"What was there on earth worth living for?" he asked himself; "what was there to compensate the pangs he endured--the burthen he bore. Nothing--nothing. Life was only not a blank because it was full of miseries."
Thus he sat, with a wrung heart and whirling brain, for nearly half an hour. At length he took a picture from his bosom--one of those small gems of art which the great painters of that and the preceding age sometimes took a pride in producing--and gazed upon it earnestly. It was the portrait of a very beautiful woman (his own mother), which the reader has seen him receive from Milan. He thought it like Leonora d'Orco; but oh! that mother was faithful and true unto the death. She had defended her own honour, she had protected herself from shame, she had escaped the power of a tyrant, by preferring the grave to pollution.
He turned to the back of the picture, now repaired, and read the inscription on it, "A cure for the ills of life."
"And why not my cure?" asked Lorenzo of his own heart; "why should I not pass from misery and shame even as my mother did?"
He pressed the spring, and the lid flew open. There were the fatal powders beneath, all ready to his hand.
He was seated in his wife's room, and among many an article of costly luxury on the table were a small silver cup and water-pitcher. Lorenzo stretched out his hand to take the cup, laying the portrait with the powders down while he half filled the cup with water. But, ere he could take a powder from the case, Antonio re-entered.
"The hour has passed, my lord, and I do hope you will now hear me," he said. "I have to tell you that which, perhaps, may be of little comfort, but is yet important for you to know."
"Speak on, my good Antonio," said Lorenzo, in a gentler tone than he had lately used; for the thoughts of death were still upon him, and to the wretched there is gentleness in the thoughts of death. "What is it you would say? I am in no haste;" and he set down the cup upon the table by the picture.
"My lord, we have been all terribly deceived," said Antonio; "you, I, the Signora Leonora--all. While you have thought her false and fickle, she has believed you the same."
"Antonio!" exclaimed his lord, in a reproachful tone, "Antonio, forbear. Try not to deceive me by fictions."