But vanity of vanities, and all is vanity! Let us raise the veil of deception that shrouds the emptiness of human joy. Alvira has now gratified her heart's desires in everything she could have under the sun. She had beauty, wealth, and fame, but she was like the pretty moth that hovers around the flame of the candle, and finds its ruin in the touch of the splendor it loves. Poor Alvira was another child of Solomon that sighed over the emptiness of human joy; for bitter disappointment is the sad tale ever told in the realization of misguided hope. Often, at midnight, when the unknown captain would return from the theatre or some festive entertainment given in her honor, she would sit at her table, wearied and disgusted, and weep bitterly. The unnatural restraint necessary to preserve her disguise, the separation from all the comforts and sympathies common to her sex, and the painful reminiscences of the past wrung tears of misery from her aching heart. The dreams of Messina haunted her still, but increased in anguish and terror, as her thoughts could now fly from the lonely cave on the Alps to the battle-field on the side of Vesuvius. Again the pangs of remorse poisoned every joy; again the angry countenance and clenched hand of her murdered father would bend over her restless couch; and again the scream of terror in the dark, silent midnight would summon her friends around her. Deep and fervent the prayer that was poured forth from that sad and breaking heart that some providential circumstance would enable her to make the change she had no long premeditated. That change is at hand. Her mother's prayer is still pleading for her before the throne of God; he who cast an eye of mercy on the erring Magdalen had already written the name of Alvira in the book of life, and destined her to be one of the noblest models of repentance that adorn the latter history of the Church. Let us come to the sequel of this extraordinary history; but first we must introduce our readers to a new character—a great and holy man, destined by Providence to save Alvira, and give the most interesting and most remarkable chapter in this romance of real life.
Chapter XXIV.
Alvira's Confession.
Tremble, thou wretch,
Though hast within thee undivulged crimes,
Unwhipped of justice: hide thee, thou bloody hand;
Thou perjured, and thou simular man of virtue,
Thou art incestuous: caitiff, to pieces shake,
That under covert and convenient seeming
Hast practised on man's life: close pent-up guilts,
Rive your concealing continents, and cry
These dreadful summoners grace.
— Lear.
It was a beautiful morning in the Lent of 1678. The sun had risen over the Apennines, and flung its magnificence over the Bay of Naples. The smoke of Vesuvius cast its shadow like a monstrous pine over the vineyards and villas that adorned the mountain-side to the sea-shore. The morning was such as Byron gazed on in fancy through the sorrowful eyes of the eloquent heroine of one of his tragedies:
"So bright, so rolling back the clouds into
Vapors more lovely than the unclouded sky,
With golden pinnacles and snowy mountains,
And billows purpler than the ocean's, making
In heaven a glorious mockery of the earth,
So like we almost deem it permanent,
So fleeting we can scarcely call it aught
Beyond a vision, 'tis so transiently
Scattered along the eternal vault!"
Whilst the eight hour was chiming from the tower of the old Gesu there issued from the monastery attacked to the church a priest accompanied by an acolyte bearing a large, plain cross and ringing a small bell. They moved in the direction of the mole or old fortress of the city. Soon a crowd followed—some bare-headed; others, especially the females, told their beads in silence.
The traveller in Italy is aware of the pious custom practised by some of the religious communities of preaching in the open air to the people during the season of Lent. Extraordinary things are related of these harangues. The lives of the sainted missionaries ring with tales of the marvellous and miraculous powers given to God's servants when, in moments of fire and zeal, they went from their cloisters like beings of another world to awaken sinners to a sense of future terrors. At one time we read of the saint's voice carried miraculously to a distance of several miles; the peasant working in the fields would hear the sweet sounds without seeing the speaker. At another the funeral procession was arrested and the dead called from the bier to testify to the truth of their teaching. Curing the cripple and restoring health to the sick were of ordinary occurrence. Our blessed Lord told the messengers who came to enquire about him to report his miracles as a proof of his divinity: the blind see, the lame walk, the sick are restored to health; but greater than all his reversions of the natural laws were the humility and the mysterious arrangement of his providence which he prophetically announced when he told his disciples that those who should come after him would perform greater miracles than he. There are few of the Thaumaturgi more celebrated than the humble father who has just issued from the Gesu to thunder forth with superhuman eloquence the truths of God and religion.
No sooner had the people heard the little bell of the attendant and seen the venerable priest leave the college than they gathered from various quarters, and seemed to vie with each other in getting nearest to him.