If I was not totally corrupted by the habits and ways of that life, I owe it wholly to those teachings of my dear mother which, through all the turmoil and confusion of this ill-regulated existence, still held a place in my heart, and led me again and again to ask myself how she would think of this, or what judgment she would pass on that; and even in this remnant of a conscience there was some safety. I tried to persuade myself that it was well for me that all this was now over, and that an honest existence was now about to open to me,—an existence in which my good mother's lessons would avail me more, stimulate me to the right and save me from the wrong, and give to the humblest cares of daily labor a halo that had never shone on my life of splendor.
It was late at night when I reached Trieste, and I left it at daybreak. The small steamer in which I had taken my passage followed the coast line, calling at even the most insignificant little towns and villages, and winding its track through that myriad of islands which lie scattered along this strange shore. The quiet, old-world look of these quaint towns, the simple articles they dealt in, the strange dress, and the stranger sounds of the language of these people, all told me into what a new life I had just set foot, and how essential it was to leave all my former habits behind me as I entered here.
The sun had just gone below the sea, as we rounded the great promontory of the north and entered the bay of Fiume. Scarcely had we passed in than the channel seemed to close behind us, and we were moving along over what looked like a magnificent lake bounded on every side by lofty mountains,—for the islands of the bay are so placed that they conceal the openings to the Adriatic. If the base of the great mountains was steeped in a blue, deep and mellow as the sea itself, their summits glowed in the carbuncle tints of the setting sun, and over these again long lines of cloud, golden and azure streaks marked the sky, almost on fire, as it were, with the last parting salute of the glorious orb that was setting. It was not merely that I had never seen, but I could not have imagined such beauty of landscape, and as we swept quietly along nearer the shore, and I could mark the villas shrouded in the deep woods of chestnut and oak, and saw the olive and the cactus, with the orange and the oleander, bending their leafy branches over the blue water, I thought to myself, would not a life there be nearer Paradise than anything wealth and fortune could buy elsewhere?
“There, yonder,” said the captain, pointing to the ornamented chimneys of a house surrounded by a deep oak-wood, and the terrace of which overhung the sea, “that's the villa of old Ignaz Oppovich. They say the Emperor tempted him with half a million of florins to sell it, but, miser as he was and is, the old fellow refused it.”
“Is that Oppovich of the firm of Hodnig and Oppovich?” asked I.
“Yes; the house is all Oppovich's now, and half Fiume too, I believe.”
“There are worse fellows than old Ignaz,” said another, gravely. “I wonder what would become of the hospital, or the poor-house, or the asylum for the orphans here, but for him.”
“He 's a Jew,” said another, spitting out with contempt.
“A Jew that could teach many a Christian the virtues of his own faith,” cried the former. “A Jew that never refused an alms to the poor, no matter of what belief, and that never spoke ill of his neighbor.”
“I never heard as much good of him before, and I have been a member of the town council with him these thirty years.”