Italy : 29. Montorio

Generous, and ardent, and as romantic as he could be,
Montorio was in his earliest youth, when, on a summer-
evening, not many years ago, he arrived at the Baths of
* * *. With a heavy heart, and with many a blessing on
his head, he had set out on his travels at day-break. It
was his first flight from home; but he was not to enter
the world; and the moon was up and in the zenith, when
he alighted at the Three Moors, a venerable house of
vast dimensions, and anciently a palace of the Albertini
family, whose arms were emblazoned on the walls.
Every window was full of light, and great was the stir,
Above and below; but his thoughts were on those he had
left so lately; and retiring early to rest, and to a couch,
the very first for which he had ever exchanged his own,
he was soon among them once more; undisturbed in his
sleep by the music that came at intervals from a pavilion
in the garden, where some of the company had assembled
to dance.
But, secluded as he was, he was not secure from intru-
sion; and Fortune resolved on that night to play a frolic
in his chamber, a frolic that was to determine the colour
of his life. Boccaccio himself has not recorded a wilder;
nor would he, if he had known it, have left the story untold.
At first glimmering of day he awaked; and, look-
ing round, he beheld --- it could not be an illusion; yet
any thing so lovely, so angelical, he had never seen before
--- no, not even in his dreams --- a Lady still younger than
himself, and in the profoundest, the sweetest slumber by
his side. But while he gazed, she was gone, and through
a door that had escaped his notice. Like a Zephyr she
trod the floor with her dazzling and beautiful feet, and,
while he gazed, she was gone. Yet still he gazed; and,
snatching up a bracelet which she had dropt in her flight,
'Then she is earthly!' he cried. 'But whence could she
come? All innocence, all purity, she mst have wandered
in her sleep.'
When he arose, his anxious eyes sought her every
where; but in vain. Many of the young and the gay were
abroad, and moving as usual in the light of the morning;
but, among them all, there was nothing like Her. Within
or without, she was nowhere to be seen; and, at length,
in his despair he resolved to address himself to his Hostess.
'Who were my nearest neighbours in that turret?'
'The Marchioness de * * * * and her two daughters,
the Ladies Clara and Violetta; the youngest beautiful as
the day!'
'And where are they now?'
'They are gone; but we cannot say whither. They
set out soon after sun-rise.'
At a late hour they had left the pavilion, and had
retired to their toilet-chamber, a chamber of oak richly
carved, that had once been an oratory, and afterwards,
what was no less essential to a house of that antiquity, a
place of resort for two or three ghosts of the family.
But, having long lost its sanctity, it had now lost its
terrors; and, gloomy as its aspect was, Violetta was soon
sitting there alone. 'Go,' said she to her sister, when
her mother withdrew for the night, and her sister was
preparing to follow, 'Go, Clara. I will not be long' ---------
and down she sat to a chapter of the Promessi Sposi.
But she might well forget her promise, forgetting where
she was. She was now under the wand of an enchanter,
and she read and read till the clock struck three, and
the taper flickered in the socket. She started up as from
a trance; she threw off her wreath of roses; she gathered
her tresses into a net; and snatching a last look in the
mirror, her eyelids heavy with sleep, and the light
glimmering and dying, she opened a wrong door, a door
that had been left unlocked; and, stealing along on tip-
toe, ( how often may Innocence wear the semblance of
Guilt! ) she lay down as by her sleeping sister; and
instantly, almost before the pillow on which she reclined
her head had done sinking, her sleep was as the sleep of
childhood.
When morning came, a murmur strange to her ear
alarmed her. --- What could it be? -- Where was she? ---
She looked not; she listened not; but like a fawn from
the covert, up she sprung and was gone.
It was she then that he sought; it was she who, so
unconsciously, had taught him to love; and, night and
day, he pursued her, till in the Cathedral of Perugia he
discovered her at a solemn service, as she knelt between
her mother and her sister among the rich and the poor.
From that hour did he endeavour to win her regard by
every attention, every assiduity that Love could dictate ;
nor did he cease till he had won it and till she had
consented to be his; but never did the secret escape from
his lips; nor was it still some years afterwards that he
said to her, on an anniversary of their nuptials, 'Violetta,
it was a joyful day to me, a day from which I date the
happiness of my life ; but, if marriages are written in
heaven,' and, as he spoke, he restored to her arm the
bracelet which he had treasured up so long, 'how strange
are the circumstances by which they are sometimes
brought about! for, if You had not lost yourself, Violetta,
I might never have found you.'