me.”

“I promise—I swear,” cried Oriana, “I will not even ask your intention, so implicitly do I rely upon you; but, Eugene, to defend your own life, if necessary, and for another purpose, that I will not now enlarge upon, accept of this, and place it within your vest;” so saying, she took from beneath a girdle which she wore, a small dagger, the blade of which, concealed within the handle, might be thrown out at pleasure, by pressing a small spring, and presented it to Gabrielle. Gabrielle accepted the dagger, and said, “Oriana, remember that you must not interfere, and for the rest, leave all to me.”

“But, Fiorenza!”

“Leave all to me—be only passive.”—

“It is enough,” cried the transported Oriana, who now rejoiced in the fancied prospect of the death of the man who, a short time before, she had passionately loved. “It is enough; give me your hand in token that you will not disappoint my hopes.”

“Here is my hand, Oriana; I give it you in token that I will do the best I can.”

“You are cold towards me, dear Eugene; but I hope that hereafter it will be otherwise.”

“Oriana, farewell, I must hasten hence.”

“Farewell Eugene; fortune favour you; would that to-morrow night were come.”

Gabrielle hastened home; but when she arrived Angelo was not there; she did not, however, regret his absence, for it gave her time to consider deeply the plan most prudent to be at this crisis adopted. Such now was her perfect knowledge of the weakness of Angelo, that she determined not, even in the present case, to enforce a belief of the perfidy of his worthless mistress, by any other mode than stubborn proof; mere assertion, however positive, she well knew might fail; and she therefore decided, that he should find himself on the very brink of destruction, to carry conviction to his infatuated mind. Once already she had preserved his life, and she flattered herself, by caution, firmness, and due management, she might render him again, though in a more imminent predicament, the same service. She resolved, however, that first he should rush even within the vortex of danger, desperate as was the expedient; but it was the only means effectually to save and detach him from a dangerous connexion. So reasoned the firm-minded Gabrielle, and such was the result of her final decision.

Angelo did not return during the day; early in the evening she retired to her chamber, first leaving on his dressing table the following lines, closely sealed, and written in a hand as little resembling that in which she had once addressed him as possible.

“Angelo, to-morrow night, at the house of Oriana, your life will be in danger. I ask you not to credit what I write, but do not entirely disregard to visit her according to your intention, for it is proper that you should, and I will accompany you. All I desire of you is, to attend to the following conduct; the first time that I quit the room, appear not to remark it, but be tranquil till my return, the second time; take heed that you follow me speedily, and, whatever you think, be under no apprehensions for the result.

“EUGENE.”

From the tenor of this note, Gabrielle readily conceived that Angelo, after reading it, would seek her in her chamber; in this she was not mistaken; finding she had retired, Angelo, as soon as he returned home, unable to find pleasure in remaining up alone, sought his chamber, when the first thing which fixed his attention was her note upon his table, which, instantly opening, he read, and hastening to her apartment. “Eugene,” he cried, “I find you have not retired to rest; but had it been otherwise I must have disturbed you; you have written me the strangest note—what, I conjure you, is the meaning of these mysterious lines?”

“Dear Angelo,” returned Gabrielle, “could I have undertaken to explain to you, succinctly, the purport of those lines, I need not have written them.”

“But, Eugene,” replied Angelo, “you evidently know more than you have expressed; if you have, really, a regard for my safety, and wish to preserve me, you cannot, surely, hesitate to inform me more fully of my danger, in order to convince me of the absolute necessity of being on my guard.”

“That observation, my Lord, is sufficient to shew me, that by revealing to you all I know, I should gain nothing; I must, therefore, persist in adding no more to what I have already said, entreating you only to pay attention to that.”

“Surely, then, Eugene,” answered Angelo, hastily, “I am not wholly inexcusable in attributing your present fearful warning, to some pious superstition, to the recent effects of a fantastic dream, or visionary presentiment.”

“Be it so, my Lord; deign only to observe the slight request I have made you, and your danger will, at all events, I hope, prove no more than a fearful dream.”

When Angelo found that neither ridicule nor entreaty, could draw from Eugene further information, he desisted, with apparent indifference, but in reality with the most extreme anxiety at heart; for some foundation, he well knew, must exist in the rational strong mind of Eugene, beyond mere idle superstition, for the warning he had given; and this conviction, added to the doubts that yet continued to exist in his breast with respect to Oriana, induced him to regard, with increasing unacknowledged suspicion, her kindness, and the consideration she evinced towards him. He determined, therefore, that he would neither slight his intimation, nor refuse to yield implicit attention to the request he had made in his note; he parted coldly with him, however, foiled in his object of provoking an explanation from him, and retired to bed, with a mind by no means perfectly at ease. Still he desired, and hoped, that no confirmation of suspicions, detrimental to his mistress, might ensue; for finding in Naples no other fair than Oriana, who appeared exclusively attached to him, his vanity, equally with his regard, and the amusement with which she filled up many of his idle hours, made him most anxious to preserve her. Such, not unfrequently, are the only ties which cement dangerous connections, which yet resist the united efforts of reason and of virtue, and are seldom broken till experience shakes, too late, her flaming torch over the lengthened track of misery that has been caused.

CHAP. XII.

THE following evening was an eventful one for the rash unwary Angelo; though his mind, ill at rest, was teeming with suspicion, he determined to be faithful to his engagement with Oriana, because he would neither have the appearance of yielding to a mere unsupported assertion, or of evincing cowardice by remaining absent; any imputation on his natural courage he could not have endured; sooner would he have run the risk of a meditated attack, and trusted to fortune for victory, or deliverance. At the appointed hour, therefore, accompanied by Eugene, with whom, although he was in perfect harmony, he had for some time past maintained a slight reserve, he repaired to the residence of his mistress. She appeared so charming, and welcomed them with so much vivacity, that already Angelo began to feel his doubts dissipating like fogs before the sun, and looked towards Eugene with an eye somewhat expressive of reproach, which did not however occasion the latter to change countenance. Fiorenza, who was present, received them likewise with the utmost cordiality, and a collation, light and elegant, was prepared in a chamber, brilliantly illuminated, which resembled more an earthly palace fitted up for the reception of a heavenly visitant, than the baleful den of treachery and murder! To the raptured eyes of Angelo, Oriana appeared as one of the fabled Houri, and the bright fantastic appearance of the room, in which her figure lightly moved, reminded him of those brilliant pictured abodes, where eternal pleasures are said to await the true followers of Mahomet.

Mean time, while mirth and jollity prevailed, while the infatuated Angelo pledged Oriana, in repeated goblets of juice, that to him seemed nectarean, and Fiorenza pledged him, thus inducing him to drink double what either of them took, Gabrielle rose, and quitted the room, anxiously noted by Oriana, but seen almost with indifference by Angelo.

He had not been long gone before Fiorenza remarked his absence; remarked it with pleasure, but not with surprise, for Eugene had been frequently in the habit of retiring early, leaving Angelo still at the table. He now considered, with fiend-like exultation, that, wholly unprotected, and unaccompanied by any, save himself, his unconscious guest would be entirely at his mercy; and, even affecting to be his defender, he might give him, unsuspected, a mortal wound. “This,” thought he, “will be the easiest fool I ever marked for vengeance.”

While thus Fiorenza congratulated himself in the undoubted prospect of success, Gabrielle, with all the speed and intrepidity inspired by the greatness of her purpose, hastened to the Stado di Toledo, and halting near the spot where Oriana had described to her that the ruffians of Fiorenza would lay in wait for Angelo, she suddenly exclaimed, “Hark!” Instantly two fierce and gigantic masks rushed from beneath an umbrageous portico, and, without pausing for a moment, seized on the brave, collected Gabrielle, and pointed their daggers to her breast.

“Stop, Claudio! stop, Piombino!” she cried; “I am not he you want, but the page and confidant of signor Fiorenza, and bring you, from him, a message. You perceive, he gave me the word of attack; a somewhat hazardous mean indeed,” she added laughing, “that I might discover you at once;—now then listen, for I must be speedily back.”

This cool and firm demeanor had the desired effect; what Gabrielle advanced of her being the confidant of Fiorenza, appeared undoubted, from her proving herself to be perfectly in the secret of the assassination, of the signal of attack, and even acquainted accurately with their names. Without either speaking a word, they conducted her rapidly up the steps of the portico, which appertained to a dilapidated house, and, bending close to her ear, one of them, in whispering voice, demanded the message of Fiorenza.

“Fiorenza,” she answered in a low voice, following the lesson given her, “is, as you may conceive, upon the rack; D’Albini has not as yet left our house, and, indeed, it does not appear probable that he is in haste to depart, for the bewitching Oriana rivets him too closely for the impatience of our good Fiorenza.” Quitting the room, therefore, he gave me a look to follow him quickly, and when I joined him, he said, “Hasten immediately to our friends, Claudio and Piombino, and tell them from me, that they must quit (curses on the delay of the fool D’Albini,) their present concealment, and lie in ambuscade, on the opposite side of the street, in some convenient spot, which you will mutually agree on, and describe to me.”

“And why—wherefore is this?” cried they both together.

“Will you not give me time?” answered Gabrielle, impatiently. “In less than another hour,” said Fiorenza, “the moon will be precisely in a situation, obliquely, to illumine the Strado di Toledo; it will appear over the tops of the houses opposite; consequently that side of the street, on which they now are, will be as light as day, while the side opposite will be enveloped in shadow.”

“By the mass, and by my faith, a most excellent suggestion,” cried Claudio, in a low tone.

“Aye, by the holy Saint Severino, a most necessary precaution,” observed Piombino; “in good truth, though fear would be a bad thing in us, it is good for our employers, for it sets their brains working for such means of security as our high mettle would disdain to think of.”

“Come, come, Signors, I am in haste,” cried Gabrielle; “let us cross, and identify the spot where you are to lie in wait.”

“Well you go on, and we will follow you separately, with solemn serious pace as Cavalieros should.”

So saying the Bravos separated; Gabrielle crossed at once, and awaited them, and each came up to her from opposite ends of the street. A convenient spot was soon found, and determined on. “Here then, you will remain,” observed Gabrielle; “on this spot, too, Fiorenza and his gay companion will encounter you much earlier than on the other side.”

“Aye, aye; we shall be here to welcome the enamorato, and save him many useless steps on his way home.”

“One word more then,” said Gabrielle, “and I go:” then, lowering her voice, “as our signal has now been used, for the greater security, Fiorenza would wish it changed; the word of attack, instead of ‘Hark!’ to be, ‘Who calls!’ And to preserve him from even the shadow of suspicion, it will be myself who shall give it.”

“We’ll answer you,” cried Claudio, smothering a laugh.

“Another precaution,” said Piombino, with a sneer, “by our bright lady! fear teaches a man wit to save himself, let what will betide.”

“Well, well, what matters that to you?”—observed the more crafty Claudio, in a significant voice, “it does not teach you manners I think;—you are paid to obey orders, and be silent.”

“Aye, aye, very true indeed,” cried Claudio, with mock solemnity.

“Well, Signors,” cried Gabrielle, “all is now settled; so farewell, and success attend those who perform their duty.” So saying, she hastily left them, and retraced her steps, with doubled eagerness.

On entering the house of Oriana, she repaired immediately to a small antichamber, where visitors usually left their cloaks and hats, where she knew Angelo’s to be, and where she hoped to find Fiorenza’s likewise. In this room a lamp was generally kept burning, though sometimes, as no one ever sat there, it was forgotten; this night, however, as she had expected, she found it lighted, and discovered immediately the cloak and hat of Angelo, while close by it laid Fiorenza’s; at which trifling circumstance she involuntarily shuddered; her first care on beholding them was to reverse their situations; she placed the hat and cloak of Angelo upon the chair which Fiorenza’s had occupied, and, in return, placed Fiorenza’s where Angelo’s had been; this done she extinguished the lamp, and returned to the supper room.

When Fiorenza again beheld her, he started; he had supposed that she had returned home, and that he should be safe from even the shadow of an interruption, in the prosecution of his dreadful purpose. Gabrielle perceived his rage and displeasure, but, with an undaunted look, seating herself close beside him, a situation she never took, she whispered in his ear, “I have discovered your plot; quit the room immediately; I will follow you, and explain.”

What language can convey an idea of the look of the dark assassin at these words. His cheek, although bronzed over by the changeless hue of repeated crimes, and his ferocious eyes, though veiled in the cunning guise of treachery, sufficiently betrayed that he heard what had been addressed to him; he looked at his unwelcome companion;—he beheld him with surprise, yet calm and collected; a movement expressive of his acquiescence, was sufficient for his watchful eye:—he rose, and quitting the room, Gabrielle followed, but not till she had caught the eye of Angelo, and an impressive glance had said, “Have a care that you remain not long behind.” His answering look assured her of his compliance.

Gabrielle found the fierce Fiorenza impatiently expecting her, without the door of the supper room; she seized him by the arm, and leading him towards the antichamber, said to him in a hurried voice, “Fiorenza, I have discovered your plot—ask me not how—for I have no time to waste in useless explanation.”

Fiorenza interrupted her—“I can hear nothing,” proceeded she, hastily, “attend to me, for the moments are precious. You think me the friend of il Conte D’Albini; but believe me, I have no reason to be attached to him. You desire, and have cunningly planned his death, guess whether I wish to prevent your intention, when I have not revealed my discovery to himself; or whether I wish to dissuade you, when I inform you, that Claudio and Piombino threaten to betray you, unless you will promise them two hundred zechins each, instead of one. They think it hard, that they should have all the hazard of the work, with so little profit, while you, without running any risk, will be enriched for life.”

Fiorenza was again about to speak, but Gabrielle resumed, “Words are vain, since you cannot now deprive me of what I know; hasten at once to Claudio and Piombino; the Count is deeply engaged with Oriana; it may not yet be too late to bring them to terms, and to secure their services for this night. Come, while you waste time in consideration, you gain nothing, and run the hazard of being momentarily betrayed;—take your cloak and hat, and let us depart.” So saying, she opened the door of the anti-chamber: the room was in darkness, and the deep, the crafty Fiorenza, for once bewildered and confused, mechanically sought for his hat and cloak in the place where he had left them; but taking up Angelo’s instead, which Gabrielle assisted him to put on, he rushed from the house with the fury of a madman, and with a speed, up the street, that the resolution of Gabrielle could have alone enabled her to keep pace with.

Angelo, determined at all events, and from curiosity as much as any thing, to comply with the enforced request of Eugene, had risen from table, notwithstanding the fascinations of Oriana, soon after his departure. He gained the hall-door just as it had closed upon him and Fiorenza, and perceived them walking up the street with the utmost rapidity. While they hurried to the Strado di Toledo, not a word was exchanged on either side; Fiorenza secretly determining, that, in case he discovered the smallest treachery in Eugene, he would immediately sacrifice him to his revenge. When Angelo perceived that Eugene was in company with Fiorenza, his mind felt a sensation of suspicion, bordering on alarm; for he could not possibly conceive a motive for their being together at this hour in the street, and, seemingly, with some urgent purpose in view; he quickened his pace, therefore, determined to pursue them at a small distance, without making himself heard. They now came within a few yards of the spot, where Claudio and Piombino, unknown to Fiorenza, were concealed; when Gabrielle, suddenly halting, said, in a low voice, “Fiorenza, I think some one bids us stop.”

“Nonsense;” in a gloomy voice, muttered Fiorenza, “they are not on this side;” and proceeded hastily a few steps. Gabrielle followed.—“I am certain I hear a voice.”—Fiorenza now paused; for the consciousness of guilt made him fearful. “Let us not appear dismayed,” whispered Gabrielle; and moving a few paces, she, in a loud voice, exclaimed, “Who calls?” When instantly the assassins, springing from their hiding places, with daggers drawn, plunged them at once into the breast of Fiorenza, who attired, unknown to himself, in the cloak and white-plumed hat of Angelo, which he had described to them, that they might immediately identify him, rushed justly, and unexpectedly, upon the fate he had destined for another.

Groaning, staggering, and falling to the ground, he exclaimed, in a dreadful voice, “Oh, hell! I am betrayed. Claudio! Piombino! can it be your daggers that I feel?—your comrade Fiorenza!” Pain prevented him from proceeding when the bravos, hearing the well-known voice of their former comrade, perceived, in an instant, that the pretended Eugene had deceived them, and, wild with rage, turning short upon him, were on the point of immolating him to their terrible vengeance. At this moment, Angelo, who had paused only when he observed them pause, rushed swiftly towards them, and drawing his stiletto, threw himself before his beloved Eugene, who feebly defended himself in such unequal combat, with the dagger given him by Oriana. Nerved with super-human strength and courage, at perceiving the imminent danger of the youth he idolized, Angelo did wonders. One of the ruffians fled, but the other, making a feint at him, thrust his stiletto into the side of Eugene, and, exclaiming, “Fiorenza, thou art revenged!” sprang after his companion.

Great now was the horror and dismay of Angelo; but his all of care, his agony, was for Eugene, who, writhing with pain, and fainting, was near falling to the earth. Supporting him in his arms, he called aloud for help, and as his eyes wandered eagerly round in search of assistance, they, for the first time, dwelt upon the prostrate Fiorenza, whom he beheld habited in his hat and cloak. A sudden ray of light burst upon his mind; “Oh, my beloved young friend,” he exclaimed, “this scene of dreadful mystery begins to develope itself to my senses; but, alas, too late, since thou art thus—for if thou diest, I will not survive.”

Gabrielle answered not, for she was incapable; but the expiring voice of Fiorenza muttered, in return, “Oh, I have not long to live; let my soul be breathed out in curses! Eternal curses seize that misleading dastard; tortures, death, and perdition, be his portion!—D’Albini, thou hast escaped; but may destruction overtake thee;—may thy best hopes be blighted;—may despair end thy days in this world, and may’st thou meet damnation in the next!” Then, heaving a deep groan, he gnashed his teeth with agony, and exclaimed “Oh! yet a moment, to gall thee with stinging regret, and bitterness, to turn to laughing contempt thy past pleasures. Dupe and fool; Oriana, whom thou thoughtest exclusively thine, was one of whom many had tasted; and was mine ere thou knewest her! Ha! she loved thee so well, in her fair arms she would have lulled thee to repose with poison! She is now rejoicing in the hopes of thy death. But, oh! madness—— curses—— curses on——” With the last remaining strength of unyielding villainy, he sought to drag his anguished body to the feet of Angelo; the struggle of craving vengeance, and fierce despair was, for an instant, successful; he grasped his dagger in one hand, and, with his feeble arm upraised, he sought to pull him downwards; the effort to do so was vain; death stiffened his nerves, his arm fell palsied, the clenched dagger dropt harmless to the ground, and, with a shivering groan, he expired. Meantime several persons, who had been roused or attracted by the exclamations of Angelo, came running to the spot; he briefly explained to them as much of the affair as was prudent, and implored their assistance for Eugene, who, bleeding profusely, and unable to move, was conveyed immediately to his house, while others, following his directions, bore the body of Fiorenza to his.

Gabrielle being laid upon a bed, a surgeon was instantly summoned; who, although she was insensible, conceiving it requisite that not a moment should be lost, prepared to examine the wound. At this juncture, the cessation of motion, and the secret operations of nature, caused animation to return. She opened her eyes, and perceiving the surgeon near her, on the point of uncovering her bosom, and Angelo watching over her, she became immediately sensible of her situation, and of what had passed; and, seeing that a discovery of her sex was now inevitable, her natural modesty taking the alarm, she, in a feeble voice, begged to be left, a single moment, alone with Angelo. The surgeon reluctantly complied; and when every one had retired, she stretched forth her hand to that unfaithful lover, who, at this very moment, when she was nearly expiring for his sake, was dearer to her heart than ever, and, in trembling accents, said, “Angelo, look at me.”

Angelo, bending over her, answered, “Ah, my beloved Eugene, I behold you with anguish.”

“You behold Gabrielle de Montmorency!” faltered she; “that Gabrielle whom you abandoned to her fate,—whom you made a mother, and who, for that cause, deserted her home, to seek you in an unknown land;—who has this night—this night,—risked her life to save your’s.”

“Oh, God! oh, gracious heaven! what do I hear!” exclaimed Angelo, overpowered, and casting himself on his knees beside the bed, “can it be possible, that I see before me Gabrielle de Montmorency?”

“Cannot you pierce through this thin disguise, Angelo?”

“Ah, those heavenly features, so long covered by an artificial veil; that look! yes, yes, I behold thee now, beloved Gabrielle; Oh wretch! oh monster, that I am! what sufferings have I caused thee—never, never, to be forgiven:” and bursting into a passion of tears, he covered his face with his hands. At this moment, the surgeon re-entering, observed, that unless he was immediately suffered to attend his patient, and be permitted to remain tranquil, he could not presume to answer for his life.

“Leave the room, then, dear Angelo,” whispered Gabrielle, “you can return again.” Angelo rose, he kissed the hand of Gabrielle, while his emotion prevented the power of speech, and hurried from the chamber. He was no sooner gone, than the surgeon inspected the wound of the suffering, but heroic Gabrielle, when, to his infinite surprise, he, by the delicacy of her formation, ascertained her to be of a sex opposite to what she appeared; he uttered no remark, however, for he possessed just notions of propriety; but his compassion was excited—and the respectful gentleness of his demeanour increased. On examination, it appeared to him, that the stiletto of the ruffian had simply glanced across the ribs, without having affected, in the least, the nobler parts. In consequence of this discovery, he observed, with pleasure, (for the unfortunate Gabrielle could not fail of inspiring with interest all who beheld her,) that her wound was far from being dangerous, and that her recovery would depend chiefly upon herself, in remaining tranquil, and not suffering her mind to be agitated. This agreeable intelligence being communicated to Angelo, he rushed, spite of every prohibition to the contrary, into her apartment, and eagerly approaching her bedside, he clasped his hands, while the tears started afresh from his eyes, and said, “Dearest Gabrielle, I do not desire you to speak to me, nay, I will not allow you; suffer me only to watch over you, and to remain by your bedside till morning.”

The poor heart of Gabrielle fluttered with delight; but she shook her head, reluctantly to deny a request so agreeable to her.

“It is in vain, dear Gabrielle, for I am resolved, and to induce your immediate acquiescence, I swear to you, that if you object to my watching in your chamber, I will not, nevertheless, retire to repose; but will remain without your door all night listening to your breathing.”

“I will not oppose your wishes, then.”

“Say no more;—to be permitted to gaze on you will now be sufficient.” So saying he half closed her curtains, and seating himself by the side of the bed, maintained a profound silence.

Notwithstanding the various misery she had undergone, notwithstanding the pain she felt,—the present moments were, to Gabrielle, moments of comparative delight;—the man who had brought on her the most terrible disasters, who had made her a mother, without having made her a wife;—for whom, too, she had quitted the once happy solitude of her almost native mountains;—whom friendless, and unaided, she had wandered far to seek;—found faithless, and unthinking of her;—passionately attached to a woman, infamous at once from habit, principle, and inclination, neither loving nor appreciating him;—to have happily conquered these appalling obstacles;—to have rescued him from the worthless wanton that had enslaved him; to have saved his threatened life from the rapacious fangs of her, and her vile associate,—and, ultimately, as she fondly presumed to hope, have recalled him to love and duty, securing, thereby, the protection of a father for her child,—all this was a matter of the highest exultation to the grief-worn breast that, for long, had been insensible of aught, save the pangs of deep remorse, corroding cares, and bitter humiliation. Fair visions of the future danced before her eyes in bright array, and she promised herself, that the turpitude and ingratitude of his false mistress being now made manifest to the deluded Angelo, he would for ever banish from his breast a libertine passion, and become once more the being that in the days of her innocence she had fancied him.

Angelo who, in most instances, was the creature of the moment, warm, susceptible, and impetuous, vicious, not in principle, but from want of firmness to be otherwise, conceived for Gabrielle, (who had now appeared before him in a novel and romantic point of view, and consequently wore in his eyes all the charms of a different object,) a passion, if possible, stronger and more ardent than the first with which she had inspired him; his enthusiasm too was powerfully awakened in the retrospect he took of her conduct,—her unshaken fortitude, her heroic courage, her perseverance, he, too, the actuating cause of such conduct, in such a woman,—for him called forth such extraordinary exertion of mind, such strength of character, such dignity of soul, his vanity roused, still added to his enthusiasm, and increased his regenerated passion. Dethroned from his mind with contempt and hatred, was its late insiduous sovereign; he no longer considered her but as a vain, unattractive, frivolous, and abandoned female, too worthless to be even a foil for the matchless Gabrielle, and almost abhorred himself to have been so long deluded by her. She now appeared to his fickle and unsteady mind, all that was most disgusting; above all, she was no longer new, while the long-neglected, and almost forgotten Gabrielle, decked by her sudden re-appearance, and under such circumstances in all the attraction of a most bewitching novelty, assumed in his fancy charms of which he had never thought her possessed, and which he would never have discovered, had their intercourse continued uninterrupted.

Such is the libertine; his vitiated appetite requires continually the poignant and extraneous inducements of ever-varied novelty to prolong, or to renew it; his passion can only be kept alive by artifice, obstacles, or perpetual interruption. How different the love of sentiment, and of the soul, where each finds in each all that a rational, yet ardent tenderness, can desire, where individual worth, known and appreciated, is omnipotent, requiring neither artificial aid, nor stimulus to support its never-dying flame.

In process of time, as Gabrielle recovered, she appeared before the enchanted Angelo, in her fair native form. From beneath that brown complexion, which resembled the withering leaves of the autumn, emerged the pale-tinted rose, which greets the early spring, and her forehead disclosed once more the hue of the delicate lily, which, like herself, fragile and fair, flourished in the valleys she had left. Now, without fear that he would distrust, or disregard her information, did she reveal to him all she knew of the infamous Oriana; her base plots, her dark machinations, her treachery, imposture, and ingratitude; she explained to him likewise that admirable conduct, which had appeared to him so mysterious on the eventful night of the poison, and which had first shaken his opinion of his unworthy mistress; and, lastly, she informed him by what stratagems, perseverance, and courage, she had preserved his life from becoming the prey of her, and her vile co-adjutor. Angelo listened, and at every word his heated fancy glowed with increased passion and admiration, for he now worshiped Gabrielle. Perpetually he interrupted her to throw himself at her feet, to vow to her an eternal gratitude and fidelity, and to implore her forgiveness for the past.

How gratifying, how delightful, was this exuberant renewal of an unhoped-for tenderness to the heart of Gabrielle! But her strict principles and unshaken duty would not permit, that, with this alone, she should be satisfied, and, selfishly elate at the returning fondness of a truant lover, neglect or forget interests so much higher, so much dearer to her than her own. She therefore, though she heard and felt, nay heard and felt too deeply, the ardent expressions of Angelo; she would not permit herself to reply to them, till first she had proved his feelings, and discovered the degree of purer affection, which might exist in his heart for the child, whom, though he had never beheld, still claimed him by the sacred title of father. Thus, when Angelo, one day, with all that animation which his enthusiastic fancy constantly lent his language, was speaking to her of his passion, she, having lent for long, a pleased, but silent ear, suddenly said, when the wounds of her heart opened afresh, and put to flight, as unholy, every thought of bliss, “Angelo, you do not ask me of my father!” Angelo paused, and blushed; it was a subject on which he had not dared to touch, for he trembled to think of his self-acknowledged baseness, and the injuries that he had heaped on the head of the noble Frenchman. It was his misfortune, not a peculiar one, to feel his errors without power to withstand them. At length he faltered, “Dare I, dare I, ask Gabrielle?”

“He is dead!” with brief solemnity returned Gabrielle.

“Dead!” cried Angelo; striking his head, as conscience whispered to his quick sensibility, that he had had a share in hastening the calamitous event.

“Dead!” replied Gabrielle, in a voice still more solemn. “I, Angelo, broke his heart.”

“You,—you!” faltered the conscience-stricken Angelo;—“you, his pride and delight!”

“Once, once,” cried Gabrielle, hastily, and bursting into tears. “Once, oh Angelo, before I knew you;—but, afterwards, his disgrace, his curse, and his destruction!”

“Oh, Gabrielle! spare me, for God’s sake!”

“Hear me, Angelo; can your sufferings in listening to what is past, equal mine who endured that dreadful past? I broke the heart of Montmorency; the knowledge of my situation struck him like a thunderbolt, and though it proved not instant death, it for ever palsied his faculties. Oh! Angelo, it destroyed first the mind, the glorious, the susceptible mind, of my father, sensitive and shrinking from the breath even of dishonor; next the havoc extended to his body, and laid him low. Oh! that dreadful scene!—dare I, can I, ever enjoy peace, while memory retains its power over my mind? To be happy, even to know a cessation from misery or remorse, would be a crime!” Here her strong sensations, her bitter recollections of the past, of the deathbed of her beloved father, rushing, by the power of detail, with renovated anguish over her mind, incapacitated her from proceeding; and, in an agony of tears, she fell back on the sopha, where she sat.

“Oh! for the sake of mercy, Gabrielle,” cried the penetrated Angelo, casting himself on his knees before her, “spare us, spare us both, this dreadful recapitulation.”

“No, no, Angelo; what are these pangs compared with what we ought to endure? will they recall the murdered Montmorency from the grave? from that grave into which we precipitated him?” At this, Angelo hastily hid his face upon the sopha, and remained eloquently silent. Painful conscience had recorded the accusation of Gabrielle, and the words he would have uttered expired on his lips. Gabrielle beheld his keen emotion, without attempting to calm it; in a faint voice at length he said, while his eyes streamed with tears, and his hands were clasped together, “Oh, daughter of Montmorency, what reason have you not to curse the hour when first those eyes beheld me! but for me, you had been ever innocent and happy.”

“And—and Montmorency would have been still living,” added Gabrielle, with anguish.

“Oh, forbear to reproach me thus, loved Gabrielle, my own heart sufficiently accuses me, for the evil of which I have been the cause, for the sorrows I have brought upon you. Yet, why did you refuse to make me a partaker of those sorrows? Why, under those dreadful and oppressive misfortunes, which I alone occasioned, was I spared my proportion of pain, and kept in ignorance of the extent of the havoc I had caused?”

“Oh, Angelo, did you not know the daughter of Montmorency possessed no grovelling mind? You abandoned, and left me to my fate; you ceased to write; was it for me, then, to sue for attention to my miseries even from their author?—was it for me to call forth his useless, his insulting commiseration, or his cold regrets? No, Angelo, believe that, for ever, you would have remained in ignorance of every dreadful evil that befel me; that my voice should never have called to you, that my presence should never have molested you, nor my pride succumbed to the man who had deserted me, but—but for an imperious duty that ordained me to forget pride, to stifle the pangs of an insulted love, and have no feeling for self humiliation; that duty was the consideration of my child—of your child, Angelo! And now behold me,” she added, throwing herself at his feet, “behold how low I can humble, when it is not for myself I plead. Angelo, I conjure you, I entreat, I implore you, to protect, preserve, and cherish that child; I ask not your returning affection; I want no tenderness, I require no benefit at your hands,—all I ask is your protection for that child, who, but for you, would not have existed; grant but that; I am indifferent to my own fate, nor could certainty of the most dreadful misfortunes then have power to appal me.”

The affectingly solemn voice in which the remorseful Gabrielle had thus appealed to the feelings of her lover, so awed and penetrated him, that he had no power to interrupt her; but now that she paused, now that he dared to look upon her, in grievous, humbled, and melancholy guise, at his feet,—now that he dared, not longer than a moment could he contemplate her; and he cast himself prostrate on his face beside her, without power to articulate a sentence.

“Angelo,” then resumed Gabrielle, in the same touching voice, and bending over him, “I had the protection of a father,—a tender father,—one who cherished, loved, and would have preserved me; but I disdained his care, broke from his protecting arms, and stung him like a scorpion, even to his heart’s core. For the love he bore me, and for the pride he took in me, I brought down his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave,—weighed him down in anguish, and bitterness of soul! oh, Angelo, your child is a daughter. Shield her, then, with watchful care; she may not prove to you the ingrate and the wretch which I proved to mine;—but, if you desert, if you abandon her to the contamination of the world, to the varied miseries of life, then will she become, if possible, more guilty and more unfortunate, though in the eyes of Heaven more pardonable, than her wretched mother.”

“Oh, I swear—I solemnly swear,” cried Angelo, starting from the ground, and raising his hands and eyes to heaven, his soul inspired by the animated colouring which the high-wrought feelings of Gabrielle imparted to her language, “I solemnly swear, to protect, while I have life, that beloved daughter of whom you speak; and if ever, becoming a wretch, greater than I have yet been, I neglect the sacred vow which I have made, may the hand of Heaven light heavy upon me, and accursed may I quit the world in misery and disgrace.”

“Oh, Angelo! it is enough; this solemn promise reassures my sinking heart; I breathe more freely—and, perhaps, when my soul quits its earthly tenement, it may rise to heaven unaccompanied by the crime of a daughter’s ruin.”

“Rise, rise my love,” cried Angelo, taking her in his arms, “and let happier thoughts now engage us; we are restored to each other—your virtues, your merits, are now known to me;—my errors have vanished for ever;—you have taught me the charms of constancy and noble love. We will send immediately for our beloved child, and let her, at once, receive the fond protection of a father, and be benefited by the care and example of such a mother.”

“My example!—oh, Angelo!”

“No more, dearest Gabrielle; you refine too deeply;” and the impetuous Angelo, raising her from the ground, and seating her beside him, proceeded with increased animation, “Say, where and how is our child situated?—Can I not soon behold her?”

“I left her,” replied Gabrielle, with a deep sigh; “beneath the fostering care of an excellent and worthy friend, where she is now safe and happy.”

“She will be equally safe, and more happy, with us, my beloved.”

“Well, Angelo, to-morrow we will talk further upon this subject; at present I must leave you;—my head burns, and my ideas are confused;—I wish to arrange—” She paused, then resumed—“You are kind, you are affectionate, Angelo; but I feel no sensation of happiness, and I wish to enquire of myself whether I am unreasonable, and why your professions of tenderness do not satisfy my heart:—farewell, to-morrow we shall meet again.”

Angelo durst not offer opposition to the movements of Gabrielle;—he faintly expressed regret, that she would not grant him a few moments more of her society, yet suffered her to depart.—Already his quick susceptibility, and conscience, which will not be silenced, had whispered to him, why Gabrielle felt not satisfied or happy; no obstacle existed to his union with her; yet in all the exuberance of his fondness he had not proposed to join his fate indissolubly with her’s.—No; the contaminated principles, the poison of example, the freedom of conduct, unrestrained by early precept, or, strict inculation of the right and the wrong; the ignoble, and libertine, delights in which from his youth he had indulged; the idle sneers, loose jests, and contemptible ribaldry, against the first of moral institutions, of his companions in debauchery,—all concurred to inspire the deluded Angelo, though possessed of mind and feeling above the herd, with a dread and abhorrence of marriage, such as scarce any earthly inducement, at the present juncture, could have given him the courage to overcome.—Yet, he loved Gabrielle, loved her to the highest degree of which his nature was capable; but his love had in it more of passion than sentiment; more of impetuosity than depth;—it resembled the wild and rushing torrent which exhausts itself, rather than those deep and silent waters which flow unruffled on.

Gabrielle, when she retired to her pillow, too well discovered why she was neither satisfied nor happy. “He thinks me unworthy of the name of wife,” thought she, “and he is justified.” And with this bitter reflection rankling at her heart, exhausted nature sought relief in sleep.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE female who has once erred, and who does not hate the author of her error, should beware of confiding in her own strength, or relying on the firmness of repentant virtue;—for her, there is no safety but in flight; and if she desire to retrieve her path, she should never behold him who caused her to wander aside. This, without further comment, may be sufficient to illustrate, that the protracted residence of Gabrielle, beneath the roof of her lover, was attended with those fatal consequences against which no human foresight or resolution could have shielded her, who lingered in so much danger. Gabrielle knew not the extent of the hazard she ran, till that knowledge became useless, and bitter self-reproach, and horror, roused her from her delusive security. When the mind is unwarily led to the commission of deep and irretrievable error, it seeks, naturally seeks, to reconcile itself to what is past recall. Thus was it with the unhappy Gabrielle. She sought to persuade herself, when the first sensations of remorseful agony were somewhat abated, that Angelo was now altered; that, indelibly impressed with the remembrance of the misfortunes that he had heaped upon her, he would never more neglect or forsake her; but, in endeavours to expiate the past, remain for ever fond, faithful, and sincere. Yet, still something remained behind which would not bear the touchstone of argument, or refletion; why, if such were his feelings towards her, hesitated he to bind his fate eternally to her’s? Ah! This was a thought which, like an intrusive creditor, was hastily dispatched with an evasive reply;—but, independently of such refinement of scrutiny, the conduct of Angelo was such, certainly, as to allow the indulgence of sanguine hope.

Time stole on, and two years elapsed of a re-union that, had Gabrielle possessed less virtue, or sensibility, might have rendered her for the present happy, and tranquil as to the future. Angelo became the father of a son, and his conduct was characterised by the best and finest attributes of the husband, and the parent; as a husband, he was tender, attentive, domesticated—— as a father, fond, to idolatry, of his child: Gabrielle endeavoured to banish the terrifying idea, that her children would live to reproach her for giving them existence, and to indulge the flattering hope, that the effects of her errors would never be extended to them.

At the commencement of their re-union, Angelo had expressed an ardent wish, to behold his daughter, and intreated Gabrielle, that she would propose to Madame Bertrand, to quit Switzerland for ever, to bring their daughter with her, and to reside with them. “But no,” wrote this excellent friend, “my dear Gabrielle, I will neither quit our peaceful retreat myself, which almost induces me to forget there is such a place beyond, as the busy world you reside in; nor, if I may be allowed a voice, shall our beloved child quit it either.—Ah, my dear young friend, be not offended with me, if I would venture to insinuate, that, though you have at present every reason to be satisfied with the conduct of D’Albini, and that he is as the best of husbands to you, in all but the name, yet that name, so far from being an inconsiderable idea, or unnecessary to ensure the happiness of your situation, is the only thing which could render it either prudent, or safe, for me to resign your daughter to you.—At this time, she is taught to respect a fond, though absent mother; her juvenile mind conceives of you the highest sentiment of which it is capable; why then would you desire, unnecessarily, to give birth to, and gradually to impress upon it, different and perplexing ideas? Trust me, D’Albini has not yet passed the fiery ordeal,—the season of folly is not yet at an end. If his reformation were perfect and sincere, he would not hesitate, nay, he would be anxious, to rivet by those bonds to which mankind have justly affixed the idea of virtue and propriety, your present union, to preclude from himself the power, or the possibility, of forming other ties. Till then, or till age shall have taught him, with a smile of contempt, to look back on the follies of youth, rely not wholly, nor securely upon him; nor snatch your child from the positive safety of her present asylum, to introduce her, perhaps to misfortune, but certainly to danger, for which you would suffer unavailing repentance and remorse.

“You have already with you, one child, my dear Gabrielle; if children are a bond of union between the sexes, is not one child sufficient to ensure it?—If it is not, one is too much; and miserable would be the fate of more. Thus, then, let me implore you, forego your wish for the present. Consent to wait, at least till the character of D’Albini is more fixed; till it has stood the test of time, and till you have better ascertained his principles of action; then, if you will insist, you shall be at liberty to reclaim your daughter.”

This letter produced upon Gabrielle a most salutary effect; her mind, which present peace had rendered hopeful for the future, was now taught to look within itself, and admit the painful probability, that this comparative felicity might not last for ever;—the idea made her tremble, and even over-clouded the peacefulness of the present; it humbled her mind from the vain and insecure eminence of sanguine hope; it prepared her, by anticipation, for any future blow, and taught her, with rational and pensive eye, to regard and appreciate passing events.

In the impassioned eyes of Angelo, she read, it is true, no mysterious intimation of future fickleness, or indifference; yet unalloyed pleasure was not thus conveyed to her heart, for she could remember, with pain, that the eyes of a lover are but an uncertain index of his soul, and never presage the future to her he seems to love. She did not communicate to him the too just observations of Madame Bertrand, but merely that she desired earnestly to be permitted to retain, yet a little longer, the child, that from infancy she had nursed and cherished. Angelo formed no objection to the request of Madame Bertrand; he possessed one child, and he possessed its mother, and he could endure to resign, for a while, to a dear and sincere friend, the one he had never beheld.

It is necessary we now return to Oriana, whose perfidy and ingratitude had furnished the unguarded Angelo with an additional example, to the many he had already had, of the danger resulting from an association with those females, whose depravity forms their only rule of action, and who never admit, for a moment, the influence of feeling, honor, or a shadow of principle, to regulate their conduct.

Humiliated, foiled, and entirely defeated, at once in her views and calculations, the rage of the abandoned Oriana knew no bounds; she breathed only death and vengeance; and her chiefest desire was to inflict the first with her own hand, upon the supposed Eugene, who, in that character, had obtained knowledge, so complete, of her infamy, and used that knowledge only to circumvent, and render it abortive. Nothing so much excites the rage of an artful and unprincipled mind, as the idea of having been deceived, and of having betrayed its inmost guilty workings. The superiority of virtue never strikes them in a point of view so manifest, and so detested, as when it possesses the resolution and the power to frustrate their evil machinations. That virtue should be combined with policy, and be endowed, at once, with the energy and ingenuity to confound vice, and to entangle it in its own snares, seems to be a sort of supererogation, and a detraction from its own peculiar prerogative, as if it were incompatible with virtue to be wise, and vice alone, from its superior cunning, should ever triumphantly bear off the palm. In such case, virtue would be weaker, and have fewer means of defence than vice; consequently, it would be the latter that ever would be lord of the ascendant.

The death of her associate Fiorenza, however when her wandering eyes had selected a newer object of passion she might have considered it desirable, now that, with all its stinging and mortifying concomitants, she had in that experienced the most aggravating disappointment, became to her matter of most serious moment, and regret. Fiorenza had been throughout her meretricious career, when personal regard for her had ceased to exist, and assumed, as he pretended, the more valuable character of a regard for her interest, as a sort of tutelar dæmon, advising, forwarding, and directing her in plans, of his own suggestion, to the injury and destruction of others, for her, or rather his advantage;—and Oriana, though she duped the unwary, was herself the dupe of superior artifice.—Still his death left her alone in the world; in the prosecution of her desired revenge, who could have participated with, or assisted her, like Fiorenza? But she was sufficiently imbued with the spirit of her late master, to determine on it, if necessary, singly, and unaided, though she should perish in the attempt.

During the two years which the objects of her hate and envy had continued to exist in seeming happy union, beneath her eyes, her revenge had not slumbered, nor had her vigilance relaxed; every mean that the vilest artifice, and the most determined resolution to insure could suggest, was instantly had recourse to. Now, calumniating anonymous letters accused them to each other of the blackest crimes and intentions, and mutual treachery. Now the allurements of love, in the form of tender confession from some susceptible Italian fair-one, appointing an assignation, were held out to the vanity and warm temperament of Angelo.—Now, similar arts were practised against the unshaken constancy and firm principles of Gabrielle;—and now, in despair at the failure of every attempt, various pretexts of urgent occasion were contrived to delude each, separately, from home, at various hours of the night, for the basest purpose of destruction—secret assassination!

Hitherto, however, every machination had proved abortive, either from exciting suspicion, or from being detected in time. These two persons, at this juncture so dear to each other, had neither inclination nor leisure to punish a feeble, though malicious enemy. Suspicion of aught that appeared equivocal, had now become so habitual to them, that, added to their perfect knowledge of the infamous Oriana, they considered themselves as sufficiently protected from her power to injure them, and from the possibility of being betrayed by her into a situation of danger.

It was with the utmost difficulty, indeed, that Angelo could ever be induced from the long untasted charms of domestic comfort, but at the earnest solicitations of Gabrielle, who, with her usual fine sense, could endure that he should sometimes be amused, even out of her society; he was occasionally prevailed on to pass a few hours among friends of his own rank of life, rendered agreeable to him by similarity of disposition and long association. One night that he was returning home late from a select party of male companions, with whom he had dined, and in convivial converse, heightened by the juice of the grape, in social gaiety passed the evening, he imagined he heard, at a short distance from him, female plaints.

Ever alive to the impulse of humanity, he stopped immediately, and listened; a young mournful voice continued to bewail, and he soon ascertained that the object could not be far off. Instantly conceiving it possible there might be some cause of grief which he could remedy, and distressed at hearing the accents of sorrow from a tender female, in the streets at this unseasonable hour, he hastened onwards, and soon discovered her who had attracted his attention, seated beneath a portico, leaning on the cold step, and weeping bitterly: he advanced towards her, and remarking that she was extremely young, his compassion encreased, while in a soothing voice he enquired the cause of her distress.

“Alas, Eccellentissimo Signore,” she replied, timidly raising her eyes, and instantly again looking down, “neither you nor any one can assist me, for my misfortune is beyond the reach of aid.”

“But what misfortune,” asked Angelo, “can occasion a young and innocent girl, as you appear, to be unprotected in the streets at this hour of the night?”

“Oh, do not ask me, Eccellentissimo Signore—do not ask me, for it reminds me of every thing.”

“Reminds you of what?” enquired Angelo.

“I cannot, no, I cannot bear, Signore,” cried the young girl, suddenly, “that such a kind Signore as you should think ill of me; therefore, I must tell you, that it was my father—yes, Signore, it was my father, who turned me into the streets this night, and bade me never return till—till——”

“Till what?—” asked Angelo, impatiently.

“Till—— till——” she answered, bursting afresh into tears, “I can determine to marry Castro Nardi, the old fisherman; he has asked me of my father, only to beat and misuse me; to make me carry his fish to market, and half kill me with blows and hard treatment, as he did his first wife; and he is so old and so ugly, Signore, my heart rises against him. No, no, I will never return home, never, sooner than marry Castro Nardi.”

This artless narrative sensibly affected Angelo, though, at the same time, he could not avoid smiling at its simplicity; he persuaded the young girl, however, to return home, for he was shocked at reflecting on the consequences that might ensue to such guileless innocence, if remaining, unprotected, during a night, in the street; and to induce her compliance, he promised, that in the morning he would call upon her father, and prevail upon him to forego his intention of marrying her to the hated Castro Nardi.

“Will you, indeed, Signore?” cried she, hastily rising, and displaying, suddenly, to the astonished Angelo, beneath the feeble rays of the lamp, some traits of a countenance that seemed of most surpassing beauty, “if you will promise to call upon my father, I will return home immediately; he could not, sure, refuse such a Signore as you,” she added, timidly, “whatever he should request.”

“Well, well, we will try,” returned Angelo, with a smile; “but see first how he receives you to-night; perhaps he may relent, and there may be even no occasion for my intercession.”

“Then, if he receives me kindly, Signore, I shall never see you any more?” returned the girl, with bewitching naiveté, and in a tone of regret.

“Oh!” cried Angelo, involuntarily, a little flattered, and desiring, even unknown to himself, to behold that beautiful countenance by the light of day, “you can easily, if you wish it, let me know how he receives you in the morning.”

“How can I, Signore? For I should like to inform you, after all your kindness, if I could,” faltered the maid.

“Well, then,” stammered Angelo, who felt he was verging on the confines of wrong, “well, then, you can meet me, if you please—— on the hill of Pausilyppo, near the church of Santa Maria a Fortuna.”

“Near the church;—I will be punctual, Signore—I will, indeed, be punctual; and I humbly thank you for your goodness towards a poor girl; and if my father, Eccellentissimo Signore, should continue hard, you will deign to speak a word for me, Signore?”

“Assuredly I will;—— but—— but I had forgot; I must know your name.”

“My name is Paulina Mezzotetto, Signore.”

“Paulina Mezzotetto;—well, I shall remember; return at once, then, Paulina—and good night.”

“Good night, Eccellentissimo Signore, and a thousand blessings attend you.” Her sylph-like figure then bounded down the steps of the portico, with graceful movement; she hastened on, and was out of sight in a moment.

Angelo returned home; he walked quicker than usual, for his mind not being perfectly at rest, he sought, by rapidity of motion, to escape those reflections which could not be shaken off. He clearly felt, that, in having promised to meet the young girl, he had acted decidedly wrong, and conscience told him, that to keep a promise improperly made, would be still more wrong. But the sophistry of inclination urged in reply, that, however hastily, or injudiciously a promise were given, that nothing, certainly, could excuse the performance of it. “And I need never see her again,” added Angelo to himself; “then why not inform Gabrielle of the whole?” demanded conscience, “and if aught, in a mere case of humanity, requires to be done, act in conjunction; since Gabrielle, under such circumstances, would not hesitate, but unite with you in the desire to render service. And why,” objected his worser reason, “run, unnecessarily, even the chance of rendering Gabrielle uneasy upon a subject, in itself so trifling, and which may be concluded, for ever, in less time than it would take me to relate it? I am growing ridiculously conscientious.”

So argued Angelo, who forgot, in the midst of his delusive reasoning, that “Virtue is arbitrary, nor admits debate.” Gabrielle, in consequence, received no information; Angelo retired to rest, harbouring concealment in his mind from the friend of his bosom; he endeavoured, therefore, to persuade himself that he did no wrong; and this very toleration jarred, in a degree, those delicate fibres of affection, which are ultimately broken and destroyed by repeated disloyalties to its faith.

Morning came, and as yet only half decided, Angelo prepared to keep his appointment; still undecided, he found himself at the spot agreed on, and did not fully know that he had determined, till he beheld, bounding towards him, the heavenly beauty he was to meet. Thus progressively are men led on to evil; too weak to be more than negatively virtuous, nor firm enough to resist from the first the temptations of vice.

The moment the irresolute Angelo beheld Paulina, his doubts and hesitations vanished; unknowing, with alacrity, he flew to meet her, and involuntarily held out to her his hand. Paulina, with a modest diffidence, gave him her hand, and advanced, raising her eyes of cerulean blue, to the countenance of Angelo. If he had been struck, with amazement, at the slight view he had of her charms the preceding night, he now felt that sentiment in a stronger degree, and was absolutely confused with admiration, as he looked upon her. Paulina was simply habited, her dress, indeed, bespoke that the lovely wearer was not rich; yet this very circumstance, joined to her modesty and the blushing innocence of her deportment, gave her only new and exquisite graces in the eyes of the susceptible Angelo.

Seeming unconscious of the admiration she excited, in simple and artless language, she related to Angelo her success with her father; she said that he had received her kindly, his anger being over, and professed himself grieved for the rashness he had been guilty of, but absolutely refused to relax a tittle of his determination swearing by the holy virgin, that she must marry Castro Nardi. “Thus, Signore, you see,” she continued, “you must condescend to speak with him at last.” Angelo promised her, that whenever her father should name the day for her nuptials, provided she informed him of it, he would make use of such arguments as should cause him speedily to resign his intentions, by convincing him that it would be for his interest to do so.

Here, as this was alone the given motive of the meeting, the interview might have terminated; but, not so, Angelo felt himself irresistibly drawn on, and he endeavoured to believe it was compassionate interest merely that influenced him in the fate of a beautiful girl; he prolonged the conversation, and was only recalled by the observation from Paulina, that she must hasten home. Angelo longed to ask the fair girl when he should behold her again, but honor and conscience made for once successful opposition. He resigned reluctantly the hand which a second time he had taken, and returned home with less alacrity than he had departed thence.

No appointment existed for the ensuing day, yet Angelo mechanically bent his steps towards the spot; the lovely Paulina, however, was not there; he measured back his way, restless and disgusted, and could not avoid feeling that he was so. The succeeding day, he renewed his attempt, and was more successful; he persuaded himself that he neither wished, nor expected to see the fair object who had so much interested him; yet, spite of himself, his eyes wandered eagerly round, and, with a sudden joy, he beheld her at a great distance, holding a small basket on her arm.

Involuntarily his pace quickened; he sought to restrain his feet, but the principle that actuated the movement was too strong for mechanical regulation, and he found himself at her side, confused, perturbed at his own sensations. The fair Paulina, however, received him with joy, though timid, unembarrassed, and affected not to disguise the pleasure she felt at beholding him. She offered him some fruit from her basket, and artlessly observed that she had gathered and brought it out, on purpose for him, in case chance should procure her the pleasure of meeting with him. How Angelo admired this bewitching simplicity! He admired it too much; and the conflict between a sense of duty, and the feelings he experienced, kept him silent. Paulina, however, prattled on, gay, unrestrained, and seeming unconscious of an idea that she ought to suppress.—Again it devolved on her to pronounce the parting, and again the uneasy, conscience-stricken Angelo bade her a reluctant “farewell.”

Weak, deluded man; each day he became more deeply entangled in the web weaving for his destruction; each day his misguided sentiments acquired fresh strength, and his peace and happiness diminished. In vain he represented to himself, that the course he was pursuing was not imprudent merely, but dishonorable, and base; and not more dishonorable and base towards the injured Gabrielle, than towards the innocent object that had allured him. What could be foreseen as the result, but the misery of the one, and the ruin of the other? Could he act consistently with honor, towards both, if he pursued his infatuation? no; for honor to one, must inevitably be baseness to the other.

Sometimes these reflections spoke so powerfully above the weakness of his heart, that he determined he would no more behold the fair girl who had excited this commotion in his breast; but these resolutions were, unhappily transient, displaced when he beheld her by opposite thoughts. Then he would endeavour to persuade himself, that simply conversing with a young artless girl, to while away sometimes a few moments which would not have been better employed, could not surely be a very momentous crime. But these moments might have been more innocently employed, and consequently better. Besides, it was not the conversations merely, but their tendency and effect that made the danger, and led progressively to the crime.

On those mornings when Angelo did not behold Paulina, he became influenced for the day; he was fretful, restless, and uneasy. Gabrielle began to observe a change in the naturally gay and happy disposition of Angelo; she attributed it, in a great degree, to the uniformity of his life, and solicited him to go frequently among his friends, and to seek amusement. Moreover, she studied, by every possible attention, to increase his comforts at home; but vain was every effort; the dissatisfaction and gloom of Angelo became daily more apparent, and peace having dwelt with them so long, now spread her fair wings, and fled their habitation.

The interviews of Angelo with Paulina were now become habitual. Gradually he struggled less against the pleasure he experienced in her society, but he sought to dupe himself into a belief, that that pleasure was harmless, because it contained no positive injury to any one, and because, being unknown, it could not even convey an imaginary one. He would not acknowledge that he loved, but simply that he was charmed with Paulina. For a time he thus aimed to deceive his reason, but soon could no longer conceal from himself the depth and extent of the sentiments with which she had inspired him.

One morning that, deeply affected by the soft smiles of his child, and the gentle unvaried kindness of Gabrielle, he had taken himself more severely to task than usual for the system he was now pursuing, yet even, while he so arraigned himself, was walking on to the accustomed spot to meet Paulina, and she perceiving him at a distance, hastened forward to meet him; when taking his arm, with that innocent familiarity which wore such charms to Angelo, she said to him, after a short silence, with an air of melancholy, “Signore, I shall certainly be obliged to marry Castro Nardi,—and I hate him more than ever.”

This subject for some time past had not been touched on, it appeared even to have been forgotten by both, but now that it was thus revived, and introduced by Paulina, the feelings of Angelo, at the moment, convinced him how much he loved. The most beautiful, the most innocent, and delicate of creatures, become the companion of a vile fisherman; be subject now, perhaps, to his disgusting tenderness, and now, to the unfeeling brutality of savage ill treatment. The idea was sacrilege, it could not be endured, and Angelo swore, with an emotion that could never have been excited by compassionate interest merely in the fate of a lovely girl, that such an unheard-of impious sacrifice must not, nor should not be.

“But, Signore,” cried Paulina, in a mournful voice, though her eyes sparkled with delight, at the warmth of Angelo, “if you were even to succeed with my father, and prevail on him to forego his intention of marrying me to Castro Nardi, even then,—— I,—— should not be happy.”

“And why not, lovely Paulina? what could then remain to afflict such innocence?”

“If I,—if I,—Signore,”—she stopped confusedly.

“Proceed, proceed;” cried Angelo.—

“If I then, Signore, had never seen you, I think,—— I might have been happy,—but,”——

“But what,” cried Angelo out of breath.—

“But now I think so much of you, Signore, I always see you before me,—— and,”—— again she stopped, and Angelo too was silent from conflicting emotion. The blood which had been kindling in his cheek, from the commencement of Paulina’s speech now, at its conclusion, had mounted into a crimson blush, and his heart beat with violence against his bosom as he faltered to himself, “She loves me!”

“I hope, Eccellentissimo Signore,” resumed Paulina, timidly raising her eyes to his face; “I hope that I have not said any thing to offend, or——”

“Offend me, sweet girl!—No, no!” cried Angelo; “you have given me only too much pleasure—pleasure which I tremble to feel—yet know not how to repress.”

This being above the comprehension of Paulina, she merely said, with a smile, and gently pressing his hand to her lips, “It is enough for me that you are not offended—for worlds I would not offend, or pain you!”

“I believe it, indeed, sweet girl!” answered Angelo, not daring to look at her: “But, for the present, I must leave you;—I must fly from you!—To-morrow we will meet again.”

Paulina cast down her eyes, and in a broken voice she said, “Now then I see that you are indeed angry with me;—for never, never yet, did you propose to leave Paulina.”

“Oh! distraction!” cried Angelo; pressing her in his arms, and as suddenly releasing her. “No, no, sweet Paulina, I am not angry; believe me, I am not, but I must leave you, I have no power to converse with you any longer.” So saying he kissed her hand—pressed it for a moment to his heart, and tore himself away.

CHAP. XIV.

ANGELO returned home; his head and heart filled with the wildest anarchy of sensation—passion, remorse, delight, and wretchedness; he now began to see, too plainly, the error he had been guilty of, in trusting himself so frequently in the society of a fascinating object; but felt, alas! that it was now impossible to recede; and though his vivid imagination presented to him images of horror around, he felt that he must inevitably rush among them; for the long-smothered passion, that now flamed in defiance of reason and honor in his breast, had too furiously burst forth to be restrained; he had fled—hastily fled, and so far, for the moment, had struggled successfully against the dangerous voice of delusion, from the lovely and too captivating Paulina. But with dismay, and bitter regret, he acknowledged, that he could never more be capable of such resolution. The remainder of the day, and the whole night, he passed in misery and self-accusation, but above all in thinking of his love. The images of the injured Gabrielle and his unconscious child stood before him in melancholy and reproachful seeming, but above all towered that of Paulina; now that he had discovered she loved him, to aim at victory over himself was vain, and though he felt his error, the seducing conviction of her tenderness, so innocently avowed, relaxed his energy, and incapacitated him even from the attempt.

On the following morning, according to promise, he hastened, with trembling eagerness once more to behold her; she was not on the accustomed spot—he waited with agonizing impatience—but she did not come—he wandered to a considerable distance—his straining eyes sought her in every direction—all was vain—and, in a state of mind raging with grief and disappointment, he was compelled to abandon all hope of seeing her for the day, and return homewards.

The idea which tortured him most was, that the tender and artless girl, affected at his seeming coldness of the preceding day, in hastening from her, could not find courage to encounter him again, and in the anguish that this thought inspired, he accused himself of unnecessary cruelty and insensibility towards her, and too great severity towards himself. In consequence of this impression, the weakness of his heart obtained a triumph over his better reason, and he determined, when next he beheld her, by yielding with less reserve to the sweet influence of her love, that he would endeavour to retrieve her happiness. When the gloomy day, which he had passed without feasting his eyes upon her beauty, had expired, and the sleepless and perturbed night had likewise passed away, he repaired at an earlier hour than usual to the hill, and soon had the now unspeakable happiness of beholding her on whom his mind was fixed. He saw, and flew to meet—but how was his happiness converted into sorrow and alarm, when he observed that beauteous countenance suffused in tears.

“Heaven, my beloved Paulina!” he exclaimed, seizing her hand, “why these tears?”

“Alas!” answered Paulina, with redoubled grief, “the day, the hour is fixed; I cannot escape, my father is now determined.”

“To marry you, Paulina?”

“Yes, yes, to the hateful Castro Nardi; never, never now, can I bring my mind to consent; sooner would I die; oh, if I had never seen you!”

Angelo trembled; “No, dear Paulina, it shall not be, trust me; but tell me the day that it is intended to——”

Paulina fixed her eyes of heavenly blue upon the face of Angelo, with an expression of anguish and despair, and exclaimed, “To-morrow!”

Angelo started back; “To-morrow, Paulina!” he cried; “then no time is to be lost; lead me instantly to your father, and I will speak to him.”

“Will you; will you, indeed?” cried Paulina, clapping her hands and smiling through her tears, “Come, then, let us hasten; perhaps to you he may relent.”

The warm, precipitate Angelo put forth his hand; Paulina seized it, and flew with, rather than led him to a retired spot, where, situated on the borders of a thick wood, and almost hidden by trees, rose a lowly hut, but seeming the abode neither of comfort nor content—attendants often in the cottage of the poor. Here Paulina stopping, looked at Angelo with a timid blush, and, pointing to the cottage, said, “There I live; can such a one as you deign to enter that place?”

“Can you ask me such a question?” said Angelo, reproachfully; and Paulina, without waiting for more, hurried on, and raising the latch, she entered the cottage, whither Angelo followed, unhesitatingly.

At the further end of the room, employed in mending a fishing net, sat the father of the fair Paulina, whom age and ugliness rendered less forbidding than the stern ferocity of aspect which fully conveyed the idea, that such a man could remain for ever inflexible to the pleadings of youth and beauty, and insensible to the feelings of humanity. An aged female, his counterpart in expression of countenance, was busied over the fire; as the door opened, the eyes of both momentarily glanced towards it, and though Paulina came accompanied by a stranger, the man did not arise, neither did the female relax her employment.

“Father,” began Paulina, while Angelo wondered in secret how so celestial a creature could call such a being parent, “I have brought you here a kind Signore, who does not wish that you should marry me to Castro Nardi; and who promises, if you will give up your cruel intention, that he——”

“Ho, ho!” cried the fisherman, Mezzotetto, interrupting his daughter with a hideous grin, “this, then, is the Signore that has turned your brain, and promised you that he would make me alter my will; well, then, Signore,” added he, with insolent contempt, looking towards Angelo, and still continuing his employment, “hear, now, what I am going to say; for when I’ve told you my mind, I shall not speak another word, though you stood here till night. This girl, whom you are so obliging as to interest yourself about, is not to be sold, like other poor girls, to any Signore that will bid for her; she was not brought up with that intention,[A] and you must look among my neighbours for another. Now, then, Signore, this girl is my daughter, and therefore my property; she shall marry my old friend Castro Nardi—and more than that, she shall marry him to-morrow. You have heard my mind; neither all your gold will move me to change a tittle of it, nor all your fair speeches to say another word.”

[A] It is the infamous practice of some of the lower orders of Italians, to sell their daughters to the young nobility, or to their parents or guardians for them, who prefer that mode as the most effectual security against early or imprudent marriages.

Angelo was indignant at the insolence and abruptness of the fisherman, while Paulina appeared covered with confusion at such language being addressed to him, and knew not where to hide her head; but indignant as was Angelo, when he looked at the lovely girl, he suppressed his rage, and condescended, for her sake, to address her father. This he did in a gentle and persuasive accent, representing to him the cruelty of the sacrifice he was about to make; and, notwithstanding what he had observed, offering, upon condition that he would abandon his purpose, to make him any compensation he would require.

It was in vain, however, that Angelo thus descended; the fisherman answered not a word; but when he found that, still entertaining hope of effecting a change, he made use of different arguments, and various inducements, he suddenly rose from his chair, and opening the door of the hovel, looked at Angelo with a significant nod, and pointed towards it. The indignation of Angelo now rose to a height; he looked fiercely at the rude ruffian before him, and his arm was raised to strike.—Paulina flew towards him, and seizing his uplifted arm, whispered at the same moment, “Save me!”

This recalled his self-possession; contempt took the place of rage in his breast; he looked tenderly and expressively at Paulina, and with a glance of scorn at the savage Mezzotetto, he quitted in silence the cottage.

Soon, however, the remembrance of the insolence he had met with was displaced by considerations more momentous, and of deeper interest. If he did not devise some prompt means of saving Paulina, on the morrow she would be immolated at the shrine of grossest barbarism, by the most unprecedented and savage obstinacy; every exertion would then be vain. “No, no;” said he, quickening his pace, in the attempt to justify himself for the keen solicitude he felt; “nature and common humanity forbid that such a sacrifice should be permitted; it becomes a duty to endeavour to prevent it, and I will use my best efforts.” As he proceeded he considered the means of putting his designs in execution: a thousand various plans suggested themselves to his heated fancy, and in turn were eagerly embraced and rejected.

At length, after deeply pondering, he decided that he would return about night-fall to the cottage, seek some means of seeing Paulina, and not leave the spot till he had succeeded; then, if she still stated her father to remain inflexible, withdraw her at once from a power he so much abused, and place her in some secure asylum. But withdrawing a young girl from her parents, and placing her in another asylum, becoming responsible for her future fate, entailing new duties on himself, and new difficulties! How afterwards to dispose of her? These reflections entered not the giddy mind of Angelo, or if they did, he repressed, and would not allow himself to attend to them. One difficulty which presented itself, and which gave him most consideration to surmount, was where, if it should be necessary immediately to withdraw her, he might for the present place her.

Suddenly he recollected that a man, who had formerly been his servant, but who was now married and lived in the suburbs, near Pausilyppo, would with alacrity perform any thing he should require, and in his house he determined, till a more eligible situation could be discovered, to place her. Thus far arranged, his mind became somewhat lightened; for, on the impropriety, rashness, and danger, exclusive of other considerations, of involving himself in an affair of this nature, he would not for a moment think. Anxiously passed the hours with him till dusk came on, he left his home, no longer pleasing to him, because of the reproaches it conveyed to his heart, and wrapped in the concealment of a loose cloak, directed his steps towards the hut of the fisherman.

By the time he arrived, it had become dark; he approached the lowly hovel, and through the crevice of the shutter espied a light within;—drawing still nearer, he could perceive what was passing; he applied his eye to a small aperture, and beheld the fair Paulina, with her father and mother, seated round a table, in jovial supper, and apparent good fellowship; the mother was laughing heartily; the sternness of the father’s features had considerably relaxed, and the ever-beautiful Paulina wore upon her’s a triumphant smile.

“How is this?” said Angelo to himself, pausing in dismay, when the idea suggested itself that the lovely Paulina had consented to become the wife of Castro Nardi, and thus had re-established the harmony which appeared to reign among them: he trembled at the thought, for he felt, if so, that his interference would be undesired; and however in the morning he had pretended to himself, that duty and humanity alone called him to active exertion, in this case he now felt that if that duty existed no longer, he should be miserable, for that he had a motive still more powerful to impel him. While he still continued gazing, but without being able to distinguish their conversation, he beheld Paulina rise from the table, and approaching the door, pause close to it, and seem to listen as for some sound without.

This movement revived his hopes: he quitted instantly the window, and advancing towards the door, ventured gently to tap against it.—Immediately an answering tap from within convinced him he had been heard;—his heart bounded—and he remained immoveable against the door, listening for every breath, and at every slight movement supposing Paulina would appear. At length, sick at heart with the delay, once more he looked through the casement, the lamp was extinguished, and the only light which remained was emitted from the wood fire, which still continued to blaze on the hearth. Neither the father nor mother of Paulina were longer visible, but in a few moments he beheld herself, like the goddess of night, stealing along on tip-toe, covered with a large mantle of grey cloth, and a long veil, which, for the present however, depended from the back of her head, and shewed in full perfection the alabaster forehead, round which luxuriantly twined the amber ringlets, and wantoned over her graceful shoulders, in rich elastic waves of gold.

Angelo gazed with rapture and delight, yet scarce could he gaze, from impatience to behold her near him. Paulina advanced, carefully undrew the slender bolt, gently raised the latch, and in a moment was in his eager arms.

“Hush!” she cried, withdrawing herself, “you must not speak while we are here;” and, seizing his arm, she led him rapidly along, till they had advanced a considerable way. “Now then,” said Paulina, suddenly stopping, “now then you must determine; my father and mother are both asleep—I seized the opportunity, and boldly ventured past their bed, knowing from your signal that you were without. Say, say then at once,” she presently added, clasping one of his hands between both her’s, “do you wish to save the poor Paulina? If you do, I shall be too happy—if you do not, death or the bitterest misery must be my portion, for return home I never will to be the wife of Castro Nardi!”

Angelo pressed the weeping beauty to his breast; again, in the assumed form of humanity, spoke the powerful voice of passion, “Yes, yes, fair creature,” he ardently exclaimed, “I will save—I will protect you;” when, jealous doubt for a moment intervening, he added, “but tell me, Paulina, how was it, that with the horror of this dreaded marriage in perspective, I could behold you a short time ago gaily sporting and laughing with your parents at supper?”

“What,” cried Paulina, hastily, “were you there so early? and did you not readily conceive my motives for such conduct? I wanted to make my father believe, that having no longer any hope of his changing his resolution, I was desirous to obey him as cheerfully as I could. I feared, by appearing still disposed to resist, he might have used hard measures with me, confined and watched me till the very moment arrived for my marriage with Castro Nardi. When they found me seeming so patient and dutiful, they had no suspicion, but praised me to the skies, and were kinder to me than ever.—I know it was very wrong to deceive my parents, but——”

“Enough, enough, dear Paulina, you have, I confess, taken a weight off my mind, by the avowal of your innocent stratagem, so well imagined, and under all circumstances so perfectly excuseable!”

“Ah, then! could you believe that I was really happy? could you suppose, for a moment, that I would agree to marry the handsomest Cavalier in all Italy, after seeing you? much less the odious old Castro Nardi, who is besides as wicked as he is ugly!”

The words so artlessly expressed, “after seeing you,” shot through the heart of Angelo; he drew the hand of Paulina through his arm, and pausing a moment, looked tenderly at her, and in a tremulous voice, said, “Paulina, sweet girl, I fear you love me.”—

“Ah, I do indeed; but why do you fear it?”

“Why should I?” said Angelo, to himself, “And do you really love me, Paulina?,” he cried.

“Oh, I loved you,” cried Paulina, with animation, “from the first moment that I saw you; and when I learnt that you was my Lord il Conte D’Albini, I was afraid, indeed, to continue to love you, and I tried all I could to overcome my passion; but, instead of that, all my trying only made me love you the more!”

Angelo was almost wild at this seducing confession; the very artlessness of which rendered it doubly dangerous; he forgot in a moment his self-possession; his virtue! reason! honor! all, all was lost, in the overpowering delusion of the moment; he pressed Paulina in his arms, and now felt, beyond the power of sophistry to prevent, how much, and how completely he was, and had been throughout, the slave of the most consuming passion! All further hesitations, all further struggles, were now from the question; he seized the hand of the bewitching girl, and led her rapidly along, till they reached the abode where, for the present, he desired to place her. Arrived, by the help of certain arguments that speak in a language ever most convincing to vulgar minds, the possessors of the house, who were besides under extensive obligations to Angelo, received, without a single question, and without the slightest demur, the lovely Paulina beneath their roof; for indifferent were they to the fate of youth and innocence, careless respecting its sacrifice or preservation, further than their own interest might be concerned.

Here, then, in a tumult of love and agitation, the rash imprudent Angelo left, reluctantly, his beauteous charge, after giving every order for her accommodation, and tenderly promising that he would see her early on the following day. He had now entered too dreadfully deep in the path of error, to think even of retracting; his whole thoughts were of Paulina.—She agitated his heart with the strongest emotions of passion;—his brain she filled with eternal anarchy;—he visited her daily;—he could enjoy no happiness when out of her presence;—the hours he passed not with her, hung heavy with disgust;—and perpetual fears tormented him, lest the beloved of his heart should be discovered in her present asylum, so ineligible, so unworthy of her, by her father, or perhaps by Castro Nardi; but, above all, lest Gabrielle, that injured Gabrielle, of whom he dreaded to think, should learn his apostacy, and seek in person to convince herself of the truth.

These were the ideas that racked and disquieted him, and were some alloy to the guilty pleasures he enjoyed. One morning Paulina informed him, that on the preceding evening she had observed two men walking to and fro, beneath her window, one of whom, she was almost certain, was her father. Angelo, alarmed, felt all his fears on the point of being verified; his mind became filled with a thousand different plans for the security of his cherished prize; he would have moved her instantly to another habitation, but remembered that all places might be equally insecure beyond the moment.

How much, however, were his apprehensions increased, when on the following morning she told him, with a countenance of alarm, that so late as after his departure the night before, standing as usual at the window to catch a last glance of his person, she beheld a female of a commanding figure, and wrapped in a loose mantle, issue as it were from the house, (though of that she could not be certain, as the situation of her window prevented her from having a view of the door,) and follow him at a slow pace as long as he remained in sight, still keeping a short distance from him.

This intelligence struck him with dismay far exceeding what he had yet felt, and it was not diminished when he suddenly remembered, that on returning home last night, Gabrielle was not as usual sitting up for him; but on enquiry he had learned, that she had retired early to her own apartment. Instantly this vague association of circumstances struck him with the idea that she must have watched his steps, traced him to the house, remained till she saw him leave it, and then, following him home, have returned secretly to her own apartment. He immediately concluded, therefore, that he was betrayed to her by the very persons with whom Paulina was placed, and whom, although he had not confided to them aught, might, if they chose, inform her of sufficient to excite her jealousy and suspicion.

These reflections filled him with confusion and perturbation; he perceived the necessity, so deemed by him, of taking instantly some certain measures to preserve Paulina from the dreadful consequences of discovery. To his terrified imagination it now appeared that she was beset by danger, and that not a moment must be lost to withdraw her from its power. Paulina, who appeared to read in his varying countenance the distraction of his mind, affectionately pressing his hand to her bosom, said, “Ah, dearest Angelo, would we were in another land; any where that I might behold you happy, and at ease.”

Angelo, who had been revolving in his mind the best plan to follow, was roused by this sentiment—he looked at Paulina; a dreadful idea glanced through his brain—he trembled to pursue it, more still to indulge it; yet, involuntarily, in an eager voice, he exclaimed, “Could you, could you be happy with me in another land, Paulina?”

“Happy!” returned Paulina, with an air of reproach, and fixing on him, with the softest tenderness, her dark blue eyes, “Now surely, Angelo, you have asked that question in sport, for you cannot doubt that I could be happy with you on the top of the wildest rock—in a cave—in a savage forest—any where.”

“Oh, say no more—say no more,” cried Angelo, pressing his hand to his forehead, “say no more, unless you would distract me, and make me more a wretch than I am!—Did I bid you be silent? Could I? Oh, repeat again what you have so sweetly said.”

“Nay, dearest Angelo, look not so wildly, and I will repeat, that I could be happy with you any where; without you, no where.”

“’Tis done,” cried Angelo, starting up and gazing upon her; “this, this is the work of fate; such transcendant beauty as your’s should never have been thrown in the path of one whose duties forbade him to be enslaved by it;—but—but the die is now cast;” and, pressing her in his arms, “mine you are by choice, and mine now, in despite of every consideration, you shall continue to be; not fate itself shall have power to break those ties it hath so closely entwined.—— I leave thee, Paulina, for a short time; I leave thee—heaven be thy guard meanwhile.”

Like every determination, however rash, wild, or imprudent, which entered the erring mind of Angelo, he dwelt on this with a spirit of infuriate ardor and adherence, which, till put in force, allowed him repose neither night nor day. To quit Italy with a girl whom scarcely he could be said to know, but whose uncommon personal beauty had fascinated his senses and enslaved his reason,—who was devoid of the divine charm which alone adds interest to beauty—mind;—and who possessed, to compensate, nothing but a graceful naiveté of manner, or expression; all this appeared no longer a plan of folly and of danger, or replete with injury or baseness to others; his violent and uncontrollable passion carried all before it, and superseded every consideration of reason, honor, or duty.

“It is in vain, it is in vain,” he would say to himself; “I respect, I venerate the virtues of Gabrielle, but I adore to distraction the too beauteous Paulina. Loving another, then, I can no longer make her happy; to remain with her, while my whole soul is another’s, would be an insult to the undivided tenderness she still bears me, but which I, alas! unhappy that I am, can no longer with equal ardor return. I leave her then;”—when suddenly the thought of his child intervening, whom, next to Paulina, he most tenderly doated on, gave a fresh turn to his thoughts; and the cruel idea of robbing him from Gabrielle, to make him the innocent partner of his intended flight, for the moment suggested itself and was paused on: “but, no, no;” he would suddenly exclaim, “that would be too barbarous—she shall retain the beloved boy; he—he may console her for the unavoidable dereliction of which his father is guilty.” Then, urged by a reproaching conscience not to inflict upon the unconscious Gabrielle an unnecessary pang, he would reluctantly consider, for a moment, the feasibility of his still continuing with her, and whether it might not be possible to retain, secure and unmolested, the fair object of his love, without departing from Italy; but soon this idea he rejected, on the plea of future discovery, if it were not already certain; then should he have to encounter bitter, because merited reproaches and wretchedness at home; restraint and perpetual apprehension when abroad. He recurred, then, with eagerness to the first suggestion—the sad and cruel alternative of departure.

Once decided on this point, home became dreadful to him, from the poignant yet silent reproaches which it made him; intoxicated with the beauty of Paulina, resolved, yet involuntarily hesitating to strike the dreadful blow upon the head of the wretched Gabrielle, his blood in an unceasing ferment with passion, anxiety, and remorse, he became impatient to fix at once the cruel moment of departure—for the consciousness of intended crime was still more dreadful than the commission of it; he desired to escape objects and scenes which rung in his ears the perpetual larum of his guilt; and, with the fury of madness, he desired to leap down the frightful precipice, without pausing on the verge to contemplate it.

The fatal step was taken; suddenly and secretly, with Paulina he quitted Naples;—he deserted the unhappy Gabrielle! he deserted his child! he yielded to the seductions of an ignoble passion; and, while he stamped himself a wretch, hurled misery and destruction on the head of others.

CHAPTER XV.

IT will now be necessary to go back a few steps of this history, and return to Oriana, whose vengeful rage, and unabated malice has been in a former period alluded to, and stated to have remained long abortive. But though such was in reality the case, and although upwards of two years had elapsed in fruitless machinations and vain attempts, Oriana was not to be thus baffled; obstacles which long since must have discouraged a less vindictive mind, seemed but to add fuel to the hate which burned in her; she still continued to watch every movement of the objects of her long-desired vengeance; the desire of vengeance was the predominent sensation of her soul, and for that she seemed to abandon every other consideration.

Not even her regard for the opposite sex had now a power of detaching her mind, for any length of time, from the contemplation of her highest aim. In every blooming youth she beheld a second Eugene; the remembrance of the shame and disgrace she had suffered was excited afresh; and she trembled lest deception might lurk, and she again commit herself. Against Gabrielle were her long-continued turbulent emotions chiefly indulged. Angelo, whom she had never loved, she did not now hate sufficiently to desire above every thing his destruction. She considered him merely as a means to work the misery and destruction of Gabrielle. She knew him well, for artless and undisguised was the character of Angelo. She knew him to be fickle, variable, ardent, and susceptible; and it was upon this knowledge that she chiefly grounded her hopes of compassing the mischief she meditated.

Wearied by a recourse to arts and stratagems hitherto unavailing, she determined upon organising a system which should be so perfectly regulated in all its parts, and so indefatigably persevered in, that no human foresight or skill should be capable of circumventing it. Oriana was truly a Genoese, cunning as they all are, inured to hardships, patient, and persevering, above the rest of the Italians; and, naturally poor, they make up, by an indefatigable industry, for the niggardliness of fortune towards them. There is a celebrated proverb respecting them, that they have a sea without fish, a land without trees, and men without faith: perhaps women may be included in the latter stricture, which could not be better applied than to Oriana.

When a child, she had been placed by her parents with the wife of a poor fisherman, living in a hut by the side of the Bonzevera, to be nursed; but subsequently these parents, whose infamy and want of principle appeared to have been transmitted to their offspring, abandoned her to the mercy of poverty-struck wretches, who had grounded their chief hopes of decent support upon the pay they expected to have received for the care and nouriture of their charge. When however, after a short time, they discovered that so far from being amended in their situation, her parents had absconded, and left their forlorn infant upon their hands, they determined, though sorely smarting under the lash of poverty, and bitterly disappointed, to endeavor to do the best they could, rather than abandon to destruction an unoffending child.

Oriana accordingly remained with the fisherman and his wife, who did not find that the addition of her slender support rendered them poorer than they were before. Nor when the wife of the fisherman, a few years after this event, presented him with a daughter, did they look with altered eye upon the little Oriana, or turn her adrift; they brought her up with their own daughter, and still contrived to live. When Oriana arrived at an age to comprehend, she was made fully sensible, but without reproach, of the obligations under which she existed to her benefactors, and she promised, that if she lived she would endeavour to repay to the utmost the kindness she had received. This promise, without entering more minutely than is necessary into her history, the unhappy girl faithfully kept. In process of time, when requiring no longer their protection or care, but towering above them in meretricious splendor, she did not add ingratitude to them, in the catalogue of her vices; she did not forget, or consider inferior to her, the obscure guardians of her early youth, but transferred them from the wretched hovel where long she had existed with them, to a commodious and comparitively sumptuous residence; bestowed on them a share of her comforts and advantages, and suffered the tide of her fortune to flow in a degree towards them.

In consequence of this, the fisherman Mezzotetto, and his family, were devoted both from gratitude and early habit to her, who, from a deserted and dependant orphan upon them, had become their benefactress; and it would have been a task of difficulty for Oriana to have proposed to them that which they would have hesitated to comply with. These were the persons then, who in the organisation of her proposed plan presented themselves to her mind, as ready and willing assistants, and fit and perfect instruments for carrying into execution her cherished vengeance, too long delayed. Hastening to them, therefore, soon as her ideas were sufficiently arranged, she first exacted from each an oath of secrecy, and then imparting to them as much of her views as she considered necessary, she explained to Mezzotetto the part she desired him to act, and in what way he could best forward the hope of vengeance, burning at her heart, which long she confessed had destroyed (from being unaccomplished) her every pleasure, and which, if remaining much longer thus, must hasten her, in despair, to an untimely grave.

Mezzotetto, his wife, and daughter, the latter of whom was intended to act a most conspicuous part in this infamous drama, at hearing this last declaration of Oriana, prayed her to dismiss such gloomy thoughts, and to rely upon them wholly, entering with the deepest interest into the sentiments of their adopted child, sympathising in the bitterness of her insulted feelings, approving of her determination to revenge the outrages she had sustained, and promising to go hand in hand with her, in whatever she should decree; and unhesitatingly exert their best efforts to meet her views.

This was no more than Oriana expected; she thanked her father and mother, however, for such she would still continue, to their great satisfaction, to call them, for the aid they so readily offered, and bidding them farewell, departed with the utmost exultation, accompanied by Paulina Mezzotetto, their daughter, whom they cheerfully resigned to be governed by her will and pleasure.

Paulina was some years younger than Oriana, and bore the appearance of being still younger than she was. Her beauty was of that peculiar cast which may be termed heavenly, for her face accurately resembled all that the finest painting has suggested, or the imagination conceives, of the Angel; her form possessed a sylphic delicacy, and that want of careless ease which in another might have been the result of ignorance, or vulgarism, but seemed in her the graceful timidity of innocent beauty. It appeared as though nature, in a freak, had determined to combine all that was beautiful and perfect in an obscure individual, but to give her neither mind, heart, nor soul, that she might show how gloriously she could embellish a casket, which yet should contain nothing. The loveliness of Paulina’s person was, indeed, the only quality of beauty she possessed.

Frequent communication with Oriana had early corrupted her principles. She had praised her exquisite beauty, and this had excited a confusion of ideas in her mind, which inevitably laid the foundation of her future depravity, from having taught her to value this cherished beauty, as her highest merit, and most valuable possession. She had entered eagerly into the designs of Oriana, yielded implicitly to all she had proposed, and in the prospect so pleasing to her ignorant and contaminated mind, of being called into action, though only as the tool of another, she hoped that a field might be opened for herself, wherein her beauty might procure her similar advantages with those appearing to be enjoyed by the vile and miserable Oriana.

Accordingly the Genoese had found it no difficult task to instruct so willing a pupil in the part she was to act. Paulina, whose natural cunning was on a par with the depravity of Oriana, readily comprehended, and as readily acquiesced in all that was required of her. Every arrangement then being accurately made, and their plan of action put in train, the Genoese experienced a sensation of joy in the prospect of at length scattering and destroying those she hated, such as long had been unknown to her breast; for the continued contemplation of her desired and insatiate revenge had literally deprived her of peace and rest; already she led the life of the tortured upon earth, racked with never-ceasing pain.

How her dire hopes became realized, how her arts succeeded, and how justly she had estimated the weakness of Angelo, has been seen; assisted in her efforts, and powerfully seconded by the seducing auxiliary of matchless beauty in the person of Paulina, her triumph was complete, and the full measure of destruction, full even as the craving vengeance of her soul could desire, heaped upon the head of the miserable Gabrielle.

To her, unconscious as yet of the horrors bursting over her, we now return. It was long ere this unhappy victim of early error and misfortune suspected the full extent of her misery; true, she had long seen, and seen with pain, that Angelo had differed strangely during the last few months from the excellent and tender Angelo that for two years preceding he had uniformily been; but this change of demeanor she attributed to almost any thing but the true cause. She knew that Angelo had a propensity to deep play, that he loved wine, and that when he had indulged in the latter, he was but too apt to fall into the error of the former. She conceived it probable that he might have lost considerably, and she was in this case too delicate and too high minded to remark his varying deportment,—now restless, now abstracted, now fretful, or reserved. She fondly flattered herself, that kindness and attention would recal him to himself, and that, if circumstances were as she suspected, they might ultimately even prove beneficial, by operating as a severe though radical cure against all future similar excesses.

What still more tended to exclude every idea of a different nature, was the doting fondness with which he still continued to regard his child, and sometimes with an enthusiasm of tenderness, even till the tears started to his eyes. Little did she surmise the real source of those tears, which were excited at the thought of soon ceasing to behold him, or of becoming a wretch still viler, by snatching him from the bosom of a mother. Even in his moodiest moments he would play with him, and fondle him with a mixture of pain, and eager delight, such as to dispel for a time his guiltier thoughts.

Never could Gabrielle suspect so far the honor and faith of Angelo, as, situated as he was, to suppose for an instant, that any other female could attract, much less employ his attention,—for the insinuation of the base Paulina to Angelo was wholly unfounded:—Gabrielle had neither suspected, nor had ever watched his movements; the fabrication was at the instigation of the fiend Oriana, for the purpose of inducing the deluded Angelo to hasten every measure, and to commit himself beyond the power of redemption. Gabrielle was besides so rational, so liberally just in her conceptions, although so enthusiastic in her feelings, that she could make infinite allowances for the variations of manner, conduct, or disposition. She considered Angelo as a firm and faithful husband, who was fond in spirit, rather than in profession; not as a lover who, with a new object, is all rapture and tender endearment. Superior sense, and fine discrimination, taught her, that the female who desires to be happy, must forego all the idle gratifications of vanity, or foolish egotism; and that the female who loves, and is beloved, may readily sacrifice these nothings at the shrine of reason.

Thus, then, when at last the fatal truth burst upon her, it came like the lightning’s flash, which for a time dries up and palsies every faculty. Angelo had been for some time past in the habit of returning home at an extreme late hour of the night, but had never yet remained absent for the whole of it. Still, when the first night elapsed and he did not return, Gabrielle in her mind palliated it, for she considered that he might have been by some friends prevailed on to dine at a distance from town, and afterwards not to venture back over some unfrequented road, at an unseasonable hour. Thus, though she experienced a slight pang at the inattention of Angelo, once so unusual with him, but now, alas! too frequent, she did not suffer much uneasiness or alarm. When the following morning arrived however, noon, evening, and night came on, and still no appearance of Angelo, the thoughts of Gabrielle were of some terrible cause for delay, some unforeseen accident or disaster. How could a mind so generous, so noble, and so conscious in itself of not meriting the cruelest injury that could be offered woman, suspect for an instant the real cause of Angelo’s absence?

At length the second night passed away, and Gabrielle, now alarmed and agitated beyond endurance, imagined nothing less than midnight assassination.

Her thoughts wandered to Oriana; she dismissed in horror the idea; again and again they reverted to her, fixed on her, and could not be withdrawn. Angelo did not return; who but her could desire or plan his death? Yielding to a sudden impulse of despair, scarce knowing what she intended, and incapable of consideration, she determined to see her. The thought and the execution were almost one, she flew to her house with a wild rapidity, and on gaining admittance, burst immediately into the well-known apartment, where usually Oriana sat: there she beheld the fierce machinating fiend, who, calm and triumphant, was exulting in idea over the havoc she had caused. Gabrielle stood before her—gazed upon her for a moment; she read her fate in her eyes, and clasping her hands together, with pale and frenzied countenance, she exclaimed, “Tell me—tell me, I conjure you, where is Angelo! Where is my husband!”

Oriana cast on her a glance, in which all the dreadful passions of her mind were depicted—hate, malice, ruthless revenge, and barbarous triumph; then, with a smile which language cannot describe, she said, “Angelo D’Albini is not with me you perceive, Signora; where else he is, no doubt himself will soon inform you.”

“Oh, lives he, lives he to inform me?” wildly exclaimed Gabrielle; “sure, if he did, long since I should have known.”

“It is quite impossible, you know, Signora,” observed Oriana, with a cutting coolness, “to account for the caprices of men; in all probability the Conte is still living; but as he once preferred you, and then me, and then you again, you being condescending enough to receive him, it is not impossible but he may now prefer another to you. However, fear not, perhaps he may return to you again still.”

At this horrible insinuation, and the air with which it was delivered, the most distracting ideas presented themselves to Gabrielle, who knew not on what to fix. That Oriana was informed respecting Angelo, she could not avoid believing; but to the hint of his infidelity she attached not the smallest credit, conceiving that Oriana merely intimated this to delude and give her pain. From her obdurate and malicious countenance, however, she clearly beheld she had nothing to expect; to interrogate her would be vain and she therefore merely said, while her towering spirit gained for a moment some ascendancy over the anguish of her heart, “Wretched woman! though I shudder at your depravity, I disdain your insinuations, and despise your malice; Angelo has so long escaped your abominable machinations, I trust in heaven he may escape them still, and, to the confusion of your hopes, unchanged and uninjured soon return.”

“But not to you;” exclaimed Oriana, bursting into a loud laugh, as Gabrielle, struck with horror, hastened from her presence; “not to you, not to you,” she repeated, and her demoniac peals of laughter continued to echo in her ears till she had escaped beyond the verge of its sound.

The next step of the distracted Gabrielle was to make application to all those friends of Angelo with whom she was acquainted, for some intelligence respecting him, but in vain; not any of his friends had been lately in the habit of seeing him; and now for the first time it was, when Gabrielle called to mind his perpetual absence from home, that something like suspicion glanced for a moment across her mind. Where, then, could he have been, if, as it appeared, not among his friends? Wonder, alarm, and uncertainty possessed her wholly, and, in undescribable suspense and anguish, she found she had no alternative but to await the moment that should explain to her his mysterious disappearance, his present fate, or future intention.

At length this anxiously desired, yet terrible moment arrived,—the moment which was to give her information of the man, who having first involved her in the most dreadful misfortunes, prepared now to give them a climax; to let her behold, traced by his hand, those horrible characters, which were to reveal to her his perfidy and ingratitude! A letter, post-mark of Calais, was the form, in which this cruel communication met the astonished and almost incredulous eyes of the bewildered Gabrielle. At each line she read, her heart beat with increased violence—dreadful ideas of her own situation, and the future fate of her child, like horrible phantoms gleamed before her;—the power of thought gradually forsook her;—her eyes glared on the paper, without power to decypher it to an end;—in vain she struggled to collect herself, to retain her fleeting senses; violent convulsions seized her—she staggered—and fell prostrate to the floor! The contents of the letter were these:—

“Calais.

“Conscious that I owe to you an explanation for my conduct, I have not till this moment found courage to address you; and even now, oh, Gabrielle! I can explain to you nothing. I am attracted, and borne away from you by a dazzling constellation which ravishes my eyes, which maddens my senses, and which fills up my heart. Oh, Gabrielle! Oh, unfortunate daughter of Montmorency, pity my baseness—pity my ingratitude!

“What shall I say more?—Return to you I cannot;—for, to return to you with affections changed would be an insult to that celestial goodness and virtue of your’s which my soul reverences and adores. But though my soul reverences and adores your virtues, my heart, my weak erring heart, doats upon the beauty of another. Oh, wretch that I am! God! why do I live to write thus to her I once so fondly loved, whom reproachful conscience sternly tells me I ought still to love!—to the mother of my child? To—— oh, Gabrielle, these falling tears bear witness of my anguish and remorse; and shew you that your wrongs are revenged, even in the very centre of my guilty heart, torn as it is by the most impetuous passion. Our child—— I have left him with you, beloved Gabrielle; beloved, did I say? Oh, heaven have mercy! where will this confusion of feeling, this distraction of idea end?

“My destination is to England—to London, where I shall fix; my reasons for not remaining at Naples, after the guilt I have avowed to you, must be obvious; perhaps other considerations swayed me too: at all events, respect for your feelings had its share in determining me. I could not, Gabrielle, I could not openly dare outrage that delicate tenderness that you bore me;—ah, its remembrance throbs at my heart in bitterest reproach, and the conviction of it increases my crime. But attempt not to recal me, Gabrielle; ah, no, I know you too well; nor reproach me, I implore you; it will be unnecessary; I could almost say, confound me not—sink me not to the earth—even by beholding your hand writing!—Cherish our boy;—believe me, he is dear to me as to you; but in leaving him with you, I have preferred you to myself; cherish him for the sake of his father—for the sake of his father, did I say? No, no, no—for his own sake, sweet innocent! be happy, too, if you can, and endeavour to forget that such a wretch exists as

“ANGELO D’ALBINI.”

“My banker’s agent, at Naples, has orders to answer your drafts to any amount.”

Thus wrote the weak, the erring Angelo, whose pleasure in the gratification of his passion was more than counterbalanced by the pangs of his remorse; whose heart, when the vain hours of dalliance had palled, missing the refined delight of intellectual intercourse, was continually reproached by his reason for abandoning a being like Gabrielle, and who, while he shuddered at, and lamented his vices, had not the fortitude to oppose them.

The unhappy Gabrielle, whose fall had been heard by a domestic in the next room, was conveyed immediately to bed, and every means administered to restore her senses; but her mind had received a blow which reason could not overcome; violent fever and delirium seized her, and she was speedily reduced to a state such as made it improbable she would long live to deplore, or smart under her manifold injuries.

Angelo in the mean time proceeded to England, reached London, and there establishing himself for a time, the stings of remorse and uneasy reflection were blunted by the frivolous gaieties in which he indulged, by exhibiting the beautiful Paulina to the ephemeral flutterers of the day, by hearing the praises bestowed on her person, and by exciting her idle wonder, and shallow observations, at the scenes so new to her.

But it is impossible to be always immersed in amusement, which soon ceases to be esteemed so, when the spirits become exhausted; it is impossible to gaze always upon a lovely countenance with equal admiration, for the senses becoming satiated, the heart requires something more—something to interest, to delight, to fix beyond the moment. In a union like that of Angelo with Paulina, where passion and the wandering senses were alone the basis, the rapture of enthusiasm soon cools, the effervescence of the senses subsides, indifference succeeds to ardour, and to indifference disgust. In such an union, too, where there is no solid foundation for the mind on which to rest, there are inevitably many moments and many hours, which, if not dedicated to passion, for love in this instance we may not call it, must be vacant, oppressive and inane. The mind cannot be for ever on the stretch, the calm and social pleasures of intellectual intercourse are necessary to refresh, and to invigorate it, and then alone can it be truly said that love becomes a rational, blissful, and refined enjoyment.

Though still intoxicated by her matchless beauty, the eyes of the misguided Angelo opened by degrees. He still beheld before him those enchanting features, and that blooming form, but he saw nothing beyond them, and even those he saw daily with decreased admiration, because daily they became more familiar in his sight. He could now discern, e’en through the delusive charms of that beauteous countenance, a dearth of every finer quality of the mind; but time convinced him soon it wanted not the more ignoble characteristics of cunning, and mercenary selfishness; for Paulina, having now gained her aim, and satisfied Oriana, was no longer anxious to appear to Angelo the thing she was not. Her modest deportment, bashful innocence, and timidity, gradually, nay quickly, vanished. She became bold, tyrannical, capricious, and, presuming on the misplaced fondness of Angelo, extravagant and ridiculous in her requests. Thus, while she disgusted him by her extreme folly, she made him wretched by the conduct she pursued, and painfully awakened him from the dream of enchantment by which he had been misled.

Now then it was, that the ill-fated Gabrielle appeared before him in the full perfection of her real beauty; never, till this time, had he so fully appreciated her; she stood before him, decked in the bright glory of her various virtues; she held his forsaken child in her arms, and regarded him in mournful accusation. From this vision of pain, because of happiness scorned and cast away, he hurried in anguish to Paulina for consolation; he saw still that fair face, but he saw in it those traces of a grovelling and worthless mind, which experience had revealed to him existed, disguised no longer by the transitory smiles of artless innocence.

“Oh, is it possible!” would he mentally exclaim, in regarding the altered object before him, “is it possible, that I could ever have been so deceived? Can this be the soft creature, whose trembling innocence, whose blushing simplicity, excited first my love? No, no, it cannot be her, but some fiend rather, who, to punish me, has assumed her form.”

Mean time Paulina, who, like her mistress Oriana, was utterly incapable of such a sentiment as love, and who felt towards Angelo a perfect indifference; respecting his pride and his feelings as little as she did his happiness, took every opportunity of mortifying the one, and of insulting the other, by the most flagrant levity of deportment towards such of his friends, as, to divert the vacuum of those hours he must have passed in her society only, he thought it expedient to invite. Indeed she did not disguise from Angelo that she preferred the conversation of other men to his, and gave as her reason, with an appearance of archness, but real sincerity, that she was weary of continually regarding the same object. Thus had he the mortification of seeing himself foiled at his own weapons,—fickleness and love of novelty.

A few months elapsed, and a perfect revolution having taken place in the mind of Angelo, he decided, in the bitterness of his mournful retrospection, to lay open his guilty heart to the deeply injured Gabrielle, to acknowledge his present conviction of his folly and baseness, to cast himself repentant at her feet, implore the tender charities of her nature for forgiveness, and supplicate her to receive him once more to her bosom.

According as his letter should be answered, he determined to act; and having written and dispatched it, he awaited in trembling anxiety for some reply.

But day after day elapsed, and he did not receive any; a line at least he had expected from the well-known goodness of Gabrielle—a line, however cold, however severe: in vain his hopes, not a word arrived to cheer him, and, overwhelmed by sorrow and regret, he said to himself, “Alas! even the supreme excellence of Gabrielle has undergone a change; but it is my baseness which has contaminated it, and taught her noble nature to desire revenge. Ah! Gabrielle, Gabrielle, thou hast it fully!—fully are thy wrongs revenged!”

CHAPTER XVI.

WHEN the conduct of Paulina became insupportable to Angelo, which it frequently did, he would rush from the house, and, a solitary being in the midst of society, seek out some temporary amusement to drown the uneasiness and dissatisfaction of his mind. Often, rather than return home, he would wander for hours about the streets, dreading to encounter the fierceness of Paulina’s resentment, on some frivolous pretext, or for some alledged fault, of which he would be unconscious.

One night, that her procedure had been more than ordinarily violent and disgusting, he had left her abruptly, and, quitting the house, determined to remain out to a late hour, preferring any discomfort attendant on that plan, to the misery of enduring her society, in such a temperament of mind. When at length he gathered resolution to return, Paulina, to his infinite joy, was not to be seen; concluding she had retired to her apartment, he hastily sought his own, too happy to have escaped a scene which he had anticipated with pain and apprehension. As he entered his room, a letter on his dressing table attracted his attention; he took it up carelessly, and with astonishment read thus:

“COUNT,

“I never loved you, and why I pretended to do so, you may at one time or another learn;—at the time you read this I shall be far from you, and all pursuit will be vain: among your friends I have found one I prefer to you—at least I think so—he is richer and more agreeable; with him I quit England, which, but for reasons stronger than my regard for you, I had never entered. You will, no doubt, accuse me of having deceived you; but what then, you loved the deception, which, till now, I suffered you to fancy real: and, in the midst of your invectives against me, remember, that for once at least I have dealt with you sincerely.

“PAULINA MEZZOTETTO.”

This rude and illiterate scrawl overwhelmed Angelo with the deepest indignation; and, true to his nature, no sooner did he find that the worthless Paulina was lost to him, than she appeared before him decked in her thousand charms. In the first heat of passionate regret, he determined to pursue her; but suddenly he remembered, with a thrill of real delight that superseded every other consideration, that he was now wholly at liberty, disencumbered of one whom he had long learned to view with other eyes than those of admiration, more humbly, more earnestly than ever, to sue the forgiveness of the injured Gabrielle. On this idea he dwelt with delight, that he should once more behold her, and that she would look on him with pity and tender pardon.

Ever sudden, variable, and precipitate, he penned in the enthusiasm of the moment, ere he retired to bed, a letter to Gabrielle, which he resolved it should be the first act of the morning to dispatch, and with sentiments less of regret for Paulina, than fear lest Gabrielle should still remain inflexible, he sought repose—in tender superstition placing the letter beneath his pillow, to anticipate in dreams its wished reception. The following was its purport:

“The meteor that allured me from you has vanished in eternal night—the fetters which bound me in the most disgraceful slavery are burst asunder—— I am free for ever from a vile enchantment! but sink to the earth, oppressed with the remembrance of my guilt. I can regain no portion of self-esteem till Gabrielle pronounces, ‘Angelo, I forgive you!’ Oh! my heart beats with delight, with sacred rapture (of which conscience tells me I am unworthy) at the thought of seeing again—of embracing my smiling boy—of embracing his injured, though adored mother.—— Yes, yes, dearest Gabrielle, adored, let me say, for now can I never believe that my heart wandered truly from you;—yet even, if so—for how short a time did its delusion last—how transient its wanderings!—Oh, be not then still inflexibly severe, drive me not eternally to despair for the folly of a moment, but, like the heaven of which you partake, be rather merciful than sternly just. In most torturing anxiety shall I wait your answer to appear before you.—Till then I dare not.—Ah! let me hope that your revenge is now satisfied and, that since my last, which you treated with such bitter, yet merited disdain, that excellent heart has relented in favor of the once loved

“ANGELO D’ALBINI.”

This letter on the following morning he eagerly dispatched;—a week, a fortnight, a month elapsed, and no reply. Steady for once beyond the impulse of the moment to the object he had in view, and persevering beyond his nature, because he could not avoid perceiving there was that which merited perseverance, he wrote again a letter more pressing, more imploring than before; yet still no answer arrived; and, with the deepest grief, though not wholly unmixed with an indignant feeling at the insensibility of Gabrielle, and the immoveable contempt she evinced towards him, he in the mortified pride of his despised humility, resolved that he would address her no more, nor recal again to her remembrance one whom she appeared so desirous to forget.

“Ah! too surely,” thought he, while stinging jealousy and the most grievous regret still tore his heart at the idea—too surely Gabrielle has bestowed her affections upon another.—“She loves without remorse, for she considers that I have forfeited, by my conduct, all claim to her, and even the right to molest her by a vain repentance; yet, with some portion of her native goodness, unwilling to wound me by an avowal of her sentiments or conduct, she preserves an entire silence, hoping it may prove sufficient explanation to me.”

Sometimes disgusted by the inanity and unprofitableness of the amusements in which he plunged, to banish, or at least temporarily to dissipate the melancholy which possessed him, he would pause on the idea of quitting England, returning to Naples, and of presenting himself, unlooked for and unannounced, before the eyes of Gabrielle. “But wherefore, wherefore,” he would suddenly exclaim—“perhaps unwished, perhaps to behold her no longer willing to be mine, but bestowing on another that love, those tender assiduities, those soothing cares which once she bestowed undeservedly on me. No, no, never; unless her cruel sternness first relax, guilty and infamous as I acknowledge myself to have been, I cannot so humble myself at the feet of her who despises me.”

Suffering thus, in some degree, the merited punishment of his conduct, for the present we leave him, and revert to the situation of Gabrielle.

The purpose of the infamous Oriana would have been but half answered, if Angelo, deluded but for a moment only by the arts and beauty of Paulina, whom she well knew, beyond a certain period would be incapable of detaining him, had then followed the impulse naturally attendant on his restoration to reason, and returned humbled, repentant, and imploring, to the feet of the forsaken Gabrielle. Therefore, to obviate the possibility of such a result, it was requisite for her to gain constant intelligence of the movements of Paulina from her own hand, that she might be thereby prepared for those of Angelo. Thus, when Paulina informed her, that, not only weary to disgust of Angelo, she desired to make him weary of her, and, subsequently, of their mutual dislike for each other, and of her determination to quit him for one more suited to her taste, Oriana justly anticipated that he would immediately endeavour to effect a re-union with Gabrielle, and prevail on her to forgive the past; thus these two persons, so abhorrent to her, and at the idea of whose happiness she sickened, might, and would be, ultimately restored to each other, and her machinations would have no other effect than that of cementing them in bonds still closer than before. Her mind became racked with jealous malice and corroding fear; she put in requisition every power of mischievous invention she possessed, determined, if possible, to prolong for ever the period of their mutual misery.

Gabrielle had for an attendant about her person, a female who was far more fitted to have been the attendant of an Oriana. With this female the plotting Genoese contrived to procure acquaintance, and by gifts, promises, and the offer of taking her into her service, if dismissed by Gabrielle, prevailed on her to undertake, without hesitation, whatever she required of her.

Through the means of this woman she was duly and accurately informed of whatever concerned her mistress, even to the merest trifle; and, when she learned from Paulina, her informant on the other side, of the effect which her altered conduct appeared to have produced upon him, she gave strict charge to this perfidious menial to keep vigilant watch for any letters that might arrive, directed for Gabrielle, and bring them instantly to her. This part of her infamous requisition was but too well fulfilled; every letter which arrived from Angelo was readily yielded to her by the inferior domestics, for the purpose of conveying them to Gabrielle, which she as regularly carried to Oriana, who thus became possessed with the knowledge of those tender and remorseful sentiments with which Angelo was inspired, and that he cherished for the injured Gabrielle a love stronger than ever.

Her rage and hatred increased at this discovery; bitter envy, and burning desire of redoubled vengeance, shook her breast, and her wild and ferocious sensations could only be temporarily allayed by the horrible exultation which she experienced at receiving one of those invaluable epistles which would have restored the unconscious Gabrielle from the brink of the grave, and destroying it with an infuriate violence and malice truly infernal.

The effects of a fine constitution, strengthened by a long residence among the health-breathing mountains of Switzerland, triumphed, though slowly, over the ravages of a most desperate malady; for some months even she continued in a state fluctuating, as it were, between life and death, an alternate increase and diminution of fever, delirium, and of moping melancholy. At length she was pronounced to be free from danger, though her weakness continued such, notwithstanding this declaration, as to threaten, momentarily, that the trembling spark of life must become extinguished. Gradually these symptoms yielded to returning strength, and, with returning bodily strength, became renewed the strength of her superior mind.

A short time further elapsed, and the wretched Gabrielle aroused herself in horror from the state of calm despair into which she was sinking. She beheld, that if some means were not speedily adopted, herself and child must perish, literally of want; for, though she could now bear to review the letter of Angelo, (the only one which, having arrived prematurely, had not been intercepted by the base minion of Oriana) and consequently knew that her drafts to any amount would be honored by his banker’s agent, she disdained, with the noble spirit of a Montmorency, to avail herself of the compassionate liberality of a man who, at the same time, could so cruelly outrage her feelings;—she scorned to owe that to the dictates of his honor or humanity, which she could owe no longer to his love.

Thus she was determined to perish, rather than be indebted to him for the means of existence, and, when she regarded her child, and burst into a flood of tears, her resolution did not alter, and she exclaimed, “Yes, my boy, we will perish together; thou shalt lie on my bosom, and die with me, for surely the crime of permitting thee to die, would be less than that of prolonging, by unworthy means, thy existence, deprived as thou now art of every hope and prospect of a father’s protection—we will die together then, and thus wilt thou escape the protracted miseries, the want, and the misfortunes, that are in store for thee.”

By degrees, however, her fine reason began to assert itself, and to prevail over these gloomy and despairing thoughts. Her rational and sublime piety, too, taught her, that, feeble mortal as she was, she should not dare to take the sceptre from the hands of fate, and mark out the fortunes of another. It taught her, too, to rely upon the supreme wisdom, which is all competent to the protection and direction of its creatures, and not presumptuously, because of the wanderings or errors of a mere mortal, doubt the mercy of God, or limit his power to save, in conjunction only with man. The child, forsaken by its natural father, would find a superior one in heaven, and, yielding to the holy influence of divine religion, which ever inspires hope, and soothes the soul, she now resolved to exert her energies anew, and call into action those powers of mind with which she was so superlatively gifted.

It was but for the finely organized mind of Gabrielle to make a successful effort over the weakness of nature, it was but for her to acquire fortitude enough to take a review of circumstances, to oppose the better line of action to the worse, and to decide then, with a spirit and judgement equalled only by the promptness of execution.

Having then acquired the firmness to pause with unshrinking eye upon her situation, she beheld immediately all that was requisite to be performed,—she saw that want, absolute want, must shortly approach, yet proudly resolving to adhere to her first principle of owing nothing to the charity of Angelo, she, as a first means of retarding the advances of the gaunt fiend, gave up her sumptuous residence, and discharged her attendants; this was not only a plan of wisdom and necessity, but a plan likewise to her of great though unsuspected advantage, for it proved the ostensible means of ridding her of the perfidious snake whose treachery had caused her to drink so deeply of the cup of misery. She then, unaccompanied but by her child, whose tender age exceeded scarce three years, quitted Naples so secretly, and so disguised, as to elude even the indefatigable vigilance of Oriana.

The small sum which remained to her, after having defrayed every demand, she flattered herself would be sufficient to bear them to England, whither she had decided to go; and far from weakly shuddering at the venturous attempt, “Did I not,” said she mentally, “when still younger, and far more a stranger to the world than now I am, quit my once happy mountains, to seek out the destroyer of my peace and innocence?—to seek him for the sake of his child, that he might protect and cherish it, when I, worn out with calamity and ceaseless remorse, should be no more? And shall I now, when the dangers and the difficulties are comparatively slight, shrink at doing less than I have already done? No; to his children I will implore Angelo to be just; let their mother be covered with obloquy, despised, and unpitied by the world; but let them be saved, and she will die content.”

Amid the gloomy reflections of the unhappy Gabrielle, it was no small consolation to her, that the young Agnes, unconscious of her mother’s sorrows, was still happy, and protected by a tender friend. How did she now in silent, though profound gratitude, bless the wise counsels of the excellent Bertrand, that had said to her, “Wait, wait till experience and the test of years shall have confirmed to you the truth, and unvarying constancy of Angelo: wait, wait till at the foot of the altar, unhesitating, and for ever, he shall make you his, and give himself to you. Then, and not till then, can he become eligible as the firm guardian and eternal protector of his daughter.”

Mean time, the deceived and ill-fated Gabrielle (who was following, from a rare and refined principle of duty, the man whom she believed hated and shunned her, who in more than six long months had never even written to her a line of condolence, dictated by some little humanity, or slight remaining interest in the fate of one he had once loved), pursued without much danger or molestation her journey; but found, with horror, that by the time she reached England, owing to her little acquaintance with the usages and extortions of society, she had scarcely the means of defraying her further procedure to London. “And when I arrive there,” thought she, with agony, “if I do not immediately discover Angelo, how shall I be enabled to support my child? Oh! heaven—heaven assist me;” she fervently ejaculated, raising, almost in despair, her hands and eyes to that heaven she supplicated, “let me but live to place in the arms of his father, this forlorn, unprotected child, and I require no more.”

She reached London at length; but from inevitable expences, and the chicanery practised by those whose harvest is the spoils of the inexperienced stranger, in a state utterly destitute of the means of procuring for her innocent Felix a morsel of food, to pacify those wants which every moment she expected would break forth in impatient demand. On her arm she held a small basket, in which she carried some fruit and a little bread, a fond precaution she had all along taken for him, which now she became desirous of reserving as long as possible, dreading lest ultimately he should experience, at his tender age, the pangs of hunger.

From the animated description which Angelo had frequently given her of London, of the number and variety of its streets, and of the situation of his own particular residence there, she felt not so infinitely appalled at the alarming prospect before her as otherwise she might have been, for she flattered herself that she should soon be enabled to trace him by inquiry, and then her cares would end. Hope for a time sustained her; nor was it till she found every inquiry vain, and her foreign accent treated with derision by some, and contempt by others, that the full horror of her situation stood with terrifying aspect before her.

It was the depth of winter, rainy and cold, when she entered London; it was growing dusk, night rapidly advanced, and, a forlorn stranger, she continued to wander about the streets, an object of vulgar curiosity to some, of insult to others, but of pity to none.

At length the idea of attempting to procure a lodging for the night suggested itself to her mind. Desperately bold at the horrible prospect of passing the night in the streets, she made several attempts at houses where her knowledge of the English language sufficiently informed her that lodging might be procured, but in vain; she could gain no admittance, for her apparel, though plain to the last degree, was foreign, and though singular, too humble and too uncostly for the well-fed, purse-proud, and mercenary wretches to whom she applied to grant her entrance. She appeared too, a miserable, unfriended, and desolate being, consequently an object of suspicion, and unfit to be sheltered by the outrageously good, or coldly prudent.

Some, after a rude unfeeling examination, observed, “They never admitted foreigners;” others objected to the equivoque of her unprotected appearance; while others, still more inhuman, after hearing the nature of her application, closed the door instantly, without reply. Now, galled and agonized, even to an excess of stupor, for the height of anguish precludes acute sensation, she seated herself, with a calm despair, on the step of a door, and taking her child in her arms, laid his little head upon her bosom, hoping that in sleep he might forget the calls of hunger.

Her basket, now most dearly cherished, she placed beside her, as desirous of not calling his attention towards it; but the watchful Felix was not to be thus eluded; he had fasted several hours, and unusual fatigue had sharpened his appetite; he cast his eyes upon the well-known basket, in which Gabrielle, during their journey, had constantly carried fruit, and things to please his childish taste, and stretching his innocent hands towards it, plainly informed his mother that he would have it opened.

How did the heart-wrung Gabrielle yield to his request? Not with the tender and natural feelings of delight, with which she usually supplied his wants, but with a tearful eye, and a tremulous hand, that with parsimonious accuracy divided the slender portion, intended but for one intermediate repast. As with unconscious glee the little Felix eagerly devoured the scanty allowance, the firmness of Gabrielle nearly failed her, for she dreaded that he would ask for more;—and if so, unless Providence befriended her, when next he asked he could not have any thing. Her fears, however, were happily disappointed; his appetite for the moment satisfied, or rather allayed, he had leisure to indulge the softer call of nature, sleep; and, laying his head upon the bosom of his mother, he fell into the profound slumber of innocence.

At this happy result, for happiness is always comparative, the grateful Gabrielle burst into a flood of tears, and pressed him with rapture in her arms.

Now, at the suggestion of reviving hope, strengthened by the moment of pleasure she had experienced, she determined to make a last attempt to procure shelter for the night. She arose accordingly, and walking a few paces, stopped at the first house which denoted lodgings to the passenger. With trembling hand she applied to the door, from the humble appearance of the house auguring that she might gain admittance; she was deceived, however, for treatment similar to that she had already met with, again awaited her. Hopeless she turned away, and was retiring hastily from the spot, when a female, of vulgar and unprepossessing form, standing at the adjoining door, enquired of her, in a voice though far from soothing, still more gentle than any she had yet heard, if she sought a lodging?

“I do,” Gabrielle, in a broken voice, replied.

“But can you pay for one?” asked the woman.

“I cannot immediately,” faltered Gabrielle, “but trust I shall be soon enabled.”

“Well, but have you nothing,” enquired the woman again; “have you nothing about you that would pay for a night’s lodging?”

“Alas! no—” answered Gabrielle, putting her hand mechanically in her pocket, and drawing it forth again with an empty purse.

“Yes you have,” observed the woman; whose keen eye, directed by a dim light in her passage, glanced upon the fair hand of Gabrielle; “you have got a gold ring upon your finger. If you want a night’s lodging, and chuse to give me that ring, I will admit you into my house, and to a share of my room.”

The eyes of Gabrielle gazed upon the ring to which the woman alluded; it was of plain gold, of little comparative value, but given her by Angelo as a marriage ring. But Angelo was perfidious, and her child was in danger of remaining unsheltered for the night—the struggle was momentary, she sighed, drew the ring from her finger, and said, “Admit me.”

The woman took the ring; her door, invulnerable to intreaty, opened to the power of gold—opened even wide, and admitted the houseless stranger. Up a narrow winding stair-case slowly she followed her hospitable guide, who from poverty had taken its last mite, ere she would yield it sufferance: she was conducted into a small and meanly-furnished room, where stood a miserable single bed.

“Here,” observed the woman, scrutinising her forlorn guest, with a suspicious eye, “here you may remain till the morning, if you chuse; you can lay down on that bed, I shall not disturb you.”

Gabrielle, thankful to have obtained upon any terms, and in any way, shelter for the night, expressed her gratitude to her hostess, and laid her sleeping Felix upon the bed. The eyes of the woman, with vulgar curiosity, not compassionate interest, were rivetted upon her, and her tongue involuntarily yielding to the influence of the former, she sought, by various questions and inuendos, to induce Gabrielle in some degree to gratify it. But Gabrielle was not so disposed, she desired to place no confidence, nor wished for vulgar uninterested participation in griefs like her’s. To avoid, therefore, the necessity of replying, she approached the bed, and availing herself of the proposition that had been made, she threw herself, drest as she was, upon it, beside her child.

With the vulgar, poverty, accompanied by superior manners (considered pride) is ever sufficient to excite their dislike, suspicion, and presumption: there was a native elegance about Gabrielle, which contrasted with her humble appearance, made her an object of remark. The vulgar can never reconcile an union so extraordinary, nor ever fail of attaching to it the idea of some misconduct or depravity: true to the class of beings to which she appertained, this woman viewed Gabrielle with so much illiberal suspicion, that she resolved to remain awake for the night, in order to keep a strict watch upon so doubtful a guest, lest she should perpetrate some mischief, or in return for her imprudent hospitality, for which she now severely arraigned herself, plunder her, and endeavour to escape.

So determining, for the sake of security, she seated herself in a chair by the fire, starting every now and then from an uneasy doze, to assure herself that all as yet was safe. Thus passed the night; morning at length dawned; the woman roused herself from the forgetfulness of a few moments, into which she had irresistibly fallen, and perceiving that it was light, conceived that her unwelcome inmate had had sufficient benefit for the small consideration she had given, and likewise that, to the letter, she had fulfilled her promise in permitting her to remain for the night; night had now certainly elapsed; she therefore immediately rose, and approaching the bed to awaken the wearied Gabrielle, who for several hours having found it utterly impossible to obtain a moment’s oblivion of her cares, had just at this time fallen into a light slumber; a rough shake, intended gently to rouse her, caused her to start up in affright.

“Come,” cried her hostess, with a constrained smile; “it is now morning, you see—I have been as good as my word, I have given up my bed to you all night, and I would advise you to rise at once, and endeavor to find out some lodging that may suit you.”

Gabrielle arose, indignant but silent, for she felt the uselessness of expostulation with such a being, whose very look spoke the narrowness and insensibility of her soul:—forlorn too as she was, she could not degrade herself by the attempt: taking then her child, still sleeping in her arms, she quitted the abode of hard inhospitality, and once more beheld herself a desolate and unsheltered wanderer.

This day passed as the former had done, in vain research, and fruitless enquiries after Angelo;—towards evening a drizzling rain came on, and again she was appalled with the prospect of passing the night in the streets. Food had not entered her lips during the day, nor for almost the whole of the preceding one; famine and the most terrible of deaths stared her in the face:—already she saw herself perishing, exhausted by want, unnoticed and unknown, in a foreign land;—horrible ideas overcame her; and, heart-sick, fainting and on the point of sinking to the earth, she leaned against the wall of a house for support.

The last reserve of fruit, the last morsel of bread had been already yielded to the craving appetite of her child. He had wept, demanded, and intreated for more; alas! the wretched mother had it not to give. Weakened by exhaustion, wearied with crying, he had fallen into a slumber; scarce able to stand herself, she held him in her arms, and dreaded with indescribable horror the moment of his waking, when more loudly and more impetuously his innocent voice would cry to her for food, which again she must endure the racking agony of not having to bestow.

“But at length his cries will cease,” said she in despair, “and he will be at peace.—— Oh, Angelo—cruel Angelo, could’st thou but behold us!” The rain rapidly increasing, she wrapped him in her cloak; and now, in stern hopelessnes, awaited the climax of her fate.

While she stood, her fair arm uncovered to the inclement wind and rain, supporting to her bosom her unconscious child, a gentleman passing by, struck by her forlorn appearance, and the extreme delicacy of an arm, which though emaciated gave intimation of something superior to what that appearance conveyed, stopped for a moment, and in a gentle voice asked her if she stood in need of aid.

The accent of the stranger struck to the heart of Gabrielle with such powerful effect, that she was incapable of reply. He appeared to pity her confusion, and attributing it to the probability of her having been differently situated, he drew from his pocket a purse, and presenting it to her, said, “If you require present assistance, take this; should you desire further—here is my address—inform me.” So saying, he passed on; the purse, which he had dropped upon her arm, fell to the ground, but the card she grasped, and feeble, fainting as she was, she tottered a few paces beneath the light of a lamp, and holding it up to her wide-stretched eyes, decyphered the name of “Angelo D’Albini!”

Instantly a piercing shriek burst from her lips; her high-wrought feelings nerved her with sudden momentary strength, she rushed after him who had given her the card, she beheld him again; she essayed to get near him, and to seize his arm—passengers intervened—she broke through them—she gained his side—her strong emotions then overpowered her, her limbs became nerveless, and feebly groaning forth, “Oh, Angelo! Angelo!” she staggered, reeled, and fell to the earth.

On hearing his name uttered by the voice of distress, and one which even then seemed not unfamiliar to him, Angelo turned hastily round, and perceiving the female he had just spoken with lying apparently senseless on the ground, he raised her in his arms, whilst her child, hurt and awakened by her fall, in a low mournful cry, expressed its pain and terror. Always humane, Angelo conveyed the insensible Gabrielle into a house, while he dispatched some persons, whom curiosity, rather than compassion had drawn around her, for a carriage.

Now at leisure to satisfy the anxiety he felt, he approached Gabrielle, whose large bonnet and cloak having been thrown aside by those who were endeavouring to recover her, her face and figure were fully revealed—Yes, Angelo beheld, in the person of a houseless wanderer, of a forlorn wretch, to whom in charity he had rendered assistance to save her from perishing by want in the streets, the once happy, once innocent, once blooming daughter of Montmorency! her whom he had destroyed—now happy, innocent, and blooming no longer! yes, Gabrielle de Montmorency, the mistress of his youth,—the forsaken friend of his bosom,—the mother of his children!

Speak he could not, for horror struck him dumb; he groaned aloud, and throwing himself at her feet, franticly embraced her knees, pressed and kissed her cold hands, and giving way to the effusions of his despair, swore that if Gabrielle did not recover, he would die at her feet.

Prostrate he remained on the ground beside her, and no entreaties could move him thence.

Mean time the little Felix, whose alarm having been soothed, was happily discovered to have sustained no injury, came hastening, fast as his tender limbs would allow, towards his mother;—soon as Angelo beheld the boy, his anguish was for a moment directed into another channel. As the innocent, in surprise and fear, clung round the knees of its mother, and looked with fond enquiry in her pallid face, Angelo seized him in his arms, and with convulsive agony pressed him to his breast. Felix first cried aloud, and struggled to get loose; but finding he could not, gazed earnestly upon him, when it seemed even as if faint recollection glanced across his infant mind, for he submitted without reluctance to his caresses.

Whether awakened to life by the well-known voice of her child dimly striking on her ear, or whether by the unaided operations of nature, Gabrielle opened her languid eyes, and beheld before her the two beings dearest to her in existence. She endeavoured to raise herself in her chair, but her power was unequal to the effort, and again she sank back.

To behold that she lived, that Gabrielle lived, though it nearly distracted him with joy, recalled to Angelo his energies; he sprang instantly from the earth with hands clasped, and eyes overflowing with tears of wild delight; his heart, late oppressed with despair, now throbbed with almost agonising bliss; he took but one more kiss of her pale hand, and then was capable of hastening the movements for her departure. Supported by a couple of females, who had humanely admitted her into their house, Gabrielle was conveyed to the carriage which awaited her, and Angelo, trembling with eagerness, followed with his boy in his arms, first making a suitable compensation to those who had lent their necessary assistance.

Now, with his recovered Gabrielle, hastening to his own residence, he placed his beloved Felix on his knee, and laid the head of his still-fainting mother upon his bosom. Thus they proceeded in a silence uninterrupted but by his own eager exclamations, now of bitter self-reproach, now of tenderness towards the injured, long-lost object of his love, now to his child, who seemed to have forgotten his hunger in innocent grief for the situation in which he beheld his mother.

At the door of a sumptuous habitation the carriage stopped; Angelo bore into his house the fragile form of her who alone of all women he yet continued to love. There, safe from danger, tumult, and inconvenience, he trusted that she would speedily revive. She was conveyed immediately into a chamber, and placed in bed; and eager then again to behold her, he entered the room, which for a few moments he had quitted, and gazing upon her with streaming eyes, he seated himself in silence beside the bed, having closed the curtains that she might repose. When every one was withdrawn, Gabrielle, with feeble hand, drew aside the curtain: this movement was sufficient, and Angelo in an instant was on his knees by her side, covering her hand with kisses, while he deluged it in tears.

“Angelo,” she faintly murmured,—“where is my Felix?—if safe with you, I can die resigned.”

“Oh, my Gabrielle, talk not of death, unless you would drive me to madness;” cried Angelo wildly—“live, live for your Felix, and for me.”—

“Angelo, I am sick at heart—I am dying—I cannot say to you now all I desire, nor receive from you the explanation you might wish to give.—Say then, where is my beloved child?—I see him not.”

“He is safe, my beloved—compose yourself; he is under this roof with ourselves.”

“Alas! alas! poor child,” in broken accents faltered Gabrielle, “he is perishing from want—— he—— he has not tasted food for nearly too days.”—

“Heavenly God! what do I hear!” cried Angelo, starting up, and striking his forehead with his clenched hand.

“Yes, yes—it is too true,” murmured Gabrielle.——

“And you—and you, oh Gabrielle!—Monster! devil! that I am, can I—oh can I ever hide from myself, that, deserted by me, my wife and child were—were on the point of perishing from hunger in the streets!”—He burst into tears, and covering his face with his hands, now called maledictions on himself, and now gazing upon the almost expiring Gabrielle, beat in agony his breast. Gabrielle sought not to assuage the remorseful anguish of those sensations that were distracting Angelo; she wished him to feel the full enormity of his guilt, and of the miseries it had entailed upon them; but the thought of her beloved child was chief in her heart, and waving her hand towards him, she faintly cried—“Felix—think of Felix.”

Angelo recalled, rushed from the room, and in a few moments returned, accompanied by the child, whose long abstinence from food began to be severely felt by him, and the fervid glow of his cheek, was displaced by a languid paleness.

Quick as thought a table was covered with various refreshments, and Angelo, who knew that by attending first to the wants of her child, he acted most conformably to the wishes of Gabrielle, placed before him such things as he conceived most appropriate to his tender appetite; and while eagerly and anxiously he was intent upon satisfying it, he prevailed upon the enfeebled Gabrielle to take a little wine, which with trembling hand, and cheek crimsoned by compunctious reflection he held to her lips. By degrees, as she became somewhat re-animated by the restoratives which Angelo, in anguished entreaty pressed her to accept, she felt enabled to sustain a little conversation; and still more capable did she feel of compassing the effort, when in the explanation of Angelo, even in the midst of his self-reproaches, she discovered how comparatively short a period to what she had imagined, he had remained in his unhappy delusion.

Rejoiced at this soothing conviction, her long oppressed heart beat with increased emotion; her weakened spirits rose to the degree of pleasure, and she could bear to listen to, and even touch upon the terrible events that had intervened since their separation. Oriana, the fiend Oriana, was mutually and justly recognised as the author of the delusions of the one, and consequent misfortunes of the other; and though no decided proof of her infamy existed, yet, by re-tracing a long line of incident, and combining circumstances apparently trifling at the time, no doubt remained in the minds of either; further too was the idea confirmed by the treatment which Gabrielle described herself to have experienced from the Genoese, when a distracted wretch she had flown to her, as her last hope of acquiring some information of him who had abandoned her, and by the sudden change of conduct and manners in the worthless Paulina.

Thus then, mutual and perfect explanation ensued; Angelo had written repeatedly to Gabrielle, and received no answer; and these dear letters, a single sentence of which would have breathed new life into her soul, she had never even beheld. “Oh, Angelo, Angelo!” cried Gabrielle, in a voice that for the first moment conveyed aught like reproach, “why, why, were ever those letters, or the present explanation, rendered necessary?”

“Ah, Gabrielle,” exclaimed Angelo, precipitating himself on his knees, and snatching her hand to his lips, “be merciful as you are fair!”

Gabrielle shed a tear upon the burning cheek of the repentant Angelo.—She gently pressed his hand, which wildly held her’s, and in that moment, so dear to both, the happiness of him who was forgiven, was equalled only by the happiness of her who forgave.

Gabrielle forgot, or at least forgave the errors of the past, and once more the sunbeams of hope pierced through the gloomy shadows of despair. But far, far more for her children than for herself, did Gabrielle rejoice that she had found again her lover, and found him still unchanged. She could not disguise from her proud and superior mind, (and with a pang at her heart she admitted it) that Angelo had sadly wandered from his allegiance to her; “and too surely,” thought she, “when the imagination is suborned, the heart, for a time, wanders with it, and partakes of its illusion—the senses cannot stray entirely alone.” These painful ideas she would endeavour to check and to repress, least pride, gaining the ascendancy over duty, should lead her in selfish disgust or resentment at the bitter conviction, to leave unfinished the glorious and noble resolution she had so far pursued. To quit in angry, mortified self-love, the father of her children,—to deprive them, perhaps, of a protector,—alienating from them, by such conduct, the love which through her he bore them; “No—perish, perish for ever,” she cried, “such miserable refinement of selfish feeling—for my children’s sake, tenfold grief and humiliation could I bear! disgrace, ignominy, and contempt, the pangs of despised and insulted love. By such chastisement inflicted on my spirit, on the spirit of a Montmorency, who infamously has singly descended from the path of high honor, traced by her ancestors, can she alone hope, in the eye of heaven, to retrieve her manifold offences.”

CHAPTER XVII.

THE virtue and perseverance of Gabrielle, who, with a severe conscientiousness that set self at nought, endeavoured as much as possible to recover the fatal lapse of her inexperienced youth, and with an ever-watchful zeal, sedulously to preserve, even in its remotest ramifications, society from being injured by her errors, reaped in so much the reward of those virtues which glowed at her heart, independently of its weakness, that Angelo became to her all that her fond love, all that her delicate mind could desire; and could but the past have been obliterated, he had been perfect—he appeared no longer the wandering creature of temptation, the precipitate unguarded youth; he was sobered into the domestic husband, the tender father, and the faithful friend.

No longer now the ephemeral, but passionate admirer of every novel face,—no longer to be attracted by the blandishments of the meretricious part of the sex, or artifices of the wary prude, Gabrielle began to behold in him the being she had long laboured to render him, who becoming such, recompensed her for every misery, save one—the eternal misery, the eternal remorse of her first error, and its dread consequences, in having precipitated to his grave her high-soul’d, honorable father!

She now saw realising, as hope with its fair finger pointed to a blest perspective, the joyous certainty of protection for her children, protection from him who best was entitled to grant it—to whom they owed that they were called into existence.

The only shadow of error in the present conduct of Angelo was his continued love of play, but that, so long as he preserved himself from embarrassment, Gabrielle was disposed to deem as an amusement, rather than a destructive habit, which, if pursued, almost invariably involves in ruin. Short-sighted mortals that we are, this very propensity, viewed by Gabrielle in a light so comparatively trivial, was of itself sufficient to blast, in a single instant, those fairy fabrics of future happiness for her children, on which her mind delighted to dwell.

Five years elapsed, and found Angelo still unchanged; at the termination of this period, he remained what at its commencement he had become. His disposition, and the fine qualities of his heart, which had seemed but in their germ, appeared mellowed only by the fostering hand of time; that which in sincere love and penitence he had commenced, had grown insensibly into a conduct of system, and become dearest and most congenial to his heart. Such is the influence and power of virtue, that when once its dictates are in sincerity adopted, it becomes agreeable to the heart of man, as it is best for the sanity of his soul, and for his temporal happiness.

The young Felix, esteemed their highest treasure, and whose name had been given him by the fond enthusiasm of a father, who considered that he would constitute their highest happiness, increased daily in strength and beauty; but while the doting eyes of the father could discern in him no fault, the apprehensive eyes of the mother scrutinized more deeply; she beheld him lovely and engaging, but beheld with uneasiness an uncontrollable impetuousness of manner, a boldness and presumption, with, most material fault of all, a tendency to deviate from the truth in the occasional relation of events in which he might be concerned.

But when Gabrielle expressed sometimes her anxious sentiments upon this head, the partial father laughed, and would tell her that she refined too much, that she must not look for excellence like her own, even in her children; or otherwise, with more of exultation than regret, attribute all to early indications of spirit and superior genius.

Earnestly desirous, at length, of having with her, without further delay, her heart-cherished but long unseen daughter, Gabrielle, who had till this period temporised with, and yielded reluctantly to the tender intreaties of her excellent friend Madame Bertrand, still to retain her, became now absolutely impatient, and resolved seriously to demand her, and in such a way that should not have it in her power to evade her further.

It was almost a year since Gabrielle had last heard from her, in answer to a request that she would only quit Switzerland for a few months, and be herself the guardian of her adopted child to her parents. In her letter then, Madame Bertrand had informed her, that softened at length by the long attachment and persevering solicitations of M. Boffuet, she had at last consented to become his wife, and stated the event to have taken place a few weeks previous to her writing. “Ah, dearest Gabrielle,” observed this excellent friend, “it is no longer then purely for the sake of society—or for the tender love I bear to Agnes, that I desire to retain her, but from higher considerations.—Alas! forgive me, if even yet my mind is not satisfied to resign her to you! ’Tis true, indeed, the constancy and attachment of D’Albini hath now undergone very considerable test, and hath remained unshaken; he is happy with you, and feels a pride in acknowledging by his conduct that he is so.—Why, then—(for am I not your friend, and may speak freely), why then hesitate to confirm to himself, far as by earthly ties it could be confirmed, the happiness he now enjoys?”

“Why is it, that still wavering, procrastinating, irresolute, he prefers to linger through life with you, in a feverish, unsatisfactory union, valuing, esteeming, and loving you as a wife in all the dearest attributes of one, save the name?

“How to himself can he be so denying and severe, as voluntarily to debar himself of the greatest and most rational enjoyment which we are empowered to make for ourselves here below—those dear and tender ties which mortals are allowed to form, and to rivet, and which are indissoluble even until death? Why should you not be to him in effect that which you are in spirit? and, while his heart proudly avows you by the name of wife, why should not the world confess you so in reality? Not till that joyful moment takes place, oh! Gabrielle, not till D’Albini places you on that eminence, so considered by society, honored and revered, will my mind give full and complete accedence to his sincerity. When I perceive that he no longer doubts himself, I shall not doubt him either, and when I perceive that he loves his children sufficiently to save them from unmeritted ignominy, then no longer shall I hesitate to resign to him a daughter.”

So, in the very last epistle received from her, wrote the just and rational Bertrand. Gabrielle in her heart allowed, and therefore was too honest to deny, that she felt the severe, incontrovertible truth of her observations, but still her confidence in Angelo was such, that no doubt could for a moment harbour there. She wished to believe, that delicacy, joined to a conviction of its being completely unnecessary as a stronger tie, prevented him now from proposing to her the form of marriage. “Angelo is so sincere a convert,” said she mentally, “that there is no danger of his relapsing into error, however unshackled he may be. So well do I know that noble nature, that sure am I, if he suspected within himself the possibility of ever wandering, he would instantly unite himself to me by the strongest of all possible bonds, in order to operate as a check upon his conduct.”

But Gabrielle erred in this instance, from want of proper discrimination, and erred likewise in thinking the best of the man she loved. She erred in the first instance, because neither her education, her knowledge of, or commerce with the world, placed before her mind, in a point of view sufficiently strong, the absolute necessity of marriage between those persons who form an intercourse of sincere attachment, who desire to live for each other, and who, in consequence of such intercourse produce to the world human beings, who will call them parents, and to whom therefore they owe it to involve them as little as possible in the consequences of their mutual error, by sooner or later endeavouring to give them that consideration in the world, to which, from the mode of their birth, they would not be immediately entitled.

She erred too, in her conception of Angelo; for he in effect feared marriage, more than he loved Gabrielle, or considered his children’s estimation in society. Never had he even named marriage to her; he would not either allow himself to revert to it even distantly, or in perspective, in her presence or in solitude. From the libertine pursuits of his early youth he had conceived a prejudice against it—from his subsequent knowledge of the worst part of the sex, judging from them of the whole, a disgust, and ultimately a dread.

It is one characteristic of the libertine, that he detests marriage, for it is the immutable consequence attendant on the long pursuit of vicious and ignoble pleasures, which unhinge the mind, and unfit the soul for the calm delights of virtue. Thus, though the excellent conduct, superior mind, and personal attractions of Gabrielle, rivetted to her in unwearied fondness the heart of Angelo, yet had he once ventured to have set the seal of eternal union upon that fondness, he would have felt himself no longer an independent being; and the idea of a formal duty would have pressed so heavily upon his mind, as to render irksome and displeasing, that very conduct, which, pursued from inclination alone, wore varied and unfading charms.

But Gabrielle judged not thus, her opinion was regulated by her love, and by her wishes: pursuant to her determination she wrote to Madame Bertrand, and insisted that it was now absolutely necessary that Angelo should behold his daughter, that no more time should be permitted to elapse ere she took strong hold of his affections, which could be only done by appearing before him, and remaining constantly under his own eyes.

“I have two children,” added Gabrielle; “the one that is not with me is no less dear to my heart than the one that is continually in my sight; but with Angelo it may be otherwise, for he has never even seen his daughter, while I, though I should never behold her more, bear her sweet infant features in my mind,—remember, as though it were but yesterday, those bitter hours when you held her in your arms, when I gazed on her indeed, but did not see her; and remember too, what, never while life endures I can forget, the scene of horror and despair in which I gave her birth, and which is impressed upon my heart in characters that are indelible.

“Let me then once more embrace that beloved child, my dear and valued friend; let me hasten to present her to her father, and communicate to his heart a portion of the tenderness which animates my own—let us no longer defer a moment which has been already deferred too long, and which implicates so deeply her future welfare. I shall expect that my kind Bertrand will no longer attempt to influence my present wish, by those well-meant and rational objections, which, however I may in a degree admit their propriety, must no longer sway me, as they are answered in my mind by considerations which outbalance them.”

To this letter Gabrielle expected a prompt and acquiescent reply, while Angelo, with his natural impetuosity, fixed his ardent hopes upon the prospect of speedily embracing a daughter, whom he longed to behold. Several weeks elapsed however, and no answer arrived; Gabrielle allayed her impatience, in the fond hope that Madame Bertrand was prepairing for her a delightful surprise, and that she would suddenly appear before them with the anxiously-expected Agnes. But when at length such a time elapsed, as to render the indulgence of this hope no longer rational, Gabrielle, half indignant at a conduct which when assuming to itself the right of dictating to her best and dearest feelings, and of combating those intentions which she felt the importance of fulfilling, appeared rather an abuse, than a prerogative of friendship, prepared to address her again, but in style more decisive a letter suddenly arrived, which at once ended their hopes by plunging them in despair—it was as follows:

“Oh, beloved Gabrielle, in what language dare I address you! how break to you the dreadful event which I have to disclose!—Oh! would that some intuitive suspicion might give you a glance of the fatal truth, and spare me a task beyond that of confirming it:—but I must proceed—I must have mercy upon the dreadful suspense and agony you endure at this moment. Know then that your child, your Agnes—do I live to say it—I know not what at this period may be her fate!

“Let me endeavor, if possible, to collect my distracted thoughts, and detail to you as I can, the events of the last six months. I informed you that I had become the wife of Boffuet—— Ah! miserable for me was the day that I did so. Can you believe it, Gabrielle, that persevering attachment, those perpetual attentions were not directed to me, but to those trifling possessions which I called mine.

“To be brief, scarce had the laws of marriage rendered his my slender property, than the man changed, and changed not gradually, but at once. Soon was I deprived of my few accustomed comforts, debarred even of necessaries, and by the line of conduct which the selfish and hypocritical Boffuet assumed immediately that he obtained a right to dictate to mine, it appeared as though he was desirous of hastening me to the grave, that he might have uncontrolled possession of all, but without the necessity of being likewise encumbered with me. Ah! when a woman at my time of life marries, and exchanges the certain comfort that was her’s, for a precarious addition, resulting from the society of a husband, what has she to expect in reality, but useless regret and bitter repentance?

“To proceed however; I could have borne perhaps with patience the infamy of his conduct, though unlooked for towards myself alone, but that which struck me to the heart, which destroyed me nearly, was the gloomy and illiberal eye with which he regarded my idolized Agnes. His contracted soul, ever thirsting for gold, desired to appropriate wholly to himself that sum which you forced on me in his presence, at your departure, and which, in an unguarded moment, I had acknowledged to have preserved still untouched for our Agnes.

“At the same time that he desired to appropriate to himself this little sum, which fondly I had anticipated at my death to double and treble, by the whole of what I possessed, he still could not endure that the innocent child should remain beneath the roof. Every little indulgence, each little dainty that my fond love had procured for her, drew from his heart so many drops of blood; but perceiving that his base and grovelling insinuations produced no effect upon me, he quickly abridged, and soon entirely deprived me of the means of continuing a conduct which had ever constituted my chief delight. Each day he became a meaner and more vulgar tyrant; each day he loudly arraigned me for my folly and obstinacy, in persisting to burthen him with the support of a child whose parents were willing and anxious to receive her.

“Oh, Gabrielle! Gabrielle, now do I hear—now do I feel your reproaches, those bitter reproaches which your noble heart involuntarily makes me, that under such circumstances when last I wrote, I should still have refused to deliver up your child—but oh, spare, I implore you spare me! I now see, alas, that I carried my zeal for the future welfare of that child to an unpardonable length, that it would have been more prudent, and more just, to have yielded to your requests, but unhappily I conceived that you were more enthusiastic than reflective; led away more by your desire to behold your child, than by your conviction of the propriety of withdrawing her from me—and that it was better our Agnes should suffer some slight discomforts in her childhood, than become perhaps the victim of neglect and misfortune at maturer years. But ah! let me speak the whole truth, and acknowledge what conscience at this moment whispers—it is, that the more miserable I became, the more I needed the cheering and beloved society of the only being near, who felt an interest for me.

“At length the conduct of Boffuet grew so intolerable as to render existence almost a curse to me.—He assumed an absolute right not only over all I possessed, but the right to direct my slightest movements and actions. His cheerless penury became such as to chill me to the heart; his savage parsimony exceeded conception; and on the innocent Agnes he looked daily with deepened gloom and malignity; the beloved girl dreaded to approach him, tears were almost always in her lovely eyes; my heart died within me to behold her youthful sorrows, yet to have expostulated with a being obdurate and insensible as Boffuet, would, I felt, only aggravate our mutual unhappiness.

“One day, ah,—let me hasten to conclude, one day for a few moments I quitted the cottage in order to breathe at liberty, for even that I could not do in presence of Boffuet. I left our Agnes playing in the garden, while the savage Boffuet, was as I conceived, immured in his room, hatching fresh plans to torture and distress. Finding herself alone, and as she believed unobserved, the innocent child, from whom every little indulgence was restricted, busily began to gather some grapes, to satisfy with glee her childish appetite. Instantly Boffuet, who from a window in his chamber could perceive all that passed in the garden, descended furiously, and seizing Agnes by the arm—inflicted on her—can I, dare I speak it to a tender mother, when even my own heart rises at the thought, the brutal chastisement of several blows! This done, he quitted the garden to procure, as he said, a whip, which hung in his chamber, still further to inflict on her such punishment as should make her remember the criminality of theft.

“Abominable, base, and pretended construction; theft in her own mansion—in the mansion of her infancy, where all it contained had by me been long and fondly recognised as her’s; it was the loss of the grapes, and not the theft which the grovelling and malignant soul of Boffuet led him to revenge.

“Whether, however, it was the terror inspired by the anticipation of cruel chastisement, or the resentment inspired by that already received, for Agnes had been nourished in the bosom of tenderest indulgence, and was ever unused to the voice of reproof even, till the infamous Boffuet made it familiar to her ear, I know not; but when he returned into the garden, he could no where perceive the object of his savage and intemperate wrath; vexed to the soul, and boiling with disappointed rage, he sought the cottage throughout, swearing that when she appeared, he would make her repent of her temerity in attempting to escape him.

“He returned then to his chamber, as a tyger disappointed of prey would return to its den. Hour after hour elapsed, and Agnes did not appear; her escape, which when I learnt I had first been tempted to rejoice in, I now began to view with sensations of the deepest alarm; towards night, when she did not return, my anxiety knew no bounds, I ran about distracted from cottage to cottage, I called her among the mountains, I shrieked forth her name in the valleys; I bent over the edge of the steep, and looked for her mangled form down the dizzying abyss; I heard not her voice, I saw her not, I beheld no traces of her.

“I returned home, like a maniac, and losing all terror of the tyrant Boffuet in the agony which rent my heart, I flew to his chamber, and upbraided him in the bitterest language my feelings could suggest, of having driven my child, the rightful owner of the cottage in which he lived, of having driven her from her home, which but for him she never would have quitted. Savage with fury, and impatient at reproaches to which he was unaccustomed, he started up, and swore that if I did not instantly retire, he would thrust me out of the house, which I should never enter more, adding that although I presumed to consider it as mine, it was so no longer, but lawfully appertained to him, and that no one should remain in it that was not agreeable to him.

“Mad with indignation and contending feelings, I rushed from his presence, and sought again, in the dead of the night, the beloved innocent I had lost; my tender child, my consoling and accustomed dear little companion.—— But alas! alas! my search was vain; so it has continued from that fatal day. I have received no tidings of her, I have no more beheld that sweet face but in my dreams—what do I say—ah! she is never from my side!

“Oh, God! how do I tremble to think what may be at this moment her fate—has she fallen down the steep rock, and perished in the bottomless abyss; or bewildered, and unable to retrace her path, has she, in the labyrinths of some gloomy forest, become the victim of famine, or prey of ferocious beasts!——

“These dreadful ideas by turns pervade my brain; I start from sleep, and think I behold her falling down the precipice, torn and mangled by its rugged sides!—that tender form!—then do my cries resound through the cottage, and sleep for that night flies my eyes. Oh, Gabrielle! reproach, upbraid, abhor me, yet pity me—but if you cannot, learn, that though my death will not restore to you your child, that, hastened by a broken heart, it will soon expiate my involuntary offence.

“I need not add, that should ere that now wished event the remotest glimmer of hope present itself, to let me think that yet she lives, or tidings of her fate arise, that instantly I will transmit to you the intelligence, however slight, however vague. I forgot to mention to you, among the list of incalculable horrors and privations brought on me by my imprudent marriage, that every little ornamental trifle with which my love had delighted, for the magnificence of our solitude alone, to deck my idol, the grasping hand of the narrow-soul’d Boffuet gradually and entirely confiscated; one thing however, and one alone, was saved from his hungry avarice, it was that valuable treasure, that medallion, which at parting with your babe you fastened round her neck, and which contained in it documents, (as you justly considered them) so accurate, and so material, respecting the family of her father, and through him of her’s. Boffuet, who knew something of it, enquired of me concerning it; I told him it was lost, and after that, conceiving that the best mode of preserving it would be to place it in the bosom of our daughter, for no depository of mine was respected by him, I did so, and easily managed to conceal from view, by her dress, the chain which attached it.

“As your beloved Agnes had never beheld you, and as I constantly brought you before her young mind, in such points of view as to make you, though unseen, enthusiastically loved and appreciated by her, this only gift of your’s, and which I represented to have been valued by you above all price, acquired in her eyes likewise, a value and a consequence beyond compare, as having been bestowed by you, at a time and moment so affecting.—Thus inestimable as appeared to her this sacred gift, she seconded, with the utmost solicitude, my endeavours to conceal it from Boffuet, and trembled if his savage eyes but looked towards her.

“Oh, had it but pleased Heaven that this beloved child had been spared to me, I should, as I often fondly anticipated, have had the happiness of presenting to you a daughter, whose long residence with me you would have had no reason to regret, and whose tender love, and profound respect toward you, you would have recognised in as high a degree as though she had dwelt with you from her infancy.

“But such was not to be my fate! ah! the thought that this induces, again unnerves me; tears gush to my eyes, and scarcely can I perceive the characters I trace.—Ah, where is the hand of my Agnes, to subjoin as usual a few lines to my letter; where is that sweet countenance that peeping over my shoulder, used to smile at a requisition that made her proud?—where that harmonious voice that carolled among the mountains, and which often my rapt fancy traces in the breeze, now in gentle swell, now like the sweet murmuring sound of an Eolian harp? alas! you have no longer a daughter, I have no longer a child—I can say no more—but pity, pity, and, if you can, forgive me.

“CECILE BERTRAND.”

What was now the anguish and dismay of Gabrielle, who with a dreadful impatience had read this long letter to an end, in the vain hope, at every break and each succeeding line, to discover a ray of hope to save her from absolute despair.—But no, her loved Agnes, the hoarded treasure, which, like a miser, she considered that she possessed, although she did not enjoy, which so long she had fondly anticipated to claim, was gone, was vanished! a moment had blighted her best hopes, had rendered vain to the object for whom she had risqued so much, the firm perseverance with which she had endured distress, danger, grief, and mortification; had rendered vain too the reward with which her courage and sufferings had been crowned, in securing the protection she had sought, the protection of a father for her cherished child!—The reflection was too much, and her acute agony burst forth in loud cries, which summoned Angelo, in trembling anticipation of ill, to her apartment.

Gabrielle could only hold out to him the fatal letter; she could not speak: Angelo glanced hastily over it; he read the relation of that terrible disaster which caused her distraction, and forgetting his own grief in the wilder agony of her’s, he made every attempt to soothe and to console her; the idea which pressed heaviest on the mind of Gabrielle, vented itself in the repeated exclamation of, “Oh! if still she lives, what will be her fate, wandering about the world, unprotected, unclaimed?”

Angelo had never seen his child, consequently his affliction was less severe than that of her mother, which for some time appeared insensible to every representation that could be made. He resolved, however, as the only step now to be pursued, to set on foot every possible enquiry, not in England indeed, for there they must have been fruitless, but in Switzerland, on its borders; in Rome, Naples, &c. first writing to Madame Bertrand for an exact description of the person of Agnes, and the dress she wore at her departure; and afterwards writing severally to such of his friends and acquaintances as were resident at these places, intreating them to diffuse enquiry, and make it as general as they possessed the power of doing, but with the exception of concealing such circumstances as it might be both indelicate and unnecessary to divulge in the pursuit.

This then was immediately entered upon, and followed up with a spirit and an interest, such as shewed the high degree of estimation in which Angelo was held by all who had an opportunity of knowing him. This active perseverance too tended in a degree to divert the bitter anguish of Gabrielle, by mingling it with the fever of hope, while its suspense and agitation prevented her from sinking into absolute despair.

All however proved vain; at the end of several months they found themselves at the precise point from which they had sat out, in total and complete ignorance of the fate of their child. Nothing now was left for the parents but the most hopeless and melancholy conjecture, and no alternative but that of trusting to time for some developement of this most mysterious and lamentable occurrence.

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Table of Contents

THE LIBERTINE;

THE LIBERTINE.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAP. XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAP. XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVII.

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