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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Godolphin, by E. B. Lytton, Vol. 3
+#179 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+Title: Godolphin, Volume 3.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7752]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on May 27, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
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+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GODOLPHIN, BY LYTTON, V3 ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Andrew Heath
+and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+GODOLPHIN, Volume 3.
+By Edward Bulwer Lytton
+(Lord Lytton)
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+THE BRIDE ALONE.--A DIALOGUE POLITICAL AND MATRIMONIAL.--CONSTANCWE GENIUS
+FOR DIPLOMACY.--THE CHARACTER OF HER ASSBMBLIES.--HER CONQUEST OVER LADY
+DELVILLE.
+
+"Bring me that book; place that table nearer; and leave me."
+
+The Abigail obeyed the orders, and the young Countess of Erpingham was
+alone.  Alone! what a word for a young and beautiful bride in the first
+months of her marriage!  Alone! and in the heart of that mighty city in
+which rank and wealth--and they were hers--are the idols adored by
+millions.
+
+It was a room fancifully and splendidly decorated.  Flowers and perfumes
+were, however, its chief luxury; and from the open window you might see
+the trees in the old Mall deepening into the rich verdure of June.  That
+haunt, too--a classical haunt for London--was at the hour I speak of full
+of gay and idle life; and there was something fresh and joyous in the air,
+the sun, and the crowd of foot and horse that swept below.
+
+Was the glory gone from your brow, Constance?--or the proud gladness from
+your eye?  Alas! are not the blessings of the world like the enchanted
+bullets?--that which pierces our heart is united with the gift which our
+heart desired!
+
+Lord Erpingham entered the room.  "Well, Constance," said he, "shall you
+ride on horseback to-day?"
+
+"I think not."
+
+"Then I wish you would call on Lady Delville.  You see Delville is of my
+party: we sit together.  You should be very civil to her, and I did not
+think you were so the other night."
+
+"You wish Lady Delville to support your political interest; and, if I
+mistake not, you think her at present lukewarm?"
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"Then, my dear lord, will you place confidence in my discretion?  I
+promise you, if you will leave me undisturbed in my own plans, that Lady
+Delville shall be the most devoted of your party before the season is half
+over: but then, the means will not be those you advise."
+
+"Why, I advised none."
+
+"Yes--civility; a very poor policy."
+
+"D--n it, Constance! why, you would not frown a great person like Lady
+Delville into affection for us?"
+
+"Leave it to me."
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"My dear lord, only try.  Three months is all I ask.  You will leave the
+management of politics to me ever afterwards!  I was born a schemer.  Am I
+not John Vernon's daughter?"
+
+"Well, well, do as you will," said Lord Erpingham; "but I see how it will
+end.  However, you will call on Lady Delville to-day?"
+
+"If you wish it, certainly."
+
+"I do."
+
+Lady Delville was a proud, great lady; not very much liked and not so
+often invited by her equals as if she had been agreeable and a flirt.
+
+Constance knew with whom she had to treat.  She called on Lady Delville
+that day.  Lady Delville was at home: a pretty and popular Mrs. Trevor was
+with her.
+
+Lady Delville received her coolly--Constance was haughtiness itself.
+
+"You go to the Duchess of Daubigny's to-night?" said Lady Delville in the
+course of their broken conversation.
+
+"Indeed I do not.  I like agreeable society.  It shall be my object to
+form a circle that not one displeasing person shall obtain access to.
+Will you assist me, my dear Mrs. Trevor?"--and Constance turned, with her
+softest smile, to the lady she addressed.
+
+Mrs. Trevor was flattered: Lady Delville drew herself up.
+
+"It is a small party at the duchess's," said the latter; "merely to meet
+the Duke and Duchess of C----."
+
+"Ah, few people are capable of giving a suitable entertainment to the
+royal family."
+
+But surely none more so than the Duchess of Daubigny--her house so large,
+her rank so great!"
+
+"These are but poor ingredients towards the forming of an agreeable
+party," said Constance, coldly.  "The mistake made by common minds is to
+suppose titles the only rank.  Royal dukes love, above all other persons,
+to be amused; and amusement is the last thing generally provided for
+them."
+
+The conversation fell into other channels.  Constance rose to depart.
+She warmly pressed the hand of Mrs. Trevor, whom she had only seen once
+before.
+
+"A few persons come to me to-morrow evening," said she; "_do_ waive
+ceremony, and join us.  I can promise you that not one disagreeable person
+shall be present; and that the Duchess of Daubigny shall write for an
+invitation and be refused."
+
+Mrs. Trevor accepted the invitation.
+
+Lady Delville was enraged beyond measure.  Never was female tongue more
+bitter than hers at the expense of that insolent Lady Erpingham!  Yet
+Lady Delville was secretly in grief; for the first time in her life, she
+was hurt at not having been asked to a party: and being hurt because she
+was not going, she longed most eagerly to go.
+
+The next evening came.  Erpingham House was not large, but it was well
+adapted to the description of assembly its beautiful owner had invited.
+Statues, busts, pictures, books, scattered or arranged about the
+apartments, furnished matter for intellectual conversation, or gave at
+least an intellectual air to the meeting.
+
+About a hundred persons were present.  They were selected from the most
+distinguished ornaments of the time.  Musicians, painters, authors,
+orators, fine gentlemen, dukes, princes, and beauties.  One thing,
+however, was imperatively necessary in order to admit them--the profession
+of liberal opinions.  No Tory, however wise, eloquent or beautiful, could,
+that evening, have obtained the sesame to those apartments.
+
+Constance never seemed more lovely, and never before was she so winning.
+The coldness and the arrogance of her manner had wholly vanished.  To
+every one she spoke; and to every one her voice, her manner, were kind,
+cordial, familiar, but familiar with a soft dignity that heightened the
+charm.  Ambitious not only to please but to dazzle, she breathed into her
+conversation all the grace and culture of her mind.  They who admired her
+the most were the most accomplished themselves.
+
+Now exchanging with foreign nobles that brilliant trifling of the world in
+which there is often so much penetration, wisdom, and research into
+character; now with a kindling eye and animated cheek commenting, with
+poets and critics, on literature and the arts; now, in a more remote and
+quiet corner, seriously discussing, with hoary politicians, those affairs
+in which even they allowed her shrewdness and her grasp of intellect; and
+combining with every grace and every accomplishment a rare and dazzling
+order of beauty--we may readily imagine the sensation she created, and the
+sudden and novel zest which so splendid an Armida must have given to the
+tameness of society.
+
+The whole of the next week, the party at Erpingham House was the theme of
+every conversation.  Each person who had been there had met the lion he
+had been most anxious to see.  The beauty had conversed with the poet, who
+had charmed her; the young debutant in science had paid homage to the
+great professor of its loftiest mysteries; the statesman had thanked the
+author who had defended his measures; the author had been delighted with
+the compliment of the statesman.  Every one then agreed that, while the
+highest rank in the kingdom had been there, rank had been the least
+attraction; and those who before had found Constance repellent, were the
+very persons who now expatiated with the greatest rapture on the sweetness
+of her manners.  Then, too, every one who had been admitted to the coterie
+dwelt on the rarity of the admission; and thus, all the world were dying
+for an introduction to Erpingham House--partly, because it was
+agreeable--principally, because it was difficult.
+
+It soon became a compliment to the understanding to say of a person, "He
+goes to Lady Erpingham's!"  They who valued themselves on their
+understandings moved heaven and earth to become popular with the beautiful
+countess.  Lady Delville was not asked; Lady Delville was furious: she
+affected disdain, but no one gave her credit for it.  Lord Erpingham
+teazed Constance on this point.
+
+"You see I was right; for you have affronted Lady Delville.  She has made
+Delville look coolly on me; in a few weeks he will be a Tory; think of
+that, Lady Erpingham!"
+
+"One month more," answered Constance, with a smile, "and you shall see."
+
+One night, Lady Delville and Lady Erpingham met at a large party.  The
+latter seated herself by her haughty enemy; not seeming to heed Lady
+Delville's coolness, Constance entered into conversation with her.  She
+dwelt upon books, pictures, music: her manner was animated, and her wit
+playful.  Pleased, in spite of herself, Lady Delville warmed from her
+reserve.
+
+"My dear Lady Delville," said Constance, suddenly turning her bright
+countenance on the countess with an expression of delighted surprise,
+"will you forgive me?--I never dreamed before that you were so charming a
+person!  I never conceal my sentiments: and I own with regret and shame
+that, till this moment, I had never seen in your mind--whatever I might in
+your person--those claims to admiration which were constantly dinned into
+my ear."
+
+Lady Delville actually coloured.
+
+"Pray," continued Constance, "condescend to permit me to a nearer
+acquaintance.  Will you dine with us on Thursday?--we shall have only nine
+persons beside yourself: but they are the nine persons whom I most esteem
+and admire."
+
+Lady Delville accepted the invitation.  From that hour, Lady Delville--who
+had at first resented, from the deepest recess of her heart, Constance
+Vernon's accession to rank and wealth,--who, had Constance deferred to her
+early acquaintance, would have always found something in her she could
+have affected to despise; from that hour, Lady Delville was the warmest
+advocate, and a little time after, the sincerest follower, of the youthful
+countess.
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+AN INSIGHT INTO THE REAL GRANDE MONDE;--BEING A SEARCH BEHIND THE
+ROSE-COLOURED CURTAINS.
+
+The time we now speak of was the most brilliant the English world, during
+the last half century, has known.  Lord Byron was in his brief and
+dazzling zenith; De Stael was in London; the Peace had turned the
+attention of rich idlers to social enjoyment and to letters.  There was an
+excitement, and a brilliancy, and a spirituality, about our circles, which
+we do not recognise now.  Never had a young and ambitious woman--a beauty
+and a genius--a finer moment for the commencement of her power.  It was
+Constance's early and bold resolution to push to the utmost--even to
+exaggeration--a power existing in all polished states, but now mostly in
+this,--the power of fashion!  This mysterious and subtle engine she was
+eminently skilled to move according to her will.  Her intuitive
+penetration into character, her tact, and her grace, were exactly the
+talents Fashion most demands; and they were at present devoted only to
+that sphere.  The rudeness that she mingled, at times, with the bewitching
+softness and ease of manner she could command at others, increased the
+effect of her power.  It is much to intimidate as well as to win.  And her
+rudeness in a very little while grew popular; for it was never exercised
+but on those whom the world loves to see humbled.  Modest merit in any
+rank; and even insolence, if accompanied with merit, were always safe from
+her satire.  It was the hauteur of foolish duchesses or purse-proud
+roturiers that she loved, and scrupled not, to abase.
+
+And the independence of her character was mixed with extraordinary
+sweetness of temper.  Constance could not be in a passion: it was out of
+her nature.  If she was stung, she could utter a sarcasm; but she could
+not frown or raise her voice.  There was that magic in her, that she was
+always feminine.  She did not stare young men out of countenance; she
+never addressed them by their Christian names; she never flirted--never
+coquetted: the bloom and flush of modesty was yet all virgin upon her
+youth.  She, the founder of a new dynasty, avoided what her successors and
+contemporaries have deemed it necessary to incur.  She was the leader of
+fashion; but--it is a miraculous union--she was respectable!
+
+At this period, some new dances were brought into England.  These dances
+found much favour in the eves of several great ladies young enough to
+dance them.  They met at each other's houses in the morning to practise
+the steps.  Among these was Lady Erpingham; her house became the favourite
+rendezvous.
+
+The young Marquis of Dartington was one of the little knot.  Celebrated
+for his great fortune, his personal beauty, and his general success, he
+resolved to fall in love with Lady Erpingham.  He devoted himself
+exclusively to her; he joined her in the morning in her rides--in the
+evening in her gaieties.  He had fallen in love with her?--yes!--did he
+love her?--not the least.  But he was excessively idle!--what else could
+he do?
+
+Constance early saw the attentions and designs of Lord Dartington.  There
+is one difficulty in repressing advances in great society--one so easily
+becomes ridiculous by being a prude.  But Constance dismissed Lord
+Dartington with great dexterity.  This was the occasion:--
+
+One of the apartments in Erpingham House communicated with a conservatory.
+In this conservatory Constance was alone one morning, when Lord
+Dartington, who had entered the house with Lord Erpingham, joined her.  He
+was not a man who could ever become sentimental; he was rather the gay
+lover--rather the Don Gaolor than the Amadis; but he was a little abashed
+before Constance.  He trusted, however, to his fine eyes and his good
+complexion--plucked up courage; and, picking a flower from the same plant
+Constance was tending, said,--
+
+"I believe there is a custom in some part of the world to express love by
+flowers.  May I, dear Lady Erpingham, trust to this flower to express what
+I dare not utter?"
+
+Constance did not blush, nor look confused, as Lord Dartington had hoped
+and expected.  One who had been loved by Godolphin was not likely to feel
+much agitation at the gallantry of Lord Dartington; but she looked gravely
+in his face, paused a little before she answered, and then said, with a
+smile that abashed the suitor more than severity could possibly have
+done:--
+
+"My dear Lord Dartington, do not let us mistake each other.  I live in the
+world like other women, but I am not altogether like them.  Not another
+word of gallantry to me alone, as you value my friendship.  In a crowded
+room pay me as many compliments as you like.  It will flatter my vanity to
+have you in my train.  And now, just do me the favour to take these
+scissors and cut the dead leaves off that plant."
+
+Lord Dartington, to use a common phrase, "hummed and hawed."  He looked,
+too, a little angry.  An artful and shrewd politician, it was not
+Constance's wish to cool the devotion, though she might the attachment, of
+a single member of her husband's party.  With a kind look--but a look so
+superior, so queen-like, so free from the petty and coquettish
+condescension of the sex, that the gay lord wondered from that hour how he
+could ever have dreamed of Constance as of certain other ladies--she
+stretched her hand to him.
+
+"We are friends, Lord Dartington?--and now we know each other, we shall be
+so always."
+
+Lord Dartington bowed confusedly over the beautiful hand he touched; and
+Constance, walking into the drawing-room, sent for Lord Erpingham on
+business--Dartington took his leave.
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+THE MARRIED STATE OF CONSTANCE.
+
+Constance, Countess of Erpingham, was young, rich, lovely as a dream,
+worshipped as a goddess.  Was she happy? and was her whole heart occupied
+with the trifles that surrounded her?
+
+Deep within her memory was buried one fatal image that she could not
+exorcise.  The reproaching and mournful countenance of Godolphin rose
+before her at all times and seasons.  The charm of his presence no other
+human being could renew.  His eloquent and noble features, living, and
+glorious with genius and with passion, his sweet deep voice, his
+conversation, so rich with mind and knowledge, and the subtle delicacy
+with which he applied its graces to some sentiment dedicated to her,
+(delicious flattery, of all flatteries the most attractive to a sensitive
+and intellectual woman!)--these occurred to her again and again, and
+rendered all she saw around her flat, wearisome, insipid.  Nor was this
+deep-seated and tender weakness the only serpent--if I may use so confused
+a metaphor--in the roses of her lot.
+
+And here I invoke the reader's graver attention.  The fate of women in all
+the more polished circles of society is eminently unnatural and unhappy.
+The peasant and his dame are on terms of equality--equality even of
+ambition: no career is open to one and shut to the other;--equality even
+of hardship, and hardship is employment: no labour occupies the whole
+energies of the man, but leaves those of the woman unemployed.  Is this
+the case with the wives in a higher station?--the wives of the lawyer, the
+merchant, the senator, the noble?  There, the men have their occupations;
+and the women (unless, like poor Fanny, work-bags and parrots can employ
+them) none.  They are idle.  They employ the imagination and the heart.
+They fall in love and are wretched; or they remain virtuous, and are
+either wearied by an eternal monotony or they fritter away intellect,
+mind, character, in the minutest frivolities--frivolities being their only
+refuge from stagnation.  Yes! there is one very curious curse for the sex
+which men don't consider!  Once married, the more aspiring of them have no
+real scope for ambition: the ambition gnaws away their content, and never
+find elsewhere wherewithal to feed on.
+
+This was Constance's especial misfortune.  Her lofty, and restless, and
+soaring spirit pined for a sphere of action, and ballrooms and boudoirs
+met it on every side.  One hope she did indeed cherish; that hope was the
+source of her intriguings and schemes, of her care for seeming trifles,
+the waste of her energies on seeming frivolities.  This hope, this object,
+was to diminish--to crush, not only the party which had forsaken her
+father, but the power of that order to which she belonged herself; which
+she had entered only to humble.  But this hope was a distant and chill
+vision.  She was too rational to anticipate an early and effectual change
+in our social state, and too rich in the treasures of mind to be the
+creature of one idea.  Satiety--the common curse of the great;--crept over
+her day by day.  The powers within her lay stagnant--the keen intellect
+rusted in its sheath.
+
+"How is it," said she to the beautiful Countess of ----, "that you seem
+always so gay and so animated; that with all your vivacity and tenderness,
+you are never at a loss for occupation?  You never seem
+weary--ennuyee--why is this?"
+
+"I will tell you," said the pretty countess, archly; "I change my lovers
+every month."  Constance blushed, and asked no more.
+
+Many women in her state, influenced by contagious example, wearied by a
+life in which the heart had no share; without children, without a guide;
+assailed and wooed on all sides, in all shapes;--many women might have
+ventured, if not into love, at least into coquetry.  But Constance
+remained as bright and cold as ever--"the unsunned snow!"  It might be,
+indeed, that the memory of Godolphin preserved her safe from all lesser
+dangers.  The asbestos once conquered by fire can never be consumed by it;
+but there was also another cause in Constance's very nature--it was pride!
+
+Oh! if men could but dream of what a proud woman endures in those
+caresses which humble her, they would not wonder why proud women are so
+difficult to subdue.  This is a matter on which we all ponder much, but we
+dare not write honestly upon it.  But imagine a young, haughty, guileless
+beauty, married to a man whom she neither loves nor honours; and so far
+from that want of love rendering her likely to fall hereafter, it is more
+probable that it will make her recoil from the very name of love.
+
+About this time the Dowager Lady Erpingham died; an event sincerely
+mourned by Constance, and which broke the strongest tie that united the
+young countess to her lord.  Lord Erpingham and Constance, indeed, now saw
+but little of each other.  Like most men six feet high, with large black
+whiskers, the earl was vain of his person; and, like most rich noblemen,
+he found plenty of ladies who assured him he was irresistible.  He had
+soon grown angry at the unadmiring and calm urbanity of Constance; and,
+living a great deal with single men, he formed liaisons of the same order
+as they do.  He was, however, sensible that he had been fortunate in the
+choice of a wife.  His political importance the wisdom of Constance had
+quadrupled; at the least; his house she had rendered the most brilliant in
+London, and his name the most courted in the lists of the peerage.  Though
+munificent, she was not extravagant; though a beauty, she did not
+intrigue; neither, though his inconstancy was open, did she appear
+jealous; nor, whatever the errors of his conduct, did she ever disregard
+his interest, disobey his wishes, or waver from the smooth and continuous
+sweetness of her temper.  Of such a wife Lord Erpingham could not
+complain: he esteemed her, praised her, asked her advice, and stood a
+little in awe of her.
+
+Ah, Constance! had you been the daughter of a noble or a peasant--had you
+been the daughter of any man but John Vernon--what a treasure beyond
+price, without parallel, would that heart, that beauty, that genius have
+been!
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+THE PLEASURE OF RETALIATING HUMILIATION.--CONSTANCE'S DEFENCE OF
+FASHION.--REMARKS ON FASHION.--GODOLPHIN'S WHEREABOUT.--FANNY MILLINGER'S
+CHARACTER OF HERSELF.--WANT OF COURAGE IN MORALISTS.
+
+It was a proud moment for Constance when the Duchess of Winstoun and Lady
+Margaret Midgecombe wrote to her, worried her, beset her, for a smile, a
+courtesy, an invitation, or a ticket to Almack's.
+
+They had at first thought to cry her down; to declare that she was
+plebeian, mad, bizarre, and a blue.  It was all in vain.  Constance rose
+every hour.  They struggled against the conviction, but it would not do.
+The first person who confounded them with a sense of their error was the
+late King, then Regent; he devoted himself to Lady Erpingham for a whole
+evening, at a ball given by himself.  From that hour they were assured
+they had been wrong: they accordingly called on her the next day.
+Constance received them with the same coldness she had always evinced; but
+they went away declaring they never saw any one whose manners were so
+improved.  They then sent her an invitation! she refused it; a second!
+she refused; a third, begging her to fix the day!!! she fixed the day, and
+disappointed them.  Lord bless us!--how sorry they were, how alarmed, how
+terrified!--their dear Lady Erpingham must be ill!--they sent every day
+for the next week to know how she was!
+
+"Why," said Mrs. Trevor to Lady Erpingham,--"why do you continue so cruel
+to these poor people?  I know they were very impertinent, and so forth,
+once; but it is surely wiser and more dignified now to forgive; to appear
+unconscious of the past:  people of the world ought not to quarrel with
+each other."
+
+"You are right, and yet you are mistaken," said Constance: "I do forgive,
+and I don't quarrel; but my opinion, my contempt, remain the same, or are
+rather more disdainful than ever.  These people are not worth losing the
+luxury we all experience in expressing contempt.  I continue, therefore,
+but quietly and without affectation, to indulge that luxury.  Besides, I
+own to you, my dear Mrs. Trevor, I do think that the mere insolence of
+titles must fairly and thoroughly be put down, if we sincerely wish to
+render society agreeable; and where can we find a better example for
+punishment than the Duchess of Winstoun?"
+
+"But, my dear Lady Erpingham, you are thought insolent: your friend, Lady
+----, is called insolent, too;--are you sure the charge is not merited?"
+
+"I allow the justice of the charge; but you will observe, ours is not the
+insolence of rank: we have made it a point to protect, to the utmost, the
+poor and unfriended of all circles.  Are we ever rude to governesses or
+companions, or poor writers, or musicians?  When a man marries below him,
+do we turn our backs on the poor wife?  Do we not, on the contrary, lavish
+our attention on her, and throw round her equivocal and joyless state the
+protection of Fashion?  No, no! _our_ insolence is Justice! it is the
+chalice returned to the lips which prepared it; it is insolence to the
+insolent; reflect, and you will allow it."
+
+The fashion that Constance set and fostered was of a generous order; but
+it was not suited to the majority; it was corrupted by her followers into
+a thousand basenesses.  In vain do we make a law, if the general spirit is
+averse to the law.  Constance could humble the great; could loosen the
+links of extrinsic rank; could undermine the power of titles; but that was
+all!  She could abase the proud, but not elevate the general tone: for one
+slavery she only substituted another,--people hugged the chains of
+Fashion, as before they hugged those of Titular Arrogance.
+
+Amidst the gossip of the day Constance heard much of Godolphin, and all
+spoke of him with interest--even those who could not comprehend his very
+intricate and peculiar character.  Separated from her by lands and seas,
+there seemed no danger in allowing herself the sweet pleasure of hearing
+his actions and his mind discussed.  She fancied she did not permit
+herself to _love_ him; she was too pure not to start at such an idea; but
+her mind was not so regulated, so trained and educated in sacred
+principle, that she forbade herself the luxury to _remember._  Of his
+present mode of life she heard little.  He was traced from city to city;
+from shore to shore; from the haughty noblesse of Vienna to the gloomy
+shrines of Memphis, by occasional report, and seemed to tarry long in no
+place.  This roving and unsettled life, which secretly assured her of her
+power, suffused his image in all tender and remorseful dyes.  Ah! where is
+that one person to been vied, could we read the heart?
+
+The actress had heard incidentally from Saville of Godolphin's attachment
+to the beautiful countess.  She longed to see her; and when, one night at
+the theatre, she was informed that Lady Erpingham was in the Lord
+Chamberlain's box close before her, she could scarcely command her
+self-possession sufficiently to perform with her wonted brilliancy of
+effect.
+
+She was greatly struck by the singular nobleness of Lady Erpingham's face
+and person: and Godolphin rose in her estimation, from the justice of the
+homage he had rendered to so fair a shrine.  What a curious trait, by the
+by, that is in women;--their exaggerated anxiety to see one who has been
+loved by the man in whom they themselves take interest: and the manner
+which the said man rises or falls in their estimation, according as they
+admire, or are disappointed in, the object of his love.
+
+"And so," said Saville, supping one night with the actress, "you think the
+world does not overlaud Lady Erpingham?"
+
+"No: she is what Medea would have been, if innocent--full of majesty, and
+yet of sweetness.  It is the face of a queen of some three thousand years
+back.  I could have worshipped her."
+
+"My little Fanny, you are a strange creature.  Methinks you have a dash of
+poetry in you."
+
+"Nobody who has not written poetry could ever read my character," answered
+Fanny, with naivete, yet with truth.  "Yet you have not much of the ideal
+about you, pretty one."
+
+"No; because I was so early thrown on myself, that I was forced to make
+independence my chief good.  I soon saw that if I followed my heart to and
+fro, wherever it led me, I should be the creature of every breath--the
+victim of every accident: I should have been the very soul of romance;
+lived on a smile; and died, perhaps, in a ditch at last.  Accordingly, I
+set to work with my feelings, and pared and cut them down to a convenient
+compass.  Happy for me that I did so!  What would have become of me if,
+years go, when I loved Godolphin, I had thrown the whole world of my heart
+upon him?"
+
+"Why, he has generosity; he would not have deserted you."
+
+"But I should have wearied him," answered Fanny; "and that would have been
+quite enough for me.  But I did love him well, and purely--(ah! you may
+smile!)--and disinterestedly.  I was only fortified in my resolution not
+to love any one too much, by perceiving that he had _affection_ but no
+_sympathy_ for me.  His nature was different from mine.  I am _woman_ in
+everything, and Godolphin is always sighing for a _goddess!_"
+
+"I should like to sketch your character, Fanny.  It is original, though
+not strongly marked.  I never met with it in any book; yet it is true to
+your sex, and to the world."
+
+"Few people could paint me exactly," answered Fanny.  "The danger is that
+they would make too much or too little of me.  But such as I am, the world
+ought to know what is so common, and, as you think, so undescribed."
+
+And now, beautiful Constance, farewell for the present!  I leave you
+surrounded by power, and pomp, and adulation.  Enjoy as you may that for
+which you sacrificed affection!
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+THE VISIONARY AND HIS DAUGHTER--AN ENGLISHMAN, SUCH AS FOREIGNERS IMAGINE
+THE ENGLISH.
+
+We must now present the reader to characters very diferent from those
+which have hitherto passed before his eye.  Without the immortal city,
+along the Appia Via, there dwelt a singular and romantic visionary, of the
+name of Volktman.  He was by birth a Dane; and nature had bestowed on him
+that frame of mind which might have won him a distinguished career, had
+she placed the period of his birth in the eleventh century.  Volktman was
+essentially a man belonging to the past time:  the character of his
+enthusiasm was weird and Gothic; with beings of the present day he had no
+sympathy; their loves, their hatreds, their politics, their literature,
+awoke no echo in his breast.  He did not affect to herd with them; his
+life was solitude, and its occupation study--and study of that nature
+which every day unfitted him more and more for the purposes of existence.
+In a word, he was a reader of the stars; a believer in the occult and
+dreamy science of astrology.  Bred up to the art of sculpture, he had
+early in life sought Rome, as the nurse of inspiration; but even then he
+had brought with him the dark and brooding temper of his northern tribe.
+The images of the classic world; the bright, and cold, and beautiful
+divinities, whose natures as well as shapes the marble simulation of life
+is so especially adapted to represent; spoke but little to Volktman's
+pre-occupied and gloomy imagination.  Faithful to the superstitions and
+the warriors of the North, the loveliness and majesty of the southern
+creations but called forth in him the desire to apply the principles by
+which they were formed to the embodying those stern visions which his
+haggard and dim fancies only could invoke.  This train of inspiration
+preserved him, at least, from the deadliest vice in a worshipper of the
+arts--commonplace.  He was no servile and trite imitator; his very faults
+were solemn and commanding.  But before he had gained that long experience
+which can alone perfect genius, his natural energies were directed to new
+channels.  In an illness which prevented his applying to his art, he had
+accidentally sought entertainment in a certain work upon astrology.  The
+wild and imposing theories of the science--if science it may be
+called--especially charmed and invited him.  The clear bright nights of
+his fatherland were brought back to his remembrance; he recalled the
+mystic and unanalysed impressions with which he had gazed upon the lights
+of heaven; and he imagined that the very vagueness of his feelings was a
+proof of the certainty of the science.
+
+The sons of the North are pre-eminently liable to be affected by that
+romance of emotion which the hushed and starry aspect of night is
+calculated to excite.  The long-broken luxurious silence that, in their
+frozen climate, reigns from the going down of the sun to its rise; the
+wandering and sudden meteors that disport, as with an impish life, along
+the noiseless and solemn heaven; the peculiar radiance of the stars; and
+even the sterile and severe features of the earth, which those stars light
+up with their chill and ghostly serenity, serve to deepen the effect of
+the wizard tales which are instilled into the ear of childhood, and to
+connect the less known and more visionary impulses of life with the
+influences, or at least with the associations, of Night and Heaven.
+
+To Volktman, more alive than even his countrymen are wont to be, to
+superstitious impressions, the science on which he had chanced came with
+an all-absorbing interest and fascination.  He surrendered himself wholly
+to his new pursuit.  By degrees the block and the chisel were neglected,
+and, though he still worked from time to time, he ceased to consider the
+sculptor's art as the vocation of his life and the end of his ambition.
+Fortunately, though not rich, Volktman was not without the means of
+existence, nor even without the decent and proper comforts: so that he was
+enabled, as few men are, to indulge his ardour for unprofitable
+speculations, albeit to the exclusion of lucrative pursuits.  It may be
+noted, that when a man is addicted to an occupation that withdraws him
+from the world, any great affliction tends to confirm, without hope of
+cure, his inclinations to solitude.  The world, distasteful, in that it
+gave no pleasure, becomes irremediably hateful when it is coupled with the
+remembrance of pain.  Volktman had married an Italian, a woman who loved
+him entirely, and whom he loved with that strong though uncaressing
+affection common to men of his peculiar temper.  Of the gay and social
+habits and constitution of her country, the Italian was not disposed to
+suffer the astrologer to dwell only among the stars.  She sought,
+playfully and kindly, to attract him towards human society; and Volktman
+could not always resist--as what man earth-born can do?--the influence of
+the fair presider over his house and hearth.  It happened, that on one day
+in which she peculiarly wished his attendance at some one of those parties
+in which Englishmen think the notion of festivity strange--for it includes
+conversation--Volktman had foretold the menace of some great misfortune.
+Uncertain, from the character of the prediction, whether to wish his wife
+to remain at home or to go abroad, he yielded to her wish, and accompanied
+her to her friend's house.  A young Englishman lately arrived at Rome, and
+already celebrated in the circles of that city for eccentricity of life
+and his passion for beauty, was of the party.  He appeared struck with the
+sculptor's wife; and in his attentions, Volktman, for the first and the
+last time, experienced the pangs of jealousy; he hurried his wife away.
+
+On their return home, whether or not a jewel worn by the signora had
+attracted the cupidity of some of the lawless race who live through
+gaining, and profiting by, such information, they were attacked by two
+robbers in the obscure and ill-lighted suburb.  Though Volktman offered no
+resistance, the manner of their assailants was rude and violent.  The
+signora was fearfully alarmed; her shrieks brought a stranger to their
+assistance; it was the English youth who had so alarmed the jealousy of
+Volktman.  Accustomed to danger in his profession of a gallant, the
+Englishman seldom, in those foreign lands, went from home at night without
+the protection of pistols.  At the sight of firearms, the ruffians felt
+their courage evaporate; they fled from their prey; and the Englishman
+assisted Volktman in conveying the Italian to her home.  But the terror of
+the encounter operated fatally on a delicate frame; and within three weeks
+from that night Volktman was a widower.
+
+His marriage had been blessed with but one daughter, who at the time of
+this catastrophe was about eight years of age.  His love for his child in
+some measure reconciled Volktman to life; and as the shock of the event
+subsided, he returned with a pertinacity which was now subjected to no
+interruption, to his beloved occupations and mysterious researches.  One
+visitor alone found it possible to win frequent ingress to his seclusion;
+it was the young English man.  A sentiment of remorse at the jealous
+feelings he had experienced, and for which his wife, though an Italian,
+had never given him even the shadow of a cause, had softened--into a
+feeling rendered kind by the associations of the deceased, and a vague
+desire to atone to her for an acknowledged error,--the dislike he had at
+first conceived against the young man.  This was rapidly confirmed by the
+gentle and winning manners of the stranger, by his attentions to the
+deceased, to whom he had sent an English physician of great skill, and, as
+their acquaintance expanded, by the animated interest which he testified
+in the darling theories of the astrologer.
+
+It happened also that Volktman's mother had been the daughter of Scotch
+parents.  She had taught him the English tongue; and it was the only
+language, save his own, which he spoke as a native.  This circumstance
+tended greatly to facilitate his intercourse with the traveller; and he
+found in the society of a man ardent, sensitive, melancholy, and addicted
+to all abstract contemplation, a pleasure which, among the keen, but
+uncultivated intellects of Italy, he had never enjoyed.
+
+Frequently, then, came the young Englishman to the lone house on the Appia
+Via; and the mysterious and unearthly conversation of the starry visionary
+afforded to him, who had early learned to scrutinise the varieties of his
+kind, a strange delight, heightened by the contrast it presented to the
+worldly natures with which he usually associated, and the commonplace
+occupations of a life in pursuit of pleasure.
+
+And there was one who, child as she was, watched the coming of that young
+and beautiful stranger with emotion beyond her years.  Brought up alone;
+mixing, since her mother's death, with no companions of her age; catching
+dim and solemn glimpses of her father's wild but lofty speculations; his
+books, filled with strange characters and imposing "words of mighty
+sound," open for ever to her young and curious gaze; it can scarce be
+matter of wonder that something strange and unworldly mingled with the
+elements of character which Lucilla Volktman early developed--a character
+that was nature itself, yet of a nature erratic and bizarre.  Her impulses
+she obeyed spontaneously, but none fathomed their origin.  She was not of
+a quiet and meek order of mind; but passionate, changeful, and restless.
+She would laugh and weep without apparent cause; and the colour on her
+cheek never seemed for two minutes the same; and the most fitful changes
+of an April heaven were immutability itself compared with the play and
+lustre of expression that undulated in her features and her wild, deep,
+eloquent eyes.
+
+Her person resembled her mind; it was beautiful; but the beauty struck you
+less than the singularity of its character.  Her eyes were of a darkness
+that at night seemed black; but her hair was of the brightest and purest
+auburn; her complexion, sometimes pale, sometimes radiant even to the
+flush of a fever, was delicate and clear; her teeth and mouth were lovely
+beyond all words; her hands and feet were small to a fault; and as she
+grew up (for we have forestalled her age in this description) her shape,
+though wanting in height, was in such harmony and proportion, that the
+mind of the sculptor would sometimes escape from the absorption of the
+astrologer and Volktman would gaze upon her with the same admiration that
+he would have bestowed, in spite of the subject, on the goddess-forms of
+Phidias or Canova.  But then, this beauty was accompanied with such
+endless variety of gesture, often so wild, though always necessarily
+graceful, that the eye ached for that repose requisite for prolonged
+admiration.
+
+When she was spoken to, she did not often answer to the purpose, but
+rather appeared to reply as to some interrogatory of her own; in the midst
+of one occupation, she would start up to another; leave that, in turn,
+undone, and sit down in silence lasting for hours.  Her voice, in singing,
+was exquisitely melodious; she had too, an intuitive talent for painting;
+and she read all the books that came in her way with an avidity that
+bespoke at once the restlessness and the genius of her mind.
+
+This description of Lucilla must, I need scarcely repeat, be considered as
+applicable to her at some years distant from the time in which the young
+Englishman first attracted her childish but ardent imagination.  To her,
+that face, with its regular and harmonious features, its golden hair, and
+soft, shy, melancholy aspect, seemed as belonging to a higher and brighter
+order of beings than those who, with exaggerated lineaments and swarthy
+hues, surrounded and displeased her.  She took a strange and thrilling
+pleasure in creeping to his side, and looking up, when unobserved, at the
+countenance which, in his absence, she loved to imitate with her pencil by
+day; and to recall in her dreams at night.  But she seldom spoke to him,
+and she shrank, covered with painful blushes, from his arms, whenever he
+attempted to bestow on her those caresses which children are wont to claim
+as an attention.  Once, however, she summoned courage to ask him to teach
+her English, and he complied.  She learned that language with surprising
+facility; and as Volktman loved its sound she grew familiar with its
+difficulties, by always addressing her father in a tongue which became
+inexpressibly dear to her.  And the young stranger delighted to hear that
+soft and melodious voice, with its trembling, Italian accent, make music
+from the nervous and masculine language of his native land.  Scarce
+accountably to himself, a certain tender and peculiar interest in the
+fortunes of this singular and bewitching child grew up within
+him--peculiar and not easily accounted for, in that it was not wholly the
+interest we feel in an engaging child, and yet was of no more interested
+nor sinister order.  Were there truth in the science of the stars, I
+should say that they had told him her fate was to have affinity with his;
+and with that persuasion, something mysterious and more than ordinarily
+tender, entered into the affection he felt for the daughter of his friend.
+
+The Englishman was himself of a romantic character.  He had been
+self-taught; and his studies, irregular though often deep, had given
+directions to his intellect frequently enthusiastic and unsound.  His
+imagination preponderated over his judgment; and any pursuit that
+attracted his imagination won his entire devotion, until his natural
+sagacity proved it deceitful.  If at times, living as he did in that daily
+world which so sharpens our common sense, he smiled at the persevering
+fervour of the astrologer, he more often shared it; and he became his
+pupil in "the poetry of heaven," with a secret but deep belief in the
+mysteries cultivated by his master.  Carrying the delusion to its height,
+I fear that the enthusiast entered upon ground still more shadowy and
+benighted;--the old secrets of the alchymist, and perhaps even of those
+arcana yet more gloomy and less rational, were subjected to their serious
+contemplation; and night after night, they delivered themselves wholly up
+to that fearful and charmed fascination which the desire and effort to
+overleap our mortal boundaries produce even in the hardest and best
+regulated minds.  The train of thought so long nursed by the abstruse and
+solitary Dane was, perhaps, a better apology for the weakness of
+credulity, than the youth and wandering fancy of the Englishman.  But the
+scene around--not alluring to the one--fed to overflowing the romantic
+aspirations of the other.
+
+On his way home, as the stars (which night had been spent in reading)
+began to wink and fade, the Englishman crossed the haunted Almo, renowned
+of yore for its healing virtues, and in whose stream the far-famed
+simulacrum, (the image of Cybele), which fell from heaven, was wont to be
+laved with every coming spring: and around his steps, till he gained his
+home, were the relics and monuments of that superstition which sheds so
+much beauty over all that, in harsh reasoning, it may be said to degrade;
+so that his mind, always peculiarly alive to external impressions, was
+girt, as it were, with an atmosphere favourable both to the lofty
+speculation and the graceful credulities of romance.
+
+The Englishman remained at Rome, with slight intervals of absence, for
+nearly three years.  On the night before the day in which he received
+intelligence of an event that recalled him to his native country, he
+repaired at an hour accidentally later than usual to the astrologer's
+abode.
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+A CONVERSATION LITTLE APPERTAINING TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.--RESEARCHES
+INTO HUMAN FATE._-THE PREDICTION.
+
+On entering the apartment he found Lucilla seated on a low stool beside
+the astrologer.  She looked up when she heard his footsteps; but her
+countenance seemed so dejected, that he turned involuntarily to that of
+Volktman for explanation.  Volktman met his gaze with a steadfast and
+mournful aspect.
+
+"What has happened?" asked the Englishman: "you seem sad,--you do not
+greet me as usual."
+
+"I have been with the stars," replied the visionary.
+
+"They seem but poor company," rejoined the Englishman; "and do not appear
+to have much heightened your spirits."
+
+"Jest not, my friend," said Volktman; it was for the loss of thee I looked
+sorrowful.  I perceive that thou wilt take a journey soon, and that it
+will be of no pleasant nature."
+
+"Indeed!" answered the Englishman, smilingly.  "I ask leave to question
+the fact: you know better than any man how often, through an error in our
+calculations, through haste, even through an over-attention, astrological
+predictions are exposed to falsification; and at present I foresee so
+little chance of my quitting Rome, that I prefer the earthly probabilities
+to the celestial."
+
+"My schemes are just, and the Heavens wrote their decrees in their
+clearest language," answered the astrologer.  "Thou art on the eve of
+quitting Rome."
+
+"On what occasion?"
+
+The astrologer hesitated--the young visitor pressed the question.
+
+"The lord of the fourth house," said Volktman, reluctantly, "is located in
+the eleventh house.  Thou knowest to whom the position portends disaster."
+
+"My father!" said the Englishman, anxiously, and turning pale; "I think
+that position would relate to him."
+
+"It doth," said the astrologer, slowly.
+
+"Impossible!  I heard from him to-day; he is well--let me see the
+figures."
+
+The young man looked over the mystic hieroglyphics of the art, inscribed
+on a paper that was placed before the visionary, with deep and
+scrutinising attention.  Without bewildering the reader with those words
+and figures of weird sound and import which perplex the uninitiated, and
+entangle the disciple of astrology, I shall merely observe that there was
+one point in which the judgment appeared to admit doubt as to the
+signification.  The Englishman insisted on the doubt; and a very learned
+and edifying debate was carried on between pupil and master, in the heat
+of which all recollection of the point in dispute (as is usual in such
+cases) evaporated.
+
+"I know not how it is," said the Englishman, "that I should give any
+credence to a faith which (craving your forgiveness) most men out of
+Bedlam concur, at this day, in condemning as wholly idle and absurd.  For
+it may be presumed that men only incline to some unpopular theory in
+proportion as it flatters or favours them; and as for this theory of
+yours--of ours, if you will--it has foretold me nothing but misfortune."
+
+"Thy horoscope," replied the astrologer, "is indeed singular and ominous:
+but, like my daughter, the exact minute (within almost a whole hour) of
+thy birth seems unknown; and however ingeniously we, following the
+ancients, have contrived means for correcting nativities, our predictions
+(so long as the exact period of birth is not ascertained) remain, in my
+mind, always liable to some uncertainty.  Indeed, the surest method of
+reducing the supposed time to the true--that of 'Accidents,' is but
+partially given, as in thy case; for, with a negligence that cannot be too
+severely blamed or too deeply lamented, thou hast omitted to mark down, or
+remember, the days on which accidents--fevers, broken limbs, &c.--occurred
+to thee; and this omission leaves a cloud over the bright chapters of
+fate----"
+
+"Which," interrupted the young man, "is so much the happier for me, in
+that it allows me some loophole for hope."
+
+"Yet," renewed the astrologer, as if resolved to deny his friend any
+consolation, "thy character, and the bias of thy habits, as well as the
+peculiarities of thy person--nay even the moles upon thy skin--accord with
+thy proposed horoscope."
+
+"Be it so!" said the Englishman, gaily.  "You grant me, at least, the
+fairest of earthly gifts--the happiness of pleasing that sex which alone
+sweetens our human misfortunes.  That gift I would sooner have, even
+accompanied as it is, than all the benign influences without it."
+
+"Yet," said the astrologer, "shalt thou even there be met with affliction;
+for Saturn had the power to thwart the star Venus, that was disposed to
+favour thee, and evil may be the result of the love thou inspirest.  There
+is one thing remarkable in our science, which is especially worthy of
+notice in thy lot.  The ancients, unacquainted with the star of Herschel,
+seem also scarcely acquainted with the character which the influence of
+that wayward and melancholy orb creates.  Thus, the aspect of Herschel
+neutralises, in great measure, the boldness and ambition, and pride of
+heart, thou wouldst otherwise have drawn from the felicitous configuration
+of the stars around the Moon and Mercury at thy birth.  That yearning for
+something beyond the narrow bounds of the world, that love for reverie,
+that passionate romance, yea, thy very leaning, despite thy worldly sense,
+to these occult and starry mysteries;--all are bestowed on thee by this
+new and potential planet."
+
+"And hence, I suppose," said the Englishman, interested (as the astrologer
+had declared) in spite of himself, "hence that opposition in my nature of
+the worldly and romantic; hence, with you, I am the dreaming enthusiast;
+but the instant I regain the living and motley crowd, I shake off the
+influence with ease, and become the gay pursuer of social pleasures."
+
+"Never _at heart gay,_" muttered the astrologer; "Saturn and Herschel make
+not sincere mirth-makers."  The Englishman did not hear or seem to hear
+him.
+
+"No," resumed the young man, musingly, "no! it is true that there is some
+counteraction of what, at times, I should have called my natural bent.
+Thus, I am bold enough, and covetous of knowledge, and not deaf to vanity;
+and yet I have no ambition.  The desire to rise seems to me wholly
+unalluring: I scorn and contemn it as a weakness.  But what matters it? so
+much the happier for me if, as you predict, my life be short.  But how, if
+so unambitious and so quiet of habit, how can I imagine that my death will
+be violent as well as premature?"
+
+It was as he spoke that the young Lucilla, who, with fixed eyes and lips
+apart, had been drinking in their conversation suddenly rose and left the
+room.  They were used to her comings in and her goings out without cause
+or speech, and continued their conversation.
+
+"Alas!" said the visionary; "can tranquillity of life, or care, or
+prudence, preserve us from our destiny?  No sign is more deadly, whether
+by accident or murder, than that which couples Hyleg with Orion and
+Saturn.  Yet, thou mayest pass the year in which that danger is foretold
+thee; and, beyond that time, peace, honour, good fortune, await thee.
+Better to have the menace of ill in early life than in its decline.  Youth
+bears up against misfortune; but it withers the heart, and crushes the
+soul of age!"
+
+"After all," said the young guest, haughtily, "we must do our best to
+contradict the starry evils by our own internal philosophy.  We can make
+ourselves independent of fate; that independence is better than
+prosperity!"  Then, changing his tone, he added,--"But you imagine that,
+by the power of other arts, we may control and counteract the prophecies
+of the stars----"
+
+"How meanest thou?" said the astrologer, hastily.  "Thou dost not suppose
+that alchymy, which is the servant of the heavenly host, is their
+opponent?"
+
+"Nay," answered the disciple, "but you allow that we may be enabled to
+ward off evils, and to cure diseases, otherwise fatal to us, by the gift
+of Uriel and the charm of the Cabala?"
+
+"Surely," replied the visionary; "but then I opine that the discovery of
+these precious secrets was foretold to us by the Omniscient Book at our
+nativity; and, therefore, though the menace of evils be held out to us, so
+also is the probability of their correction or our escape.  And I must own
+(pursued the enthusiast) that, to me, the very culture of those divine
+arts hath given a consolation amidst the evils to which I have been fated;
+so true seems it, that it is not in the outer nature, in the great
+elements, and in the bowels of the earth, but also within ourselves that
+we must look for the preparations whereby we are to achieve the wisdom of
+Zoroaster and Hermes.  We must abstract ourselves from passion and earthly
+desires.  Lapped in a celestial reverie, we must work out, by
+contemplation, the essence from the matter of things: nor can we dart into
+the soul of the Mystic World until we ourselves have forgotten the body;
+and by fast, by purity, and by thought, have become, in the flesh itself,
+a living soul."
+
+Much more, and with an equal wildness of metaphysical eloquence, did the
+astrologer declare in praise of those arts condemned by the old Church;
+and it doth indeed appear from reference to the numerous works of the
+alchymists and magians yet extant, somewhat hastily and unjustly.  For
+those books all unite in dwelling on the necessity of virtue, subdued
+passions and a clear mind, in order to become a fortunate and accomplished
+cabalist--a precept, by the way, not without its policy; for, if the
+disciple failed, the failure might be attributed to his own fleshly
+imperfections, not to any deficiency in the truth of the science.
+
+The young man listened to the visionary with an earnest and fascinated
+attention.  Independent of the dark interest always attached to discourses
+of supernatural things more especially, we must allow, in the mouth of a
+fervent and rapt believer, there was that in the language and very person
+of the astrologer which inexpressibly enhanced the effect of the theme.
+Like most men acquainted with the literature of a country, but not
+accustomed to daily conversation with its natives, the English words and
+fashion of periods that occurred to Volktman were rather those used in
+books than in colloquy; and a certain solemnity and slowness of tone
+accompanied with the frequent, almost constant use of the pronoun
+singular--the thou and the thee, gave a strangeness and unfamiliar majesty
+to his dialect that suited well with the subjects on which he so loved to
+dwell.  He himself was lean, gaunt, and wan; his cheeks were drawn and
+hollow; and thin locks, prematurely bleached to grey, fell in disorder
+round high, bare temples, in which the thought that is not of this world
+had paled the hue and furrowed the surface.  But, as may be noted in many
+imaginative men, the life that seemed faint and chill in the rest of the
+frame, collected itself, as in a citadel, within the eye.  Bright, wild,
+and deep, the expression of those blue large orbs told the intense
+enthusiasm of the mind within; and, even somewhat thrillingly,
+communicated a part of that emotion to those on whom they dwelt.  No
+painter could have devised, nor even Volktman himself, in the fulness of
+his northern phantasy, have sculptured forth a better image of those pale
+and unearthly students who, in the darker ages, applied life and learning
+to one unhallowed vigil, the Hermes or the Gebir of the alchymist's empty
+science--dreamers, and the martyrs of their dreams.
+
+In the discussion of mysteries which to detail would only weary while it
+perplexed the reader, the enthusiasts passed the greater portion of the
+night; and when at length the Englishman rose to depart, it cannot be
+denied that a solemn and boding emotion agitated his breast.
+
+"We have talked," said he, attempting a smile, "of things above this
+nether life; and here we are lost, uncertain.  On one thing, however, we
+can decide; life itself is encompassed with gloom; sorrow and anxiety
+await even those upon whom the stars shed their most golden influence.  We
+know not one day what the next shall bring!--no; I repeat it; no--in spite
+of your scheme, and your ephemeris, and your election of happy moments.
+But, come what will, Volktman, come all that you foretell to me; crosses
+in my love, disappointment in my life, melancholy in my blood, and a
+violent death in the very flush of my manhood,--Me: at least, Me! my soul,
+my heart, my better part, you shall never cast down, nor darken, nor
+deject.  I move in a certain and serene circle; ambition cannot tempt me
+above it, nor misfortune cast me below!"
+
+Volktman looked at the speaker with surprise and admiration; the
+enthusiasm of a brave mind is the only fire broader and brighter than that
+of a fanatical one.
+
+"Alas! my young friend," he said, as he clashed the hand of his guest, "I
+would to Heaven that my predictions may be wrong: often and often they
+have been erroneous," added he bowing his head humbly; "they may be so in
+their reference to thee.  So young, so brilliant, so beautiful too; so
+brave, yet so romantic of heart, I feel for all that may happen to
+thee--ay, far, far more deeply than aught which may be fated to myself;
+for I am an old man now, and long inured to disappointment; all the
+greenness of my life is gone: even could I attain to the Grand Secret the
+knowledge methinks would be too late.  And, at my birth, my lot was
+portioned out unto me in characters so clear, that, while I have had time
+to acquiesce in it, I have had no hope to correct and change it.  For
+Jupiter in Cancer, removed from the Ascendant, and not impedited of any
+other star, betokened me indeed some expertness in science, but a life of
+seclusion, and one that should bring not forth the fruits that its labour
+deserved.  But there is so much in thy fate that ought to be bright and
+glorious, that it will be no common destiny marred, should the evil
+influences and the ominous seasons prevail against thee.  But thou
+speakest boldly--boldly, and as one of a high soul, though it be sometimes
+clouded and led astray.  And I, therefore, again and again impress upon
+thee, it is from thine own self, thine own character, thine own habits,
+that all evil, save that of death, will come.  Wear, then, I implore thee,
+wear in thy memory, as a jewel, the first great maxim of alchymist and
+magian:--'Search thyself--correct thyself--subdue thyself:' it is only
+through the lamp of crystal that the light will shine duly out."
+
+"It is more likely that the stars should err," returned the Englishman,
+"than that the human heart should correct itself of error: adieu!"
+
+He left the room, and proceeded along a passage that led to the outer
+door.  Ere he reached it, another door opened suddenly, and the face of
+Lucilla broke forth upon him.  She held a light in her hand; and as she
+gazed on the Englishman, he saw that her face was very pale, and that she
+had been weeping.  She looked at him long and earnestly, and the look
+affected him strangely; he broke silence, which at first it appeared to
+him difficult to do.
+
+"Good night, my pretty friend," said he: "shall I bring you some flowers
+to-morrow?"
+
+Lucilla burst into a wild eltritch laugh; and abruptly closing the door,
+left him in darkness.
+
+The cool air of the breaking dawn came freshly to the cheek of our
+countryman; yet, still, an unpleasant and heavy sensation sat at his
+heart.  His nerves, previously weakened by his long commune with the
+visionary, and the effect it had produced, yet tingled and thrilled with
+the abrupt laugh and meaning countenance of that strange girl, who
+differed so widely from all others of her years.  The stars were growing
+pale and ghostly, and there was a mournful and dim haze around the moon.
+
+"Ye look ominously upon me," said he, half aloud, as his eyes fixed their
+gaze above; and the excitement of his spirit spread to his language: "ye
+on whom, if our lore be faithful, the Most High hath written the letters
+of our mortal doom.  And if ye rule the tides of the great deep, and the
+changes of the rolling year, what is there out of reason or nature in our
+belief that ye hold the same sympathetic and unseen influence over the
+blood and heart, which are the character (and the character makes the
+conduct) of man?"  Pursuing his soliloquy of thought, and finding reasons
+for a credulity that afforded to him but little cause for pleasure or
+hope, the Englishman took his way to St. Sebastian's gate.
+
+There was, in truth, much in the traveller's character that corresponded
+with that which was attributed and destined to one to whom the heavens had
+given a horoscope answering to his own; and it was this conviction rather
+than any accidental coincidence in events, which had first led him to pore
+with a deep attention over the vain but imposing prophecies of judicial
+astrology.  Possessed of all the powers that enable men to rise; ardent,
+yet ordinarily shrewd; eloquent, witty, brave, and, though not what may be
+termed versatile, possessing that rare art of concentrating the faculties
+which enables the possessor rapidly and thoroughly to master whatsoever
+once arrests the attention, be yet despised all that would have brought
+these endowments into full and legitimate display.  He lived only for
+enjoyment.  A passionate lover of women, music, letters, and the arts, it
+was society, not the world, which made the sphere and end of his
+existence.  Yet was he no vulgar and commonplace epicurean: he lived for
+enjoyment; but that enjoyment was mainly formed from elements wearisome to
+more ordinary natures.  Reverie, contemplation, loneliness, were at times
+dearer to him than the softer and more Aristippean delights.  His energies
+were called forth in society, but he was scarcely social.  Trained from
+his early boyhood to solitude, he was seldom weary of being alone.  He
+sought the crowd, not to amuse himself, but to observe others.  The world
+to him was less as a theatre on which he was to play a part, than as a
+book in which he loved to decipher the enigmas of wisdom.  He observed all
+that passed around him.  No sprightly cavalier at any time; the charm that
+he exercised at will over his companions was that of softness, not
+vivacity.  But amidst that silken blandness of demeanour, the lynx eye of
+Remark never slept.  He penetrated character at a glance, but he seldom
+made use of his knowledge.  He found a pleasure in reading men, but a
+fatigue in governing them.  And thus, consummately skilled as he was in
+the science du monde, he often allowed himself to appear ignorant of its
+practice.  Forming in his mind a beau ideal of friendship and of love, he
+never found enough in the realities long to engage his affection.  Thus,
+with women he was considered fickle, and with men he had no intimate
+companionship.  This trait of character is common with persons of genius;
+and, owing to too large an overflow of heart, they are frequently
+considered heartless.  There is always, however, danger that a character
+of this kind should become with years what it seems; what it soon learns
+to despise.  Nothing steels the affections like contempt.
+
+The next morning an express from England reached the young traveller.  His
+father was dangerously ill; nor was it expected that the utmost diligence
+would enable the young man to receive his last blessing.  The Englishman,
+appalled and terror-stricken, recalled his interview with the astrologer.
+Nothing so effectually dismays us, as to feel a confirmation of some idea
+of supernatural dread that has already found entrance within our reason;
+and of all supernatural belief, that of being compelled by a predecree,
+and thus being the mere tools and puppets of a dark and relentless fate,
+seems the most fraught at once with abasement and with horror.
+
+The Englishman left Rome that morning, and sent only a verbal and hasty
+message to the astrologer, announcing the cause of his departure.
+Volktman was a man of excellent heart; but one would scarcely like to
+inquire whether exultation at the triumph of his prediction was not with
+him a far more powerful sentiment than grief at the misfortune to his
+friend!
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+THE YOUTH OF LUCILLA VOLKTMAN.--A MYSTERIOUS CONVERSATION.--THE RETURN OF
+ONE UNLOOKED FOR.
+
+Time went slowly on, and Lucilla grew up in beauty.  The stranger traits
+of her character increased in strength, but perhaps in the natural
+bashfulness of maidenhood they became more latent.  At the age of fifteen,
+her elastic shape had grown round and full, and the wild girl had already
+ripened to the woman.  An expression of thought, when the play of her
+features was in repose, that dwelt upon her lip and forehead, gave her the
+appearance of being two or three years older than she was; but again,
+when her natural vivacity returned,--when the clear and buoyant music of
+her gay laugh rang out, or when the cool air and bright sky of morning
+sent the blood to her cheek and the zephyr to her step, her face became as
+the face of childhood, and contrasted with a singular and dangerous
+loveliness the rich development of her form.
+
+And still was Lucilla Volktman a stranger to all that savoured of the
+world; the company of others of her sex and age never drew forth her
+emotions from their resting-place:--
+
+   "And Nature said, a lovelier flower
+    On earth was never sown
+    *   *   *   *   *
+    Myself will to my darling be
+    Both law and impulse; and with me
+      The girl, in rock and plain,
+    In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
+    Shall feel an overseeing power
+      To kindle or restrain.
+
+    The stars of midnight shall be dear
+    To her; and she shall lean her ear
+      In many a secret place;
+    Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
+      And beauty, born of murmuring sound,
+    Shall pass into her face."
+
+                                     WORDSWORTH.
+
+These lines have occurred to me again and again, as I looked on the face
+of her to whom I have applied them.  And, remembering as I do its radiance
+and glory in her happier moments, I can scarcely persuade myself to notice
+the faults and heats of temper which at times dashed away all its lustre
+and gladness.  Unrestrained and fervid, she gave way to the irritation of
+grief of the moment with a violence that would have terrified any one who
+beheld her at such times.  But it rarely happened that the scene had its
+witness even in her father, for she fled to the loneliest spot she could
+find to indulge these emotions; and perhaps even the agony they
+occasioned--an agony convulsing the heart and whole of her impassioned
+frame--took a sort of luxury from the solitary and unchecked nature of its
+indulgence.
+
+Volktman continued his pursuits with an ardour that increased--as do all
+species of monomania--with increasing years; and in the accidental truth
+of some of his predictions, he forgot the erroneous result of the rest.  He
+corresponded at times with the Englishman, who, after a short sojourn in
+England, had returned to the Continent, and was now making a prolonged
+tour through its northern capitals.
+
+Very different, indeed, from the astrologer's occupations were those of
+the wanderer; and time, dissipation, and a maturer intellect had cured the
+latter of his boyish tendency to studies so idle and so vain.  Yet he
+always looked back with an undefined and unconquered interest to the
+period of his acquaintance with the astrologer; to their long and
+thrilling watches in the night season; to the contagious fervour of faith
+breathing from the visionary; his dark and restless excursions into that
+remote science associated with the legends of eldest time, and of
+
+   "The crew, who, under names of old renown,
+    Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their train,
+    With monstrous shapes and sorceries, abused
+    Fanatic Egypt and her priests."
+
+One night, four years after the last scene we have described in the
+astrologer's house, Volktman was sitting alone in his favourite room.
+Before him was a calculation on which the ink was scarcely dry.  His face
+leant on his breast, and he seemed buried in thought.  His health had been
+of late gradually declining; and it might be seen upon his worn brow and
+attenuated frame, that death was already preparing to withdraw the
+visionary from a world whose substantial enjoyments he had so sparingly
+tasted.
+
+Lucilla had been banished from his chamber during the day.  She now knew
+that his occupation was over, and entered the room with his evening
+repast; that frugal meal, common with the Italians--the polenta (made of
+Indian corn), the bread and the fruits, which after the fashion of
+students he devoured unconsciously, and would not have remembered one hour
+after whether or not it had been tasted!
+
+"Sit thee down, child," said he to Lucilla, kindly;--"sit thee down."
+
+Lucilla obeyed, and took her seat upon the very stool on which she had
+been seated the last night on which the Englishman had seen her.
+
+"I have been thinking," said Volktman, as he placed his hand on his
+daughter's head, "that I shall soon leave thee; and I should like to see
+thee protected by another before my own departure."
+
+"Ah, father," said Lucilla, as the tears rushed to her eyes, "do not talk
+thus! indeed, indeed, you must not indulge in this perpetual gloom and
+seclusion of life.  You promised to take me with you, some day this week,
+to the Vatican.  Do let it be to-morrow; the weather has been so fine
+lately; and who knows how long it may last?"
+
+"True," said Volktman; "and to-morrow will not, I think, be unfavourable
+to our stirring abroad, for the moon will be of the same age as at my
+birth--an accident that thou wilt note, my child, to be especially
+auspicious towards any enterprise."
+
+The poor astrologer so rarely stirred from his home, that he did well to
+consider a walk of a mile or two in the light of an enterprise.--"I have
+wished," continued he, after a pause, "that I might see our English friend
+once more--that is, ere long.  For, to tell thee the truth, Lucilla,
+certain events happening unto him do, strangely enough, occur about the
+same time as that in which events, equally boding, will befall thee.  This
+coincidence it was which contributed to make me assume so warm an interest
+in the lot of a stranger.  I would I might see him soon."
+
+Lucilla's beautiful breast heaved, and her face was covered with blushes:
+these were symptoms of a disorder that never occurred to the recluse.
+
+"Thou rememberest the foreigner?" asked Volktman, after a pause.
+
+"Yes," said Lucilla, half inaudibly.
+
+"I have not heard from him of late: I will make question concerning him
+ere the cock crow."
+
+"Nay my father!" said Lucilla, quickly: "not tonight: you want rest, your
+eyes are heavy."
+
+"Girl," said the mystic, "the soul sleepeth not, nor wanteth sleep: even
+as the stars, to which (as the Arabian saith) there is also a soul,
+wherewith an intent passion of our own doth make a union--so that we, by
+an unslumbering diligence, do constitute ourselves a part of the heaven
+itself!--even, I say, as the stars may vanish from the human eye, nor be
+seen in the common day--though all the while their course is stopped not,
+nor their voices dumb--even so doth the soul of man retire, as it were,
+into a seeming sleep and torpor, yet it worketh all the same--and perhaps
+with a less impeded power, in that it is more free from common obstruction
+and trivial hindrance.  And if I purpose to confer this night with the
+'Intelligence' that ruleth earth and earth's beings, concerning this
+stranger, it will not be by the vigil and the scheme, but by the very
+sleep which thou imaginest, in thy mental darkness, would deprive me of
+the resources of my art."
+
+"Can you really, then, my father," said Lucilla, in a tone half anxious,
+half timid,--"can you really, at will, conjure up in your dreams the
+persons you wish to see; or draw, from sleep, any oracle concerning their
+present state?"
+
+"Of a surety," answered the astrologer; "it is one of the great--though
+not perchance the most gifted--of our endowments."
+
+"Can you teach me the method?" asked Lucilla, gravely.
+
+"All that relates to the art I can," rejoined the mystic: "but the chief
+and main power rests with thyself.  For know, my daughter, that one who
+seeks the wisdom that is above the earth must cultivate and excite, with
+long labour and deep thought, his least earthly faculty."
+
+Here the visionary, observing that the countenance of Lucilla was stamped
+with a fixed attention, which she did not often bestow upon his
+metaphysical exordiums; paused for a moment; and then pursued the theme
+with the tone of one desirous of making himself at once as clear and
+impressive as the nature of an abstruse science would allow.
+
+"There are two things in the outer creation, which, according to the great
+Hermes, suffice for the operation of all that is wonderful and
+glorious--Fire and Earth.  Even so, my child, there are in the human mind
+two powers that affect all of which our nature is capable--reason and
+imagination.  Now mankind,--less wise in themselves than in the outer
+world--have cultivated, for the most part, but one of these faculties; and
+that the inferior and more passive, reason.  They have tilled the earth of
+the human heart, but suffered its fire to remain dormant, or waste itself
+in chance and frivolous directions.  Hence the insufficiency of human
+knowledge.  Inventions founded only on reason move within a circle from
+which their escape is momentary and trivial.  When some few, endowed with
+a just instinct, have had recourse to the diviner element, imagination,
+thou wilt observe, that they have used it only in the service of the
+lighter arts, and those chiefly disconnected from reason.  Such is poetry
+and music, and other delicious fabrications of genius, that amuse men,
+soften men, but _advance_ them not.  They have--with but rare
+exceptions--left this glorious and winged faculty utterly passive in the
+service of Philosophy.  There, reason alone has been admitted, and
+imagination hath been carefully banished, as an erratic and deceitful
+meteor.  Now mark me, child: I, noting this our error in early youth, did
+resolve to see what might be effected by the culture of this renounced and
+maltreated element; and finding, as I proceeded in the studies that grew
+from this desire, by the occult yet guiding writings of the great
+philosophers of old, that they had forestalled me in this discovery, I
+resolved to learn, from their experience, by what means the imagination is
+best fostered, and, as it were, sublimed.
+
+"Anxiously following their precepts--the truth of which soon appeared--I
+found that solitude, fast, intense reverie upon the one theme on which we
+desired knowledge, were the true elements and purifiers of this glorious
+faculty.  It was by these means, and by this power, that men so far behind
+us in lesser lore achieved, on the mooned plains of Chaldea and by the
+dark waters of Egypt, their penetration into the womb of Event;--by these
+means, and this power, the solitaries of the Gothic time not only attained
+to the most intricate arcana of the stars, but to the empire of the
+spirits about, above, and beneath the earth; a power, indeed, disputed by
+the presumptuous sophists of the present time, but of which their writings
+yet contain ample proof.  Nay, by the constant feeding, and impressing and
+moulding, and refining, and heightening, the imaginative power, I do
+conceive that even the false prophets and the evil practitioners of the
+blacker cabala clomb into the power seemingly inconceivable--the power of
+accomplishing miracles and prodigies, and to appearance belie, but in
+truth verify, the course of nature.  By this spirit within the flesh, we
+grow _from_ the flesh, and may see, and at length invoke, the souls of the
+dead, and receive warnings, and hear omens, and girdle our sleep with
+dreams.
+
+"Not unto me," continued the cabalist, in a lowlier tone, "have been
+vouchsafed all these gifts; for I began the art when the first fire of
+youth was dim within me; and it was therefore with duller and already
+earth-clogged pinions that I sought to rise.  Something, however, I have
+won as a recompense for austere abstinence and much labour; and this power
+over the land of dreams is at least within my command."
+
+"Then," said Lucilla, in a disappointed tone, "it is only by a long course
+of indulgence to the fervour of the imagination, and not by spell or
+charm, that one can gain a similar power?"
+
+"Not wholly so, my daughter," replied the mystic; "they who do so excite,
+and have so raised the diviner faculty, can alone possess the certain and
+invariable power over dreams, even without charms and talismans; but the
+most dull or idle may hope to do so with just confidence (though not
+certainty) by help of skill, and by directing the full force of their
+half-roused fancy towards the person or object they wish to see reflected
+in the glass of Sleep."
+
+"And what means should the uninitiated employ?" asked Lucilla, in a tone
+betokening her interest.
+
+"I will tell thee," answered the astrologer.  "Thou must inscribe on a
+white parchment an image of the sun."
+
+"As how?" interrupted Lucilla.
+
+"Thus!" said the astrologer, drawing from among his papers one inscribed
+with the figure of a man asleep on the bosom of an angel.  "This was made
+at the potential and appointed time, when the sun was in the Ninth of the
+Celestial Houses, and the Lion shook his bright mane as he ascended the
+blue mount.  Observe, that on the figure must be written thy desire--the
+name of the person thou wishest to see, or the thing thou wouldst have
+foreshown: then having prepared and brought the mind to a faith in the
+effect--for without faith the imagination lies inert and lifeless--this
+image will be placed under the head of the invoker, and when the moon
+goeth through the sign which was in the Ninth House of his nativity, the
+Dream will glide into him, and his soul walk with the spirit of the
+vision."
+
+"Give me the image," said Lucilla, eagerly.
+
+The mystic hesitated--"No, Lucilla," said he, at length; "no, it is a dark
+and comfortless path, that of prescience and unearthly knowledge, save to
+the few that walk it with a gifted light and a fearless soul.  It is not
+for women or children--nay, for few amongst men: it withers up the sap of
+life, and makes the hair grey before its time.  No, no; take the broad
+sunshine, and the brief but sweet flowers of earth; they are better for
+thee, my child, and for thy years than the fever and hope of the
+night-dream and the planetary influence."
+
+So saying, the astrologer replaced the image within the leaves of one of
+his books; and with prudence not common to him, thrust the volume into a
+drawer, which he locked.  The fair face of Lucilla became clouded, but the
+ill health of her father imposed a restraint on her wild temper.
+
+Just at that moment the door slowly opened, and the Englishman stood
+before the daughter and sire.  They did not note him at first.  The
+solitary servant of the sage had admitted him; he had proceeded, without
+ceremony, to the well-remembered apartment.
+
+As he now stood gazing on the pair, he observed with an inward smile, how
+exactly their present attitudes (as well as the old aspect of the scene)
+resembled those in which he had broken upon them on the last evening he
+had visited that chamber; the father bending over the old, worn, quaint,
+table; and the daughter seated beside him on the same low stool.  The
+character of their countenances struck him, too, as wearing the same
+ominous expression as when those countenances had chilled him on that
+evening.  For Volktman's features were impressed with the sadness that
+breathed from, and caused, his prohibition to his daughter; and that
+prohibition had given to her features an abstraction and shadow similar to
+the dejection they had worn on the night we recur to.
+
+This remembered coincidence did not cheer the spirits of the young
+traveller; he muttered to himself; and then, as if anxious to break the
+silence, moved forward with a heavy step.
+
+Volktman started at the sound; and looking up, seemed literally
+electrified by this sudden apparition of one whom he had so lately
+expressed his desire to see.  His lips muttered the intruder's name, one
+well known to the reader (it was the name of Godolphin) and then closed;
+but Lucilla sprang from her seat, and, clasping her hands joyously
+together, darted forward till she came within a foot of the unexpected
+visitor.  There she abruptly arrested herself, blushed deeply, and stood
+before him humbled, agitated, but all vivid with delight.
+
+"What, is this Lucilla?" said Godolphin admiringly: "how beautiful she is
+grown!" and advancing, he saluted, with a light and fraternal kiss, her
+girlish and damask cheek: then, without heeding her confusion, he turned
+to the astrologer, who by this time had a little recovered from his amaze.
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+THE EFFECT OF YEARS AND EXPERIENCE.--THE ITALIAN CHARACTER.
+
+Godolphin now came almost daily to the astrologer's abode.  He was shocked
+to perceive the physical alteration four years had wrought in his singular
+friend; and, with the warmth of a heart naturally kind, he sought to
+contribute to the comfort and enjoyment of a life that was evidently
+drawing to a close.
+
+Godolphin's company seemed to give Volktman a pleasure which nothing else
+could afford him.  He loved to converse on the various incidents that had
+occurred to each since they met; and, in whatsoever Godolphin communicated
+to him, the mystic sought to impress upon his friend's attention the
+fulfilment of an astrological prediction.
+
+Godolphin, though no longer impressed with a belief in the visionary's
+science, did not affect to combat his assertions.  He had not, in his
+progress through life, found much to shake his habitual indolence in
+ordinary affairs; and it was no easy matter to provoke one of his quiet
+temper and self-indulging wisdom into conversational dispute.  Besides,
+who argues with fanaticism?
+
+Since the young idealist had left England, the elements of his character
+had been slowly performing the ordination of time, and working their due
+change in its general aspect.  The warm fountains of youth flowed not so
+freely as before the selfishness that always comes, sooner or later, to
+solitary men of the world, had gradually mingled itself with all the
+channels of his heart.  The brooding and thoughtful disposition of his
+faculties having turned from romance to what he deemed philosophy, that
+which once was enthusiasm had hardened into wisdom.  He neither hated men
+nor loved them with a sanguine philanthropy; he viewed them with cool and
+discerning eyes.  He did not think it within the power of governments to
+make the mass, in any country, much happier or more elevated than they
+are.  Republics, he was wont to say, favoured aristocratic virtues, and
+despotisms extinguished them: but, whether in a monarchy or republic, the
+hewers of wood and the drawers of the water, the multitude, still remained
+intrinsically the same.
+
+This theory heightened his indifference to ambition.  The watchwords of
+party appeared to him ridiculous; and politics in general--what a great
+moralist termed one question in particular--a shuttlecock kept up by the
+contention of noisy children.  His mind thus rested as to all public
+matters in a state of quietude, and covered over with the mantle of a most
+false, a most perilous philosophy.  His appetites to pleasure had grown
+somewhat dulled by experience, but he was as yet neither sated nor
+discontented.  One feeling at his breast still remained scarcely
+diminished of its effect, when the string was touched--his tender
+remembrance of Constance; and this had prevented any subsequent but
+momentary attachment deepening into love.  Thus, at the age of seven and
+twenty, Percy Godolphin reappears on our stage.
+
+There was a great deal in the Italian character that our traveller liked:
+its love of ease, reduced into a system; its courtesy; its content with
+the world as it is; its moral apathy as regards all that agitates life,
+save one passion--and the universal tenderness, ardour, and delicacy
+which, in that passion, it ennobles itself in displaying.  The commonest
+peasant of Rome or Naples, though not perhaps in the freer land of
+Tuscany, can comprehend all the romance and mystery of the most subtle
+species of love; all that it requires in England the idle habits of
+aristocracy, or the sensitive fibre of genius, even to conceive.  And what
+is yet stranger, the worn-out debauches, sage with an experience and
+variety of licentiousness, which come not within the compass of a northern
+profligacy, remains alive to the earliest and most innocent sentiments of
+the passion.  And if Platonism in its coldest purity exist on earth, it is
+among the Aretins of southern Italy.
+
+This unworldly refinement, amidst so much worldly callousness, was a
+peculiarity that afforded perpetual amusement to the nice eye and subtle
+judgment of Godolphin.  He loved not to note the common elements of
+character; whatever was most abstract and difficult to analyse, pleased
+him most.  He mixed then much with the Romans, and was a favourite amongst
+them; but, during his present visit to the Immortal City, he did not, how
+distantly soever, associate with the English.  His carelessness of show,
+and the independence of a single man from burdensome connexions, rendered
+his income fully competent to his wants; but, like many proud men, he was
+not willing to make it seem even to himself, as a comparative poverty,
+beside the lavish expenses of his ostentatious countrymen.  Travel,
+moreover, had augmented those stores of reflection which rob solitude of
+ennui.
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+MAGNETISM.--SYMPATHY.--THE RETURN OF ELEMENTS TO ELEMENTS.
+
+Daily did the health of Volktman decline; Lucilla was the only one
+ignorant of his danger.  She had never seen the gradual approaches of
+death: her mother's abrupt and rapid illness made the whole of her
+experience of disease.  Physicians and dark rooms were necessarily coupled
+in her mind with all graver maladies; and as the astrologer, wrapt in his
+calculations, altered not any of his habits, and was insensible to pain,
+she fondly attributed his occasional complaints to the melancholy induced
+by seclusion.  With sedentary men, diseases being often those connected
+with the Organisation of the heart, do not usually terminate suddenly: it
+was so with Volktman.
+
+One day he was alone with Godolphin, and their conversation turned upon
+one of the doctrines of the old Magnetism, a doctrine which, depending as
+it does so much upon a seeming reference to experience, survived the rest
+of its associates, and is still not wholly out of repute among the wild
+imaginations of Germany.
+
+"One of the most remarkable and abstruse points in what students call
+metaphysics," said Volktman, "is sympathy! the first principle, according
+to some, of all human virtue.  It is this, say they, which makes men just,
+humane, charitable.  When one who has never heard of the duty of assisting
+his neighbour, sees another drowning, he plunges into the water and saves
+him.  Why? because involuntarily, and at once, his imagination places
+himself in the situation of the stranger: the pain he would experience in
+the watery death glances across him: from this pain he hastens,--without
+analysing its cause, to deliver himself.
+
+"Humanity is thus taught him by sympathy: where is this sympathy
+placed?--in the nerves: the nerves are the communicants with outward
+nature; the more delicate the nerves, the finer the sympathies; hence,
+women and children are more alive to sympathy than men.  Well, mark me: do
+not these nerves have attraction and sympathy---not only with human
+suffering, but with the powers of what is falsely termed inanimate nature?
+Do not the wind, the influences of the weather and the seasons, act
+confessedly upon them? and if one part of nature, why not another,
+inseparably connected too with that part?  If the weather and seasons have
+sympathy with the nerves, why not the moon and the stars, by which the
+weather and the seasons are influenced and changed?  Ye of the schools may
+allow that sympathy originates some of our actions; I say it governs the
+whole world--the whole creation!  Before the child is born, it is this
+secret affinity which can mark and stamp him with the witness of his
+mother's terror or his mother's desire."
+
+"Yet," said Godolphin, "you would scarcely, in your zeal for sympathy,
+advocate the same cause as Edricius Mohynnus, who cured wounds by a
+powder, not applied to the wound, but to the towel that had been dipped in
+its blood?"
+
+"No," answered Volktman: "it is these quacks and pretenders that have
+wronged all sciences, by clamouring for false deductions.  But I do
+believe of sympathy, that it has a power to transport ourselves out of the
+body and reunite us with the absent.  Hence, trances, and raptures, in
+which the patient, being sincere, will tell thee, in grave earnestness,
+and with minute detail, of all that he saw, and heard, and encountered,
+afar off, in other parts of the earth, or even above the earth.  As thou
+knowest the accredited story of the youth, who, being transported with a
+vehement and long-nursed desire to see his mother, did, through that same
+desire, become as it were rapt, and beheld her, being at the distance of
+many miles, and giving and exchanging signs of their real and bodily
+conference."
+
+Godolphin turned aside to conceal an involuntary smile at this grave
+affirmation; but the mystic, perhaps perceiving it, continued yet more
+eagerly:--
+
+"Nay, I myself, at times, have experienced such trance, if trance it be;
+and have conversed with them who have passed from the outward earth--with
+my father and my wife.  And," continued he, after a moment's pause, "I do
+believe that we may, by means of this power of attraction--this elementary
+and all-penetrative sympathy, pass away, in our last moments, at once into
+the bosom of those we love.  For, by the intent and rapt longing to behold
+the Blest and to be amongst them, we may be drawn insensibly into their
+presence, and the hour being come when the affinity between the spirit and
+the body shall be dissolved, the mind and desire, being so drawn upward,
+can return to earth no more.  And this sympathy, refined and extended,
+will make, I imagine, our powers, our very being, in a future state.  Our
+sympathy being only, then, with what is immortal, we shall partake
+necessarily of that nature which attracts us; and the body no longer
+clogging the intenseness of our desires, we shall be able by a wish to
+transport ourselves wheresoever we please,--from star to star, from glory
+to glory, charioted and winged by our wishes."
+
+Godolphin did not reply, for he was struck with the growing paleness of
+the mystic, and with a dreaming and intent fixedness that seemed creeping
+over his eyes, which were usually bright and restless.  The day was now
+fast declining, Lucilla entered the room, and came caressingly to her
+father's side.
+
+"Is the evening warm, my child?" said the astrologer.
+
+"Very mild and warm," answered Lucilla.
+
+"Give me your arm then," said he; "I will sit a little while without the
+threshold."
+
+The Romans live in flats, as at Edinburgh, and with a common stair.
+Volktman's abode was in the secondo piano.  He descended the stairs with
+a step lighter than it had been of late; and sinking into a seat without
+the house, seemed silently and gratefully to inhale the soft and purple
+air of an Italian sunset.
+
+By and by the sun had entirely vanished: and that most brief but most
+delicious twilight, common to the clime, had succeeded.  Veil-like and
+soft, the mist that floats at that hour between earth and heaven, lent its
+transparent shadow to the scene around them: it seemed to tremble as for a
+moment, and then was gone.  The moon arose, and cast its light over
+Volktman's earnest countenance,--over the rich bloom and watchful eye of
+Lucilla,--over the contemplative brow and motionless figure of Godolphin.
+It was a group of indefinable interest: the Earth was so still, that the
+visionary might well have fancied it had hushed itself, to drink within
+its quiet heart the voices of that Heaven in whose oracles he believed.
+Not one of the group spoke,--the astrologer's mind and gaze were riveted
+above; and neither of his companions wished to break the meditations of
+the old and dreaming man.
+
+Godolphin, with folded arms and downcast eyes, was pursuing his own
+thoughts; and Lucilla, to whom Godolphin's presence was a subtle and
+subduing intoxication, looked indeed upward to the soft and tender
+heavens, but with the soul of the loving daughter of earth.
+
+Slowly, nor marked by his companions, the gaze of the mystic deepened and
+deepened in its fixedness.
+
+The minutes went on; and the evening waned, till a chill breeze, floating
+down from the Latian Hills, recalled Lucilla's attention to her father.
+She covered him tenderly with her own mantle, and whispered gently in his
+ear her admonition to shun the coldness of the coming night.  He did not
+answer; and on raising her voice a little higher, with the same result,
+she looked appealingly to Godolphin.  He laid his hand on Volktman's
+shoulder; and, bending forward to address him,--was struck dumb by the
+glazed and fixed expression of the mystic's eyes.  The certainty flashed
+across him; he hastily felt Volktman's pulse--it was still.  There was no
+doubt left on his mind; and yet the daughter, looking at him all the
+while, did not even dream of this sudden and awful stroke.  In silence,
+and unconsciously, the strange and solitary spirit of the mystic had
+passed from its home--in what exact instant of time, or by what last
+contest of nature, was not known.
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+A SCENE.--LUCILLA'S STRANGE CONDUCT-GODOLPHIN PASSES THROUGH A SEVERE
+ORDEAL.--EGERIA'S GROTTO, AND WHAT THERE HAPPENS.
+
+Let us pass over Godolphin's most painful task.  What Lucilla's feelings
+were, the reader may imagine; and yet, her wayward and unanalysed temper
+mocked at once imagination and expression to depict its sufferings or its
+joys.
+
+The brother of Volktman's wife was sent for: he and his wife took
+possession of the abode of death.  This, if possible, heightened Lucilla's
+anguish.  The apathetic and vain character of the middle classes in Rome,
+which her relations shared, stung her heart by contrasting its own
+desolate abandonment to grief.  Above all, she was revolted by the
+unnatural ceremonies of a Roman funeral.  The corpse exposed--the cheeks
+painted--the parading procession, all shocked the delicacy of her real and
+reckless affliction.  But when this was over--when the rite of death was
+done, and when, in the house wherein her sire had presided, and she
+herself had been left to a liberty wholly unrestricted, she saw strangers
+(for such comparatively her relatives were to her) settling themselves
+down, with vacant countenances and light words, to the common occupations
+of life,--when she saw them move, alter (nay, talk calmly, and sometimes
+with jests, of selling), those little household articles of furniture
+which, homely and worn as they were, were hallowed to her by a thousand
+dear, and infantine, and filial recollections;--when, too, she found
+herself treated as a child, and, in some measure, as a dependant,--when
+she, the wild, the free, saw herself subjected to restraint--nay, heard
+the commonest actions of her life chidden and reproved,--when she saw the
+trite and mean natures which thus presumed to lord it over her, and assume
+empire in the house of one, of whose wild and lofty, though erring
+speculations--of whose generous though abstract elements of character, she
+could comprehend enough to respect, while what she did not comprehend
+heightened the respect into awe;--then, the more vehement and indignant
+passions of her mind broke forth! her flashing eye, her scornful gesture,
+her mysterious threat, and her open defiance, astonished always, sometimes
+amused, but more often terrified, the apathetic and superstitious
+Italians.
+
+Godolphin, moved by interest and pity for the daughter of his friend,
+called once or twice after the funeral at the house; and commended, with
+promises and gifts, the desolate girl to the tenderness and commiseration
+of her relations.  There is nothing an Italian will not promise, nothing
+he will not sell; and Godolphin thus purchased, in reality, a forbearance
+to Lucilla's strange temper (as it was considered) which otherwise,
+assuredly, would not have been displayed.
+
+More than a month had elapsed since the astrologer's decease; and, the
+season of the malaria verging to its commencement, Godolphin meditated a
+removal to Naples.  He strolled, two days prior to his departure, to the
+house on the Appia Via, in order to take leave of Lucilla, and bequeath to
+her relations his parting injunctions.
+
+It was a strange and harsh face that peered forth on him through the iron
+grating of the door before he obtained admittance; and when he entered, he
+heard the sound of voices in loud altercation.  Among the rest, the
+naturally dulcet and silver tones of Lucilla were strained beyond their
+wonted key, and breathed the accents of passion and disdain.
+
+He entered the room whence the sounds of dispute proceeded, and the first
+face that presented itself to him was that of Lucilla.  It was flushed
+with anger; the veins in the smooth forehead were swelled; the short lip
+breathed beautiful contempt.  She stood at some little distance from the
+rest of the inmates of the room, who were seated; and her posture was
+erect and even stately, though in wrath: her arms were folded upon her
+bosom, and the composed excitement of her figure contrasted with the play,
+and fire, and energy of her features.
+
+At Godolphin's appearance, a sudden silence fell upon the conclave; the
+uncle and the aunt (the latter of whom had seemed the noisiest) subsided
+into apologetic respect to the rich (he was rich to them) young
+Englishman; and Lucilla sank into a seat, covered her face with her small
+and beautiful hands, and--humbled from her anger and her vehemence--burst
+into tears.
+
+"And what is this?" said Godolphin, pityingly.
+
+The Italians hastened to inform him.  Lucilla had chosen to absent herself
+from home every evening; she had been seen, the last night on the
+Corso,--crowded as that street was with the young, the profligate, and the
+idle.  They could not but reprove "the dear girl" for this indiscretion
+(Italians, indifferent as to the conduct of the married, are generally
+attentive to that of their single, women); and she announced her
+resolution to persevere in it.
+
+"Is this true, my pupil?" said Godolphin, turning to Lucilla: the poor
+girl sobbed on, but returned no answer.  "Leave me to reprimand and
+admonish her," said he to the aunt and uncle; and they, without appearing
+to notice the incongruity of reprimand in the mouth of a man of
+seven-and-twenty to a girl of fifteen, chattered forth a Babel of
+conciliation and left the apartment.
+
+Godolphin, young as he might be, was not unfitted for his task.  There was
+a great deal of quiet dignity mingled with the kindness of his manner; and
+his affection for Lucilla had hitherto been so pure, that he felt no
+embarrassment in addressing her as a brother.  He approached the corner of
+the room in which she sat; he drew a chair near to her; and took her
+reluctant and trembling hand with a gentleness that made her weep with a
+yet wilder vehemence.
+
+"My dear Lucilla," said he, "you know your father honoured me with his
+regard: let me presume on that regard, and on my long acquaintance with
+yourself, to address you as your friend--as your brother."  Lucilla drew
+away her hand; but again, as if ashamed of the impulse, extended it
+towards him.
+
+"You cannot know the world as I do, dear Lucilla," continued Godolphin;
+"for experience in its affairs is bought at some little expense, which I
+pray that it may never cost you.  In all countries, Lucilla, an unmarried
+female is exposed to dangers which, without any actual fault of her own,
+may embitter her future life.  One of the greatest of these dangers lies
+in deviating from custom.  With the woman who does this, every man thinks
+himself entitled to give his thoughts--his words--nay, even his actions, a
+license which you cannot but dread to incur.  Your uncle and aunt,
+therefore, do right to advise your not going alone, to the public streets
+of Rome more especially, except in the broad daylight; and though their
+advice be irksomely intruded, and ungracefully couched, it is good in its
+principle, and--yes, dearest Lucilla, even necessary for you to follow."
+
+"But," said Lucilla, through her tears, "you cannot guess what insults,
+what unkindness, I have been forced to submit to from them.  I, who never
+knew, till now, what insult and unkindness were!  I, who----" here sobs
+checked her utterance.
+
+"But how, my young and fair friend, how can you mend their manners by
+destroying their esteem for you?  Respect yourself, Lucilla, if you wish
+others to respect you.  But, perhaps,"--and such a thought for the first
+time flashed across Godolphin--"perhaps you did not seek the Corso for
+the _crowd_ but for _one;_ perhaps you went there to meet--dare I guess
+the fact?--an admirer, a lover."
+
+"Now _you_ insult me!" cried Lucilla, angrily.
+
+"I thank you for your anger; I accept it as a contradiction," said
+Godolphin.  "But listen yet a while, and for give frankness.  If there be
+any one, among the throng of Italian youths, whom you have seen, and could
+be happy with; one who loves you and whom you do not hate;--remember that
+I am your father's friend; that I am rich; that I can----"
+
+"Cruel, cruel!" interrupted Lucilla and withdrawing herself from
+Godolphin, she walked to and fro with great and struggling agitation.
+
+"Is it not so, then?" said Godolphin, doubtingly.
+
+"No, sir: no!"
+
+"Lucilla Volktman," said Godolphin, with a colder gravity than he had yet
+called forth, "I claim some attention from you, some confidence, nay, some
+esteem;--for the sake of your father--for the sake of your early years,
+when I assisted to teach you my native tongue, and loved you as a brother.
+Promise me that you will not commit this indiscretion any more--at least
+till we meet again; nay, that you will not stir abroad, save with one of
+your relations."
+
+"Impossible! impossible!" cried Lucilla, vehemently; "it were to take
+away the only solace I have: it were to make life a privation--a curse."
+
+"Not so, Lucilla; it is to make life respectable and safe.  I, on the
+other hand, will engage that all within these walls shall behave to you
+with indulgence and kindness."
+
+"I care not for their kindness!--for the kindness of any one; save----"
+
+"Whom?" asked Godolphin, perceiving she would not proceed: but as she was
+still silent, he did not press the question.  "Come!" said he,
+persuasively: "come, promise, and be friends with me; do not let us part
+angrily: I am about to take my leave of you for many months.
+
+"Part!--you!--months!--O God, do not say so!"
+
+With these words, she was by his side; and gazing on him with her large
+and pleading eyes, wherein was stamped a wildness, a terror, the cause of
+which he did not as yet decipher.
+
+"No, no," said she, with a faint smile: "no! you mean to frighten me, to
+extort my promise.  You are not going to desert me!"
+
+"But, Lucilla, I will not leave you to unkindness; they shall not--they
+dare not wound you again."
+
+"Say to me that you are not going from Rome--speak; quick!"
+
+"I go in two days."
+
+"Then let me die!" said Lucilla, in a tone of such deep despair, that it
+chilled and appalled Godolphin, who did not, however, attribute her grief
+(the grief of this mere child--a child so wayward and eccentric) to any
+other cause than that feeling of abandonment which the young so bitterly
+experience at being left utterly alone with persons unfamiliar to their
+habits and opposed to their liking.
+
+He sought to soothe her, but she repelled him.  Her features worked
+convulsively: she walked twice across the room; then stopped opposite to
+him, and a certain strained composure on her brow seemed to denote that
+she had arrived at some sudden resolution.
+
+"Wouldst thou ask me," she said, "what cause took me into the streets as
+the shadows darkened, and enabled me lightly to bear threats at home and
+risk abroad?"
+
+"Ay, Lucilla: will you tell me?"
+
+"Thou wast the cause!" she said, in a low voice, trembling with emotion,
+and the next moment sank on her knees before him.
+
+With a confusion that ill became so practised and favoured a gallant,
+Godolphin sought to raise her.  "No! no!" she said; "you will despise me
+now: let me lie here, and die thinking of thee.  Yes!" she continued, with
+an inward but rapid voice, as he lifted her reluctant frame from the
+earth, and hung over her with a cold and uncaressing attention: "yes! you
+I loved--I adored--from my very childhood.  When you were by, life seemed
+changed to me; when absent, I longed for night, that I might dream of you.
+The spot you had touched I marked out in silence, that I might kiss it and
+address it when you were gone.  You left us; four years passed away: and
+the recollection of you made and shaped my very nature.  I loved solitude;
+for in solitude I saw you--in imagination I spoke to you--and methought
+you answered and did not chide.  You returned--and--and--but no matter: to
+see you, at the hour you usually leave home; to see you, I wandered forth
+with the evening.  I tracked you, myself unseen; I followed you at a
+distance: I marked you disappear within some of the proud palaces that
+never know what love is.  I returned home weeping, but happy.  And do you
+think--do you dare to think--that I should have told you this, had you not
+driven me mad!--had you not left me reckless of what henceforth was
+thought of me--became of me!  What will life be to me when you are gone?
+And now I have said all!  Go!  You do not love me: I know it: but do not
+say so.  Go--leave me; why do you not leave me?"
+
+Does there live one man who can hear a woman, young and beautiful, confess
+attachment to him, and not catch the contagion?  Affected, flattered, and
+almost melted into love himself, Godolphin felt all the danger of the
+moment but this young, inexperienced girl--the daughter of his friend--no!
+her he could not--loving, willing as she was, betray.
+
+Yet it was some moments before he could command himself sufficiently to
+answer her:--"Listen to me calmly," at length he said; "we are at least to
+each other dear friends nay, listen, I beseech you.  I, Lucilla, am a man
+whose heart is forestalled--exhausted before its time; I have loved,
+deeply, and passionately: that love is over, but it has unfitted me for
+any species of love resembling itself--any which I could offer to you.
+Dearest Lucilla, I will not disguise the truth from you.  Were I to love
+you, it would be--not in the eyes of _your_ countrymen (with whom such
+connexions are common), but in the eyes of mine--it would be dishonour.
+Shall I confer even this partial dishonour on you?  No!  Lucilla, this
+feeling of yours towards me is (pardon me) but a young and childish
+phantasy: you will smile at it some years hence.  I am not worthy of so
+pure and fresh a heart: but at least" (here he spoke in a lower voice, and
+as to himself)--"at least I am not so unworthy as to wrong it."
+
+"Go!" said Lucilla; "go, I implore you."  She spoke, and stood hueless and
+motionless, as if the life (life's life was indeed gone!) had departed
+from her.  Her features were set and rigid; the tears that stole in large
+drops down her cheeks were unfelt; a slight quivering of her lips only
+bespoke what passed within her.
+
+"Ah!" cried Godolphin, stung from his usual calm--stung from the quiet
+kindness he had sought, from principle, to assume--"can I withstand this
+trial?--I, whose dream of life has been the love that I might now find!
+I, who have never before known an obstacle to a wish which I have not
+contended against, if not conquered: and, weakened as I am with the
+habitual indulgence to temptation, which has never been so strong as
+now;--but no!  I will--I will deserve this attachment by self-restraint,
+self-sacrifice."
+
+He moved away; and then returning, dropped on his knee before Lucilla.
+
+"Spare me!" said he in an agitated voice, which brought back all the blood
+to that young and transparent cheek, which was now half averted from
+him--"spare me--spare yourself!  Look around, when I am gone, for some one
+to replace my image: thousands younger, fairer, warmer of heart, will
+aspire to your love; that love for them will be exposed to no peril--no
+shame: forget me; select another; be happy and respected.  Permit me alone
+to fill the place of your friend--your brother.  I will provide for your
+comforts, your liberty: you shall be restrained, offended no more.  God
+bless you, dear, dear Lucilla; and believe," (he said almost in a
+whisper), "that, in thus flying you, I have acted generously, and with an
+effort worthy of your loveliness and your love."
+
+He said, and hurried from the apartment.  Lucilla turned slowly round as
+the door closed and then fell motionless on the ground.
+
+Meanwhile Godolphin, mastering his emotion, sought the host and hostess;
+and begging them to visit his lodging that evening, to receive certain
+directions and rewards, hastily left the house.
+
+But instead of returning home, the desire for a brief solitude and
+self-commune, which usually follows strong excitement, (and which, in all
+less ordinary events, suggested his sole counsellors or monitors to the
+musing Godolphin), led his steps in an opposite direction.  Scarcely
+conscious whither he was wandering, he did not pause till he found himself
+in that green and still valley in which the pilgrim beholds the grotto of
+Egeria.
+
+It was noon, and the day warm, but not overpowering.  The leaf slept on
+the old trees that are scattered about that little valley; and amidst the
+soft and rich turf the wanderer's step disturbed the lizard, basking its
+brilliant hues in the noontide, and glancing rapidly through the herbage
+as it retreated.  And from the trees, and through the air, the occasional
+song of the birds (for in Italy their voices are rare) floated with a
+peculiar clearness, and even noisiness of music, along the deserted haunts
+of the Nymph.
+
+The scene, rife with its beautiful associations, recalled Godolphin from
+his reverie.  "And here," thought he, "Fable has thrown its most lovely
+enduring enchantment: here, every one who has tasted the loves of earth,
+and sickened for the love that is ideal, finds a spell more attractive to
+his steps--more fraught with contemplation to his spirit, than aught
+raised by the palace of the Caesars or the tomb of the Scipios."
+
+Thus meditating, and softened by the late scene with Lucilla, (to which
+his thoughts again recurred), he sauntered onward to the steep side of the
+bank, in which faith and tradition have hollowed out the grotto of the
+goddess.  He entered the silent cavern, and bathed his temples in the
+delicious waters of the fountain.
+
+It was perhaps well that it was not at that moment Lucilla made to him her
+strange and unlooked-for confession: again and again he said to himself
+(as if seeking for a justification of his self-sacrifice), "Her father was
+not Italian, and possessed feeling and honour: let me not forget that he
+loved me!"  In truth, the avowal of this wild girl; an avowal made indeed
+with the ardour--but also breathing of the innocence, the inexperience--of
+her character--had opened to his fancy new and not undelicious prospects.
+He had never loved her, save with a lukewarm kindness, before that last
+hour; but now, in recalling her beauty, her tears, her passionate
+abandonment can we wonder that he felt a strange beating at his heart, and
+that he indulged that dissolved and luxurious vein of tender meditation
+which is the prelude to all love?  We must recall, too, the recollection
+of his own temper, so constantly yearning for the unhackneyed, the
+untasted; and his deep and soft order of imagination, by which he
+involuntarily conjured up the delight of living with one, watching one, so
+different from the rest of the world, and whose thoughts and passions
+(wild as they might be) were all devoted to him!
+
+And in what spot were these imaginings fed and coloured?  In a spot which
+in the nature of its divine fascination could be found only beneath one
+sky, that sky the most balmy and loving upon earth!  Who could think of
+love within the haunt and temple of
+
+   "That Nympholepsy of some fond despair,"
+
+and not feel that love enhanced, deepened, modulated, into at once a dream
+and a desire?
+
+It was long that Godolphin indulged himself in recalling the image of
+Lucilla; but nerved at length and gradually, by harder, and we may hope
+better, sentiments than those of a love which he could scarcely indulge
+without criminality on the one hand, or, what must have appeared to the
+man of the world, derogatory folly on the other; he turned his thoughts
+into a less voluptuous channel, and prepared, though with a reluctant
+step, to depart homewards.  But what was his amaze, his confusion, when,
+on reaching the mouth of the cave, he saw within a few steps of him
+Lucilla herself!
+
+She was walking alone and slowly, her eyes bent upon the ground, and did
+not perceive him.  According to a common custom with the middle classes of
+Rome, her rich hair, save by a single band, was uncovered; and as her
+slight and exquisite form moved along the velvet sod, so beautiful a
+shape, and a face so rare in its character, and delicate in its
+expression, were in harmony with the sweet superstition of the spot, and
+seemed almost to restore to the deserted cave and the mourning stream
+their living Egeria.
+
+Godolphin stood transfixed to the earth; and Lucilla, who was walking in
+the direction of the grotto, did not perceive, till she was almost
+immediately before him.  She gave a faint scream as she lifted her eyes;
+and the first and most natural sentiment of the woman breaking forth
+involuntarily,--she attempted to falter out her disavowal of all
+expectation of meeting him there.
+
+"Indeed, indeed, I did not know--that is--I--I--" she could achieve no
+more.
+
+"Is this a favourite spot with you?" said he, with the vague
+embarrassment of one at a loss for words.
+
+"Yes," said Lucilla, faintly.
+
+And so, in truth, it was: for its vicinity to her home, the beauty of the
+little valley, and the interest attached to it--an interest not the less
+to her in that she was but imperfectly acquainted with the true legend of
+the Nymph and her royal lover--had made it, even from her childhood, a
+chosen and beloved retreat, especially in that dangerous summer time,
+which drives the visitor from the spot, and leaves the scene, in great
+measure, to the solitude which befits it.  Associated as the place was
+with the recollection of her earlier griefs, it was thither that her first
+instinct made her fly from the rude contact and displeasing companionship
+of her relations, to give vent to the various and conflicting passions
+which the late scene with Godolphin had called forth.
+
+They now stood for a few moments silent and embarrassed, till Godolphin,
+resolved to end a scene which he began to feel was dangerous, said in a
+hurried tone:--
+
+"Farewell, my sweet pupil!--farewell!--May God bless you!"
+
+He extended his hand, Lucilla seized it, as if by impulse; and conveying
+it suddenly to her lips, bathed it with tears.  "I feel," said this wild
+and unregulated girl, "I feel, from your manner, that I ought to be
+grateful to you: yet I scarcely know why: you confessed you cannot love
+me, that my affection distresses you--you fly--you desert me.  Ah, if you
+felt one particle even of friendship for me, could you do so?"
+
+"Lucilla, what can I say?--I cannot marry you."
+
+"Do I wish it?--I ask thee but to let me go with thee wherever thou
+goest."
+
+"Poor child!" said Godolphin, gazing on her; "art thou not aware that thou
+askest thine own dishonour?"
+
+Lucilla seemed surprised:--"Is it dishonour to love?  They do not think so
+in Italy.  It is wrong for a maiden to confess it; but that thou hast
+forgiven me.  And if to follow thee--to sit with thee--to be near
+thee--bring aught of evil to myself, not thee,--let me incur the evil: it
+can be nothing compared to the agony of thy absence!"
+
+She looked up timidly as she spoke, and saw, with a sort of terror, that
+his face worked with emotions which seemed to choke his answer.  "If," she
+cried passionately, "if I have said what pains thee--if I have asked what
+would give dishonour, as thou callest it, or harm, to thyself, for give
+me--I knew it not--and leave me.  But if it were not of thyself that thou
+didst speak, believe that thou hast done me but a cruel mercy.  Let me go
+with thee, I implore!  I have no friend here: no one loves me.  I hate the
+faces I gaze upon; I loathe the voices I hear.  And, were it for nothing
+else, thou remindest me of him who is gone:--thou art familiar to
+me--every look of thee breathes of my home, of my household recollections.
+Take me with thee, beloved stranger!--or leave me to die--I will not
+survive thy loss!"
+
+"You speak of your father: know you that, were I to grant what you, in
+your childish innocence, so unthinkingly request, he might curse me from
+his grave?"
+
+"O God, not so!--mine is the prayer--be mine the guilt, if guilt there be.
+But is it not unkinder in thee to desert his daughter than to protect
+her?"
+
+There was a great, a terrible struggle in Godolphin's breast.  "What,"
+said he, scarcely knowing what he said,--"what will the world think of you
+if you fly with a stranger?"
+
+"There is no world to me but thee!"
+
+"What will your uncle--your relations say?"
+
+"I care not; for I shall not hear them."
+
+"No, no; this must not be!" said Godolphin proudly, and once more
+conquering himself.  "Lucilla, I would give up every other dream or hope
+in life to feel that I might requite this devotion by passing my life with
+thee: to feel that I might grant what thou askest without wronging thy
+innocence; but--but--"
+
+"You love me then!  You love me!" cried Lucilla, joyously, and alive to
+no other interpretation of his words.  Godolphin was transported beyond
+himself; and clasping Lucilla in his arms he covered her cheeks, her lips,
+with impassioned and burning kisses; then suddenly, as if stung by some
+irresistible impulse, he tore himself away; and fled from the spot.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GODOLPHIN, BY LYTTON, V3 ***
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