They’ll shine o’er her sleep, like a smile from the west,
From her own loved island of sorrow.
The evening before his death, Miss Curran was admitted into his dungeon to bid him her eternal farewell. He was leaning in a melancholy mood against the window of the prison, and the heavy clanking of his chains smote dismally on her heart. The interview was bitterly affecting, and melted even the callous soul of the jailor. As for Emmet himself, he wept, and spoke little; but as he pressed his beloved in silence to his heart, his countenance betrayed his emotions. In a low voice, half choked by anguish, he besought her not to forget him; he reminded her of their former happiness, of the long past days of their childhood, and concluded by requesting her sometimes to visit the scenes where their infancy was spent, and though the world might repeat his name with scorn, to cling to his memory with affection. In parting, she turned round, as if to gaze once more on her widowed love. He caught her eye as she retired—it was but for a moment—and as the door closed on him, it informed her too surely that they had met for the last time on earth, but that they should meet in a better world, where man could not separate them.
She loved him with the disinterested fervour of a woman’s first and early love. When every worldly maxim arrayed itself against him—when blasted in fortune, and disgrace and danger darkened around his name, she loved him the more ardently for his very sufferings. If, then, his fate could awaken the sympathy even of his foes, what must have been the agony of her whose whole soul was occupied by his image? Let those tell who have had the portal of the tomb suddenly closed between them and the being they most loved on earth—who have sat at its threshold, as one shut out in a cold and lonely world from whence all that was most lovely and loving had departed.
To render her widowed situation more desolate, she had incurred her father’s displeasure by her unfortunate attachment, and was an exile from her paternal roof. But could the sympathy and offices of friends reached a spirit so shocked and driven in by horror, she would have experienced no want of consolation, for the Irish are proverbially a people of quick and generous sensibilities.
The most delicate and cherishing attentions were paid her by families of wealth and distinction. She was led into society, and they tried by all kinds of occupation and amusement to dissipate her grief, and wean her from the tragical story of her love. But it was all in vain.
There are some strokes of calamity that scathe and scorch the soul—that penetrate to the vital seat of happiness—and blast it, never again to put forth bud or blossom. She never objected to frequent the haunts of pleasure, but she was as much alone there as in the depths of solitude. She walked about in a sad reverie, apparently unconscious of the world around her. She carried with her an inward woe that mocked at all the blandishments of friendship, and “heeded not the song of the charmer, charm he never so wisely.”
On the occasion of a masquerade at the Rotunda, her friends brought her to it. There can be no exhibition of far-gone wretchedness more striking and painful than to meet it in such a scene. To find it wandering like a spectre, lonely and joyless, where all around is gay—to see it dressed out in the trappings of mirth, and looking so wan and wo-begone, as if it had tried in vain to cheat the poor heart into a momentary forgetfulness of sorrow. After strolling through the splendid rooms and giddy crowd with an air of utter abstraction, she sat herself down on the steps of an orchestra, and looking about for some time with a vacant air, that shewed insensibility to the garish scene, she began, with the capriciousness of a sickly heart, to warble a little plaintive air. She had an exquisite voice but on this occasion it was so simple, so touching, it breathed forth such a soul of wretchedness, that she drew a crowd, mute and silent around her, and melted every one into tears.
The story of one so true and tender could not but excite great interest in a country remark for enthusiasm. It completely won the heart of a brave officer who paid his addresses to her, and thought that one so true to the dead could not but prove affectionate to the living. She declined his attentions, for her thoughts were irrevocably engrossed by the memory of her former lover.—He, however, persisted in his suit. He solicited not her tenderness, but her esteem. He was assisted by her conviction of his worth, and her sense of her own destitute and dependant situation, for she was existing on the kindness of friends. In a word, he at length succeeded in gaining her hand, though with the solemn assurance that her heart was unalterably another’s.
He took her with him to Sicily, hoping that a change of scene might wear out the remembrance of early woes. She was an amiable and exemplary wife, and made an effort to be a happy one; but nothing could cure the silent and devouring melancholy that had entered into her very soul. She wasted away in a slow but hopeless decline, and at length sunk into the grave, the victim of a broken heart.