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!”