"We came away by an early train to Verona, and drove in the afternoon to San Zenone, and then to the beautiful Giusti gardens for the sunset. Mother was able to climb up to the summer-house on the height, and the gardener gave us pinks and roses.
"On the 24th we came on to Trent, a most attractive place, with an interesting cathedral, fine fountains, beautiful trees, and surroundings of jagged pink mountains tipped with snow. Cheating the Alps by crossing the Brenner, we went by Salzburg to Berchtesgaden, where we found quiet rooms with a splendid view of the snow-clad Watzmann. We were rowed down the Königsee as far as the waterfall, Lea dreadfully frightened on the lake."
From Augsburg we went to Oberwesel on the Rhine, where we were very happy in a primitive hotel amid the vines and old timberhouses. On our second morning there, while I was drawing on the shore of the river, a strange and terrible presentiment came over me of some great misfortune, some overwhelming grief which was then taking place in England. I threw down my drawing things and hurried back to the hotel to my mother. "Never," I said, "have these sudden presentiments come to me without meaning. I am sure you will listen to me when I say that we ought to be in England directly."—"Yes," she said, "I quite believe it; let us go at once;" and then and there, in the hot morning, we walked down to the train. We travelled all night, and at daybreak we were in England. I confess that, as we travelled, the detailed impression which I had from my presentiment was wrong. I thought of what would have affected my mother most. I fancied that, as I was sitting on the Rhine shore, Arthur Stanley had died at Westminster. But John Gidman met us with our little carriage at Hastings, and as we drove up to Holmhurst he told me the dreadful truth—that, at the very moment of my presentiment, my sister Esmeralda had expired.
I still feel the echo of that terrible anguish.
XIII
LAST YEARS OF ESMERALDA
"Sleep sweetly, dear one; thou wilt wake at dawn."—MOSCHUS.
"Her mind was one of those pure mirrors from which the polluting breath passes away as it touches it."—Bishop Heber.
"Cette longue et cruelle maladie qu'on appelle la vie, est enfin guérie."—Mademoiselle d'Espinasse.
"Let her pure soul ...
Remain my pledge in heaven, as sent to show
How to this portal every step I go."—Sir John Beaumont.