I was filled with solemn emotion when, having taken leave of my brother
and all the friends who had accompanied me on board, I at length found
myself alone with Ottavia on the deck of the boat, gazing at the receding
mountains, hills, villas, and the smiling, flowery shores of the Bay of
Naples as they vanished away. Two years had scarcely flown since the day
when this prospect met my eyes for the first time. But during this short
period so many different feelings had agitated my heart, and so many
events had crossed my path, that the time seemed as long as a whole life.
Joys and sorrows, ardent hopes and bitter deceptions, severe trials,
dangerous temptations, a deadly struggle, grace—to crown all! grace
luminous and wonderful—had all succeeded each other in my soul. And to all
these remembrances was now added the new sorrow which set on these last
days a mournful, heartrending seal! The death of a child, it is true,
would seem to the indifferent to seriously wound no heart but its
mother’s. Mine, however, bled profusely, and the sudden death of the
angelic little creature I had so much loved, as well as the separation
that so soon took place, cast an inexpressible gloom over the hour of
departure I had so eagerly longed for, and which I had obtained at the
price of sacrifices which till now had not seemed worthy of being counted.
Truly, the words already quoted do not apply less to earthly affections
than to the divine love that overrules them and includes them all: “There
is no living in love without some pain or sorrow.” This is indubitable.
The more tender the affection, the more exquisite the suffering it
entails. But by way of recompense, in proportion as these cruel wounds are
multiplied, the never‐failing supreme love affords a remedy by revealing
itself more and more fully, and thereby supplying the place of all these
vanished joys. This love alone assures the promise, the pledge, of their
restoration and immortal duration!
Therefore, whatever the sadness of this hour; whatever the desolation of
heart with which I gazed at the convent on yonder height where I had just
parted from Stella and my sister with so many tears—in short, whatever the
emotions of all kinds that seemed combined to overwhelm me, I felt, in
spite of them, I lived a truer, freer life than when for the first time,
surrounded with illusions and deceitful hopes, I crossed this bay in all
the intoxication of radiant happiness!
These thoughts, and many others of a similar nature, passed through my
mind while the boat was rapidly cleaving the waves, and little by little
the last outline of the coast of Italy faded away and finally disappeared
from my eyes for ever.
Night came on, the stars appeared, but I remained in the place where I
was, without being able to make up my mind to leave it.
This solitude of the sea—more profound than any other—speaks to the soul a
language peculiar to itself. I listened to it with undivided attention,
blessing God for having inclined me to hear his voice, to give heed to no
other during the period of inaction and repose which separated the portion
of my life just closed from that which was about to commence under new and
unknown circumstances.
I did not stop at Marseilles, for I was impatient to arrive at my
journey’s end. And yet, in spite of the summons I was now obeying, I was
not without anxiety as to the reception I should meet with. I knew the
mobility of Lorenzo’s feelings, and that the letter I had so recently
received from him was not a sure guarantee of the disposition in which I
should find him. In fact, when I met him on my arrival at the station, I
did not at first know what to think. He was pale, agitated, and gloomy,
and could scarcely hide the suffering his face expressed much more clearly
than joy at seeing me again. I felt the arm tremble on which I was
leaning, and I remained silent, confounded, and anxious. He hurried me
through the crowd, placed me in a carriage, made Ottavia take a seat
beside me, then closed the door with an air of constraint, saying he
wished to arrive before me.
At first I was astonished at finding myself so suddenly separated from
him, after barely seeing him for a moment. But I saw, by the embarrassment
and painful agitation he manifested, what was passing in his mind, and was
extremely affected. Poor Lorenzo! it was not in this way he had once led
his young bride beneath his roof. This was not the future he then took
pleasure in depicting, or what he had promised. The immense change of
fortune he had undergone was now for the first time to be realized by the
wife he had outraged, and from whom he did not dare expect an affection
which would overlook all and render every sacrifice light. I felt he
regretted now that he had consented to my coming.
After a long drive we at last came to the end of a street at the extremity
of the Faubourg Saint‐Germain, where we entered a small court, and the
carriage stopped before a door of very unpretending appearance.
But the house to which it gave access, covered on the outside with
climbing plants that concealed the reddish tint of the walls, had a
picturesque appearance seldom found in any house in Paris, large or small.
Lorenzo, with his artistic eye, had discovered it, and understood also how
it should be arranged interiorly. Consequently, when he ushered me into a
_salon_ opening into a little parterre filled with flowers, beyond which
rose the trees of an adjacent garden, which made it seem like some rural
solitude; when he took me all over the ground‐floor, where everything was
simple, but nothing vulgar; when on all sides I found evidences both of
his taste and his solicitude for me; above all, when I saw in his cabinet
and studio all the indications that he had resumed his habits of assiduous
labor and serious study, so great a joy filled my heart and beamed from my
eyes that he could no longer feel any doubt, and I saw the cloud that
veiled his brow totally disappear.
“Is it possible?... Is it true?” said he. “You are satisfied, Ginevra? And
I can welcome your presence without remorse?”