"Do not cry," continued the child, with a kind of tender gravity. "You are going, but Papa says it would be selfish in us to grieve, for it is for your good; and we should be glad. But I am selfish, Leonard, and I do grieve. I shall miss you sadly."
"You, young lady,—you miss me?"
"Yes; but I do not cry, Leonard, for I envy you, and I wish I were a boy:
I wish I could do as you."
The girl clasped her hands, and reared her slight form, with a kind of passionate dignity.
"Do as me, and part from all those you love!"
"But to serve those you love. One day you will come back to your mother's cottage, and say, 'I have conquered fortune.' Oh that I could go forth and return, as you will! But my father has no country, and his only child is a useless girl."
As Violante spoke, Leonard had dried his tears: her emotion distracted him from his own.
"Oh," continued Violante, again raising her head loftily, "what it is to be a man! A woman sighs, 'I wish,' but a man should say, 'I will.'"
Occasionally before Leonard had noted fitful flashes of a nature grand and heroic in the Italian child, especially of late,—flashes the more remarkable from the contrast to a form most exquisitely feminine, and to a sweetness of temper which made even her pride gentle. But now it seemed as if the child spoke with the command of a queen,—almost with the inspiration of a Muse. A strange and new sense of courage entered within him.
"May I remember these words!" he murmured, half audibly.