The Project Gutenberg eBook of The libertine; vol. 2 [of 4]
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
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] ***
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.
END OF VOL. II.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIBERTINE; VOL. 2 [OF 4] ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg™ License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 41 Watchung Plaza #516,
Montclair NJ 07042, USA, +1 (862) 621-9288. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
