How will this end, my dear friend? I tremble for the future. The rupture with his court has placed my master in a state of humiliating dependence on one sole person—the Marquis Civitella. This man is now master of our secrets—of our whole fate. Will he always conduct himself as nobly as he does now? Are his good intentions to be relied upon; and is it expedient to confide so much weight and power to one person—even were he the best of men? The prince’s sister has again been written to—the result of this fresh appeal you shall learn in my next letter.
COUNT O——— IN CONTINUATION.
This letter never reached me. Three months passed without my receiving any tidings from Venice,—an interruption to our correspondence which the sequel but too clearly explained. All my friend’s letters to me had been kept back and suppressed. My emotion may be conceived when, in the December of the same year, the following letter reached me by mere accident (as it afterwards appeared), owing to the sudden illness of Biondello, into whose hands it had been committed.
“You do not write; you do not answer me. Come, I entreat you, come on the wings of friendship! Our hopes are fled! Read the enclosed,—all our hopes are at an end!
“The wounds of the marquis are reported mortal. The cardinal vows vengeance, and his bravos are in pursuit of the prince. My master—oh! my unhappy master! Has it come to this! Wretched, horrible fate! We are compelled to hide ourselves, like malefactors, from assassins and creditors.
“I am writing to you from the convent of ————, where the prince has found an asylum. At this moment he is resting on his hard couch by my side, and is sleeping—but, alas! it is only the sleep of deadly exhaustion, that will but give him new strength for new trials. During the ten days that she was ill no sleep closed his eyes. I was present when the body was opened. Traces of poison were detected. To-day she is to be buried.
“Alas! dearest O———, my heart is rent. I have lived through scenes that can never be effaced from my memory. I stood beside her deathbed. She departed like a saint, and her last strength was spent in trying with persuasive eloquence to lead her lover into the path that she was treading in her way to heaven. Our firmness was completely gone—the prince alone maintained his fortitude, and although he suffered a triple agony of death with her, he yet retained strength of mind sufficient to refuse the last prayer of the pious enthusiast.”
This letter contained the following enclosure:
TO THE PRINCE OF ————, FROM HIS SISTER.