As he entered his palace, he was struck by the grave and serious manner with which his retainers, usually so enthusiastic, received him. An ominous gloom reigned in the court, and as with lordly tread he passed through the long corridors, he felt that his step was breaking the silence of death. In the anteroom of the queen’s apartment, he found her maidens indulging in the utmost expressions of grief. The feeble wail of an infant smote upon his ear, and striding through the hushed and darkened chamber, he sought the couch of the neglected Violante. That couch was a bier. Those lips, upon whose sportive accents he had hung with exquisite though momentary rapture, were forever dumb. Those features, that had kindled with a glow of love at his every word of tenderness, were now settled in their last calm repose.
Poor Violante! Thy pilgrimage was brief. The first sweet stage of childhood scarcely passed, Fancy led thy willing footsteps through the Elysian fields of Love, and robed the object of thy young affections with a halo of purity and truth.—The life-long experience of woman—the indefinable slight and wrong that press home upon her, the bitter sense of utter helplessness and dependence, the inexplicable woe of the primeval curse,—crowded into the little span of a few short months, brought thee early to the sepulchre,—seventeen summers, and a winter whose rigor congealed the very fountain of thy life,—to hope, to love, to give thy life to another, and die.—Such is thy history, beautiful Violante, Queen of Jerusalem, Empress of Germany, Heroine of the Sixth Crusade.
ELEANORA.
CHAPTER I.
THE PARENTS OF EDWARD I.