“Hurrah!” he cried at last, with his face lighted up, and a boyish toss of his right hand. “Look, look, Prince, here are Peschiera’s own letters to his kinsman’s wife; his avowal of what he calls his ‘patriotic designs;’ his entreaties to her to induce her husband to share them. Look, look, how he wields his influence over the woman he had once wooed; look how artfully he combats her objections; see how reluctant our friend was to stir, till wife and kinsman both united to urge him!”
“It is enough,-quite enough,” exclaimed the prince, looking at the passages in Peschiera’s letters which Harley pointed out to him.
“No, it is not enough,” shouted Harley, as he continued to read the letters with his rapid sparkling eyes. “More still! O villain, doubly damned! Here, after our friend’s flight, here is Peschiera’s avowal of guilty passion; here, he swears that he had intrigued to ruin his benefactor, in order to pollute the home that had sheltered him. Ah, see how she answers! thank Heaven her own eyes were opened at last, and she scorned him before she died! She was innocent! I said so. Violante’s mother was pure. Poor lady, this moves me! Has your emperor the heart of a man?”
“I know enough of our emperor,” answered the prince, warmly, “to know that, the moment these papers reach him, Peschiera is ruined, and your friend is restored to his honours. You will live to see the daughter, to whom you would have given a child’s place at your hearth, the wealthiest heiress of Italy,—the bride of some noble lover, with rank only below the supremacy of kings!”
“Ah,” said Harley, in a sharp accent, and turning very pale,—“ah, I shall not see her that! I shall never visit Italy again!—never see her more,—never, after she has once quitted this climate of cold iron cares and formal duties! never, never!” He turned his head for a moment, and then came with quick step to Leonard. “But you, O happy poet! No Ideal can ever be lost to you. You are independent of real life. Would that I were a poet!” He smiled sadly.
“You would not say so, perhaps, my dear Lord,” answered Leonard, with equal sadness, “if you knew how little what you call ‘the Ideal’ replaces to a poet the loss of one affection in the genial human world. Independent of real life! Alas! no. And I have here the confessions of a true poet-soul, which I will entreat you to read at leisure; and when you have read, say if you would still be a poet!”
He took forth Nora’s manuscripts as he spoke.
“Place them yonder, in my escritoire, Leonard; I will read them later.”
“Do so, and with heed; for to me there is much here that involves my own life,—much that is still a mystery, and which I think you can unravel!”
“I!” exclaimed Harley; and he was moving towards the escritoire, in a drawer of which Leonard had carefully deposited the papers, when once more, but this time violently, the door was thrown open, and Giacomo rushed into the room, accompanied by Lady Lansmere.