_Beatrice's Narrative._
She was awakened from this reverie by the voice of Beatrice, who called
to her to come near. "I am quite recovered," she said, "though weak; I
have been very ill to-day, and I am frightened to think of the violence
of my sensations. But sit near me, beloved friend; it is now night, and
you will hear no sound but my feeble voice; while I fulfil my promise of
relating to you my wretched history."
"Mine own Beatrice, do not now vex yourself with these recollections;
you must seek calm and peace alone; let memory go to its grave."
"Nay, you must know all," replied Beatrice, peevishly; "why do you balk
me? indeed I do best when I follow my own smallest inclinations; for,
when I try to combat them, I am again ill, as I was this morning. Sit
beside me; I will make room for you on my couch; give me your hand, but
turn away your soft eyes; and now I will tell you every thing.
"You know that I loved Castruccio; how much I need hardly tell: I loved
him beyond human love, for I thought heaven itself had interfered to
unite us. I thought----alas! it is with aching pain that I recollect my
wild dreams,--that we two were chosen from the rest of the world, gifted
with celestial faculties. It appeared to me to be a dispensation of
Providence, that I should have met him at the full height of my glory,
when I was burning with triumph and joy. I do not think, my own
Euthanasia, that you can ever have experienced the vigour and fire of my
sensations. Victory in an almost desperate struggle, success in art,
love itself, are earthly feelings, subject to change and death; but,
when these three most exquisite sensations are bestowed by the visible
intervention of heaven, thus giving security to the unstable, and
eternity to what is fleeting, such an event fills the over-brimming cup,
intoxicates the brain, and renders her who feels them more than mortal.
"Victory and glory I had, and an assurance of divine inspiration; the
fame of what I was, was spread among the people of my country; then love
came, and flattered, and softened, and overcame me. Well, that I will
pass over: to conceive that all I felt was human, common, and now faded,
disgusts me, and makes me look back with horror to my lost paradise.
Castruccio left me; and I sat I cannot tell how long, white, immoveable,
and intranced; hours, I believe days, passed; I cannot tell, for in
truth I think I was mad. Yet I was silent; not a word, not a tear, not a
sound escaped me, until some one mentioned the name of Castruccio before
me, and then I wept. I did not rave or weep aloud; I crept about like a
shadow, brooding over my own thoughts, and trying to divine the mystery
of my destiny.
"At length I went to my good father, the bishop; I knelt down before
him: 'Rise, dear child,' he said; 'how pale you are! what has quenched
the fire of your brilliant eyes?'
"'Father, holy father,' I replied, 'I will not rise till you answer me
one question.'--My looks were haggard with want of rest; my tangled
locks fell on my neck; my glazed eyes could scarcely distinguish any
object.
"'My blessed Beatrice,' said the good old man, 'you are much unlike
yourself: but speak; I know that you can ask nothing that I can refuse
to tell.'
"'Tell me then, by your hopes of heaven,' I cried, 'whether fraud was
used in the _Judgement of God_ that I underwent, or how I escaped the
fearful burning of the hot shares.'
"Tears started in my father's eyes; he rose, and embraced me, and,
lifting me up, said with passion,--'Thank God! my prayers are fulfilled.
Beatrice, you shall not be deceived, you will no longer deceive
yourself; and do not be unhappy, but joy that the deceit is removed from
you, and that you may return from your wild and feverish extacies to a
true and real piety.'
"'This is all well,' I replied calmly; 'but tell me truly how it
happened.'
"'That I cannot, my child, for I was myself kept in the dark; I only
know that fraud was most certainly practised for your deliverance. My
child, we have all of us much erred; you less than any; for you have
been deceived, led away by your feelings and imagination to believe
yourself that which you are not.'
"I will not repeat to you all that the bishop said; it was severe, but
kind. First he shewed me, how I had deceived myself, and nourished
extacies and transports of the soul which were in no way allied to
holiness; and then he told me how I must repair my faults by deep
humility, prayer, and a steady faith in that alone which others taught,
not what I myself imagined. I listened silently; but I heard every word;
I was very docile; I believed all he said; and although my soul bled
with its agony, I accused none, none but myself. At first I thought that
I would tell my countrymen of their deception. But, unsupported by my
supernatural powers, I now shrunk from all display; no veil, no wall
could conceal me sufficiently; for it could not hide me from myself. My
very powers of speech deserted me, and I could not articulate a
syllable; I listened, my eyes bent on the earth, my cheek pale; I
listened until I almost became marble. At length the good old man
ceased; and, with many words of affectionate comfort, he bade me go and
make firm peace with my own heart, and that then he hoped to teach me a
calm road to happiness. Happiness! surely I must have been stone; for I
neither frowned in despite, nor laughed in derision, when that term was
applied to any thing that I could hereafter feel. I kissed his hand, and
withdrew.
"Did you ever feel true humility? a prostration of soul, that accuses
itself alone, and asks pardon of a superior power with entire penitence,
and a confiding desertion of all self-merit, a persuasion intimate and
heartfelt of one's own unworthiness? That was what I felt; I had been
vain, proud, presumptuous; now I fell to utter poverty of spirit; yet it
was not poverty, for there was a richness in my penitence, which
reminded me of the sacred text, that says 'Oh, that my head were water,
and mine eyes a fountain of tears!'
"Then succeeded to this mental humiliation, a desire to mortify and
punish myself for my temerity and mistakes. I was possessed by a spirit
of martyrdom. Sometimes I thought that I would again undergo the
_Judgement of God_ fairly and justly: but now I shrunk from public
exhibition; besides, the good bishop had strongly reprobated these
temptations of God's justice. At other times I thought that I would
confess all to my excellent father; and this perhaps is what I ought to
have done; what would really have caused me to regain a part of the calm
that I had lost; but I could not; womanly shame forbade me; death would
have been a far preferable alternative. At length an idea struck me,
that seemed to my overstrained feelings to transcend all other
penitence; a wretchedness and anguish that might well redeem my
exceeding sins.
"Think you that, while I thus humbled myself, I forgot Castruccio?
Never! the love I bore him clung around me, festered on my soul, and
kept me ever alive to pain. Love him! I adored him; to whisper his name
only in solitude, where none could hear my voice but my own most
attentive ear, thrilled me with transport. I tried to banish him my
thoughts; he recurred in my dreams, which I could not control. I saw him
there, beautiful as his real self, and my heart was burnt by my emotion.
Well; it was on this excess of love that I built my penitence, which was
to go as a pilgrim and ask alms of you. Euthanasia! I only knew your
name; the very idea of seeing you made me shiver. I was three months
before I could steel my heart to this resolve. I saw none; I spoke to
none; I was occupied by my meditations alone, and those were deep and
undermining as the ocean.
"Well; as I have said, I dwelt long and deeply upon my plan, until every
moment seemed a crime, that went by before I put it in execution. The
long winter passed thus; my poor mother, the lady Marchesana, watched
me, as a child might watch a favourite bird fluttering in the agonies of
death. She saw that some mysterious and painful feeling oppressed me,
that I no longer appeared in public, that I shunned the worship of my
admirers, that the spirit of prophecy was dead within me; but I was
silent, and reserved; and her reverence for me (Good angels! her
reverence for me!) prevented any enquiries. In the spring the bishop
Marsilio was promoted to another see, and he was obliged to go to
Avignon to receive the investiture. Excellent and beloved old man! he
blessed me, and kissed me, and with words of affectionate advice
departed. I have never seen him more.
"When he was gone, the labour of my departure was lightened; and in
gentle and hesitating words I told my best and loved mother that I had
vowed a pilgrimage to Rome: she wished to accompany me. Those were
heart-breaking scenes, my Euthanasia, when I left all my friends, all
who loved me, and whom I had ever loved: I knew that I should never see
them again. How did I know this? In truth, after having performed my vow
with regard to you, I intended to visit the sepulchres at Rome; and I
might then have returned. I was no prophetess; and yet I felt that mine
was not a simple pilgrimage, but an eternal separation from all former
associations, from every one I had ever known. Thus, hopeless of future
good, I deserted all that yet rendered life in any degree sufferable: I
did this to satisfy my sense of duty, to do homage to the divinity by
some atonement for his violated laws: I did this; and henceforward I was
to be an outcast, a poor lonely shrub on a bleak heath, a single reed in
a vast and overflowing river.
"I had known too much luxury in my youth; every one loved me, and tended
on me; I had seen about me eyes beaming with affection, smiles all my
own, words of deep interest and respect, that had become to me a second
nature. I departed alone at four in the morning from Ferrara by the
secret entrance of the viscountess's palace, on a clear and lovely day
in the spring. I was dressed as the meanest pilgrim, and I carefully hid
my white hands and fair cheeks, which might have betrayed my way of life
during the past; except indeed when I was alone,--then I loved to throw
off my cloak, to bare my arms, my face, my neck to the scorching
sun-beams, that I might the sooner destroy a delicacy I despised: the
work was quickly done; a few hours exposure to the sun of noon burnt up
my skin, and made it red and common.
"The first day was one of unmixed pain; the sun parched my frame; my
feet were blistered, my limbs ached; I walked all day, until bodily
fatigue lulled my mental anguish, for I was unhappy beyond all words.
Alone, deserted by God and man, I had lost my firm support, my belief in
my own powers; I had lost my friends; and I found, that the vain,
self-sufficing, cloud-inhabiting Beatrice was in truth a poor dependent
creature, whose heart sunk, when in the evening she came to a clear
brook running through a little wood, and she found no cup to drink, and
no dainties to satisfy her appetite. I dragged my weary limbs three
miles further, to an hospital for pilgrims, and repined over my coarse
fare and coarser bed:--I, the ethereal prophetess, who fancied that I
could feed upon air and beautiful thoughts, who had regarded my body but
as a servant to my will, to hunger and thirst only as I bade it.
"Alone! alone! I travelled on day after day, in short, but wearisome
journeys, and I felt the pain of utter and forced solitude; the burning
sun shone, and the dews fell at evening, but there was no breeze, no
coolness to refresh me; the nights were close, and my limbs, dried with
the scorching of the day, and stiff with walking, burned all night as if
a furnace had glowed within them. Were these slight evils? Alas! I was a
spoiled child, and I felt every pain as an agony.
"I fell ill; I caught cold one evening, when just after sunset I threw
myself down to rest under a tree, and the unwholesome dew fell upon me.
I got a low fever, which for a long time I did not understand, feeling
one day well, and the next feverish, cold, and languid. Some attendant
nuns at an hospital found out my disorder, and nursed me; I was confined
for six weeks; and, when I issued forth, little of the fire of my eyes,
or of the beauty the lady Marchesana used to dwell upon, out-lived this
attack.--I was yellow, meagre,----a shadow of what I had been.
"My journey to your castle was very long. I crossed the Apennines during
the summer, and passing through Florence I arrived at Pistoia in the
beginning of June. But now my heart again failed; I heard of your name,
your prosperity, your beauty, the respect and adoration you every where
excited: it was a double penance to humble myself before so excelling a
rival. If you had been worthless, a self-contenting pride would have
eased my wounds, but to do homage to my equal--oh! to one far my
superior,--was a new lesson to my stubborn soul. I remained nearly three
months at Pistoia, very unhappy, hesitating,--cast about, as a boat that
for ever shifts its sail, but can never find the right wind to lead it
into port.
"I visited you in September; do you remember my coming? do you remember
my hesitating gait, and low and trembling voice? I was giddy--sick--I
thought that death was upon me, for that nothing but that great change
could cause such an annihilation of my powers, such an utter sinking of
my spirit. A cold dew stood upon my forehead, my eyes were glazed and
sightless, my limbs trembled as with convulsions. Castruccio loved you!
Castruccio! it is long since I have mentioned his name: during this
weary journey never did his loved image for a moment quit its temple,
its fane, its only home, that it still and for ever fills. Love him! it
was madness; yet I did;--yet I do;--put your hand upon my heart,--does
it not beat fast?"
Euthanasia kissed poor Beatrice's forehead; and, after a short pause,
she continued:
"My penance was completed, yet I did not triumph; an unconquerable
sadness hung over me; miserable dreams haunted my sleep; and their
recollected images strayed among my day-thoughts, as thin and grim
ghosts, frightening and astounding me. Once,--I can never forget,--I had
been oppressed for several days by an overpowering and black melancholy,
for which I could in no manner account; it was not regret or grief; it
was a sinking, an annihilation of all my mental powers in which I was a
passive sufferer, as if the shadow of some mightier spirit was cast over
to darken and depress me. I was haunted as by a prophecy, or rather a
sense of evil, which I could neither define nor understand. Three
evenings after, as I sat beside a quiet spring that lulled me almost to
insensibility, the cause of my mournful reveries suddenly flashed across
me; it stalked on my recollection, as a terrific and gigantic shadow,
and made me almost die with terror. The memory of a dream flashed across
me. Again and again I have dreamed this dream, and always on the eve of
some great misfortune. It is my genius, my dæmon. What was it? there
was something said, something done, a scene pourtrayed. Listen
attentively, I intreat; there was a wide plain flooded by the waters of
an overflowing river, the road was dry, being on the side of a hill
above the level of the plain, and I kept along the path which declined,
wondering if I should come to an insurmountable obstacle; at a distance
before me they were driving a flock of sheep; on my left, on the side of
the hill, there was a ruined circuit of wall, which inclosed the
dilapidated houses of a deserted town; at some distance a dreary, large,
ruinous house, half like a castle, yet without a tower, dilapidated, and
overgrown with moss, was dimly seen, islanded by the flood on which it
cast a night-black shade; the scirocco blew, and covered the sky with
fleecy clouds; and the mists in the distance hovered low over the plain;
a bat above me wheeled around. Then something happened, what I cannot
now tell, terrific it most certainly was; Euthanasia, there is something
in this strange world, that we none of us understand.
"Euthanasia, I came to that scene; if I live, I did! I saw it all as I
had before seen it in the slumbers of the night. Great God, what am I? I
am frailer than the first autumnal leaf that falls; I am overpowered."
She paused sobbing with passion; a clinging horror fell upon Euthanasia;
they were for a long time silent, and then Beatrice in a low subdued
voice continued:
"I had returned to Florence; I had passed through Arezzo; I had left
Thrasymene to the north; I had passed through Perugia, Foligno, and
Terni, and was descending towards the plain surrounding Rome; the Tiber
had overflowed, the whole of the low country was under water; but I
proceeded, descending the mountains, until, having passed Narni, I came
to the lowest hill which bounds the Campagna di Roma; the scirocco blew;
the mists were on the hills, and half concealed the head of lone
Soracte; the white waters, cold and dreary, were spread far, waste and
shelterless; on my left was a high dark wall surrounding a ruined
town--I looked,--some way beyond I saw on the road a flock of sheep
almost lost in the distance,--my brain was troubled, I grew dizzy and
sick--when my glazed eyes caught a glance of an old, large, dilapidated
house islanded in the flood,--the dream flashed across my memory; I
uttered a wild shriek, and fell lifeless on the road.
"I again awoke, but all was changed: I was lying on a couch, in a vast
apartment, whose loose tapestries waved and sighed in the wind;--near me
were two boys holding torches which flared, and their black smoke was
driven across my eyes; an old woman was chafing my temples.--I turned my
head from the light of the torches, and then I first saw my wicked and
powerful enemy: he leaned against the wall, observing me; his eyes had a
kind of fascination in them, and, unknowing what I did, hardly conscious
that he was a human creature, (indeed for a time it appeared to me only
a continuation of my dream,) I gazed on his face, which became
illuminated by a proud triumphant, fiendlike smile.--I felt sick at
heart, and relapsed into a painful swoon.
"Well: I promised to be brief, and I go on dwelling on the particulars
of my tale, until your fair cheek is blanched still whiter by fear. But
I have said enough, nor will I tell that which would chill your warm
blood with horror. I remained three years in this house; and what I saw,
and what I endured, is a tale for the unhallowed ears of infidels, or
for those who have lost humanity in the sight of blood, and not for so
tender a heart as yours. It has changed me, much changed me, to have
been witness of these scenes; I entered young, I came out grey, old and
withered; I went in innocent; and, if innocence consist in ignorance, I
am now guilty of the knowledge of crime, which it would seem that fiends
alone could contrive.
"What was he, who was the author and mechanist of these crimes? he bore
a human name; they say that his lineage was human; yet could he be a
man? During the day he was absent; at night he returned, and his roofs
rung with the sounds of festivity, mingled with shrieks and
imprecations. It was the carnival of devils, when we miserable victims
were dragged out to----
"Enough! enough! Euthanasia, do you wonder that I, who have been the
slave of incarnate Evil, should have become a Paterin?
"That time has passed as a dream. Often my faculties were exerted to the
utmost; my energies alive, at work, combating;--but I struggled against
victory, and was ever vanquished. I have seen the quiet stars shine, and
the shadow of the grated window of the hall lie upon the
moon-enlightened pavement, and it crawled along silently as I had
observed it in childhood, so that truly I inhabited the same world as
you,--yet how different! Animal life was the same; the household dog
knew, and was at last obedient to my voice; the cat slumbered in the
sun;--what was the influence that hung alone over the mind of man,
rendering it cruel, hard and fiendlike?
"And who was the author of these ills? There was something about him
that might be called beautiful; but it was the beauty of the tiger, of
lightning, of the cataract that destroys. Obedience waited on his
slightest motion; for he made none, that did not command; his followers
worshipped him, but it was as a savage might worship the god of evil.
His slaves dared not murmur;--his eyes beamed with irresistible fire,
his smile was as death. I hated him; and I alone among his many victims
was not quelled to submission. I cursed him--I poured forth eloquent and
tumultuous maledictions on his head, until I changed his detested love
into less dreadful, less injurious hate. Yet then I did not escape; his
boiling and hideous passions, turned to revenge, now endeavoured to
wreak themselves in my misery. These limbs, my Euthanasia, have been
wrenched in tortures; cold, famine and thirst have kept like
blood-hounds a perpetual watch upon my wearied life; yet I still live to
remember and to curse.
"But, though life survived these rending struggles, my reason sank
beneath them!--I became mad. Oh! dearest friend, may you never know what
I suffered, when I perceived the shadow of a false vision overpower me,
and my sickening throes, when the bars of my dungeon, its low roof, and
black thick air, would, as it were, peer upon me with a stifling sense
of reality amidst my insane transports. I struggled to recall my reason,
and to preserve it; I wept, I prayed;--but I was again lost; and the
fire that dwelt in my brain gave unnatural light to every object. But I
must speak of that no more; methinks I again feel, what it is madness
only to recollect.
"I told you that I remained for three years in this infernal house. You
can easily imagine how slowly the days and nights succeeded one to
another, each adding to my age, each adding one misery more to my list.
Still I was the slave of him, who was a man in form alone, and of his
companions, who, if they did not equal him in malice, yet were more
vile, more treacherous, than he. At length the Pope's party besieged the
castle. The many crimes of its possessor had drawn on him the hatred of
the country round; and the moment that a leader appeared, the whole
peasantry flocked as to a crusade to destroy their oppressor. He was
destroyed. I saw him die, calm, courageous and unrepenting. I stood
alone near his couch of blood-stained cloaks thrown in a heap upon the
floor, on which when he staggered into the room he had fallen; he asked
me for a cup of water; I raised his head, and gave him to drink; he
said--'I feel new strength, I shall be better soon.' And, saying those
words, he died.
"I was now free. I arose from the floor on which I knelt; and dividing
from my eyes my hair dabbled in his blood, I cut off with his dagger the
long and dripping locks, and threw them on his body. I disguised me in
the clothes of one of his pages, and hid myself, until by the submission
of his followers the outlet from my prison should be free. As I said
before, it was more a vast palace than a castle, being without towers or
battlements; but it was fortified by numberless ditches and other
obstacles, apparently small, yet which, defended by slingers and
archers, became almost impregnable. But when the chief died, these were
deserted; and the partners of his rapine and his feasts filled the air
with their savage lamentations. The fortress was taken; and I escaped to
the mountains, the wild, wild mountains,--I sought them as a home after
my long and painful imprisonment.
"I was now free. The ilex trees shaded me; the waters murmured beside
me; the sweet winds passed over my cheeks. I felt new life. I was no
longer a haggard prisoner, the despairing victim of others' crimes, the
inhabitant of the dark and blood-stained walls of a house, which hedged
me in on all sides, and interrupted the free course of my health even in
sleep. I was again Beatrice; I again felt the long absent sensations of
joy: it was paradise to me, to see the stars of heaven, unimpeded by the
grates of my dungeon-windows, to walk, to rest, to think, to speak,
uninterrupted and unheard. I became delirious with joy; I embraced the
rough trunks of the old trees, as if they were my sisters in freedom and
delight;--I took up in my hand the sparkling waters of the stream, and
scattered them to the winds;--I threw myself on the earth, I kissed the
rocks, I raved with tumultuous pleasure. Free! free! I can run, until my
strength fails; I can rest on a mossy bank, until my strength returns; I
hear the waving of the branches; I see the flight of the birds; I can
lie on the grassy floor of my mother-earth so long unvisited; and I can
call nature my own again. It was autumn, and the underwood of the forest
had strewn the ground with its withered leaves; the arbutus-berries,
chesnuts, and other fruits satisfied my appetite. I felt no want, no
fatigue; the common shapes of this world seemed arrayed in unusual
loveliness, to welcome and feast me on my new-found liberty.
"I wandered many days, and penetrated into the wild country of the
Abruzzi. But I was again lost: I know not what deprived me of reason
thus, when I most needed it. Whether it were the joy, or the sudden
change, attendant on a too intense sensation of freedom, which made me
feel as if I interpenetrated all nature, alive and boundless. I have
recollections, as if sometimes I saw the woods, the green earth, and
blue sky, and heard the roaring of a mighty waterfal which splashed me
with its cold waters: but there is a blank, as of a deep, lethargic
sleep; and many weeks passed before I awoke again, and entered upon the
reality of life.
"I found myself in a cavern lying on the ground. It was night; and a
solitary lamp burned, fastened to the wall of the cave; the
half-extinguished ashes of a fire glimmered in a recess; and a few
utensils that appeared to have been intended for the preparing food,
seemed to mark this as a human habitation. It was dry, and furnished
with a few benches and a table, on which lay bread and fruits. I felt as
if I had become the inhabitant of the dwelling of a spirit; and, with a
strange, half-painful, half-pleasurable feeling, I raised an apple to my
lips, that by its fragrance and taste I might assure myself that it was
earthly. Then again I looked around for some fellow-creature. I found a
narrow passage from my cave, which led to an inner apartment much
smaller and very low; on the ground, on a bed of leaves lay an old man:
his grey hairs were thinly strewn on his venerable temples, his beard
white, flowing and soft, fell to his girdle; he smiled even in his sleep
a gentle smile of benevolence. I knelt down beside him; methought it was
my excellent father, the lord Marsilio; but that there were greater
traces of thought and care upon the fallen cheeks and wrinkled brow of
this old man.
"He awoke: 'My poor girl,' he said, 'what would you?'
"'I wish to know where I am, and what I do here?'
"My words convinced my good protector, that the kindly sleep into which
his medicines had thrown me, had restored my reason; and, it being now
day-break, he arose, and opened the door of his cave. It was dug under
the side of a mountain, covered by ivy, wild vines, and other parasites,
and shaded by ilex trees; it opened on the edge of a small grassy
platform, with a steep wall of rock behind, and a precipice before: the
mountain in which it was scooped, was one of many that inclosed a rugged
valley; and, from one spot on the platform, I could distinguish a mass
of waters falling with a tremendous crash, which were afterwards hidden
by the inequalities of the mountain, and then were seen, a turbid and
swift river, at the bottom of the valley. The lower sides of the
mountain were covered with olive woods, whose seagreen colour contrasted
with the dark ilex, and the fresh-budding leaves of a few chesnuts. I
felt cold, and the mountain had just begun to be tipped by the rising
sun; it seemed as if no path led to or from the platform, and that we
were shut out from the whole world, suspended on the side of a rocky
mountain.
"This cavern had been an hospital for me during the long winter months.
The old man had found me straying wildly among the forests, complaining
of the heavy chains that bound me, and the wrongs and imprisonment that
I suffered. He, poor wretch, was an outcast of his species, a heretic, a
Paterin, who hid himself in the woods from the fury of the priests who
would have destroyed him. He led me to his cave; he tended me as the
kindest father; he restored me to reason, and even then did not desert
me. He lived here quite alone; no one was intrusted with the secret of
his retreat; at night, muffled up and disguised, he often went to seek
for food, and again hastened back to peace and solitude.
"I partook his solitude for many months: at sunrise we quitted our
dwelling, and enjoyed the fresh air, and the view of the sky and the
hills, until the sight of the first countryman in the vale below warned
us to retire. On moonlight nights we sat there; and, while she, lady of
the night, moved slowly above us, and the stars twinkled around, we
talked, and, in our conversations of faith, goodness and power, his
doctrines unveiled to me, what had before been obscure, and from him I
learned that creed which you hold in detestation, but which, believe me,
has much to be said in its behalf.
"Look, dear Euthanasia, daylight has made dim the glimmer of your lamp,
and bids me remember how often I have forgotten my promise to be brief
in my relation; it is now almost finished. I soon greatly loved my kind
guardian; he was the gentlest and most amiable of mortals, wise as a
Grecian sage, fearless and independent. He died in torture: the
bloodhounds hunted him from his den; they bound his aged limbs; they
dragged him to the stake. He died without dread, I would fain believe
almost without pain. Could these things be, oh, my preserver, best and
most excellent of men? It were well befitting, that thou shouldst die
thus, and that I lived, and still live.
"It were tedious to relate how all this passed; how I wept and prayed;
how I escaped, and, half maddened by this misery, cursed the creation
and its cruel laws. The rest is all uninteresting; I was returning from
the task of carrying the last legacy of this old man to his daughter at
Genoa, when I was seized in this town by the Inquisitors, and cast into
prison,----you know the rest.
"And now, dearest friend, leave me. Having related the events of my past
life, it makes me look on towards the future; it is not enough to rise
every day, and then lie down to sleep; I would look on what I may become
with firmness; I know that no creature in the whole world is so
miserable as I; but I have not yet drained the cup of life; something
still remains to be done.
"Yet one word, my Euthanasia, of Him who is the law of my life; and yet
I dare not say what I thought of saying. You write to him about me
sometimes; do you not? You may still; I would not check you in this. In
truth he is the master of my fate; and it were well that he knew all
that relates to me."
Poor Beatrice then wept bitterly; but she waved her hand in sign that
she would be left alone; and Euthanasia retired. She had not slept the
whole night, but she felt no inclination to rest. The last words of
Beatrice seemed to imply that she wished that Castruccio should know her
story; so she sat down, and wrote an abstract of it, while her eyes
often filled with tears, as she related the wondrous miseries of the
ill-fated prophetess.