“Yet hast thou ever noted the change, the fearful change, that has passed over this face within a few brief days? Dost mark the pallor of this cheek, the blaze of this eye? Dost see this forehead seamed by a single wrinkle between the brows; dost note these wan and wasted features?”
“Yes, yes my father, I do. What hath wrought this fearful change?”
“Canst thou ask? A mighty grief has been swelling the channels of my soul—grief for the crime of Adrian, grief that his hands, the hands of the son, should be red—dripping with his own father’s blood.”
He paused—covered his face—there was a moment of voiceless agony “and yet, even in this hour of agony, the resemblance, the sad resemblance, which has haunted me for years, comes back to my soul—”
“The resemblance, my father?”
“Boy, I tell thee, thy face is like the face of—Even now I see it!”
“Father?—”
“The face of thy mother!”
“I tremble my father; mine eyes are wet with burning tears. Tell me—oh, tell me of her—my mother.”
“Twenty years ago, a nameless Scholar, who disdaining the din and battle of war, gave his soul to higher and purer thoughts, won the love of a proud and peerless Ladye. They might not wed, for she was the scion of a Royal line. It was evening, boy, calm and gorgeous evening—well do I remember the scene—when the proud Ladye gazed from the portico of a kingly palace, over the temples and the towers of Jerusalem. The glow of sunset was streaming over her face, and her full dark eyes, kindled with the grandeur of the scene, when, when—listen Guiseppo,—her boy, her bright eyed boy, lay prattling on her knee. The Scholar stood by her side—he was silent, for his heart was full—oh, God! methinks I see myself as I was then, even through the long lapse of years—”