“Nisida,” exclaimed Fernand, cruelly bewildered, “you drive me to despair. I know not whether to loathe thee for this avowal which thou hast made, or to snatch thee to my arms, abandon all hope of salvation, and sacrifice myself entirely for one so transcendently beautiful as thou art. But thy suspicions relative to Agnes are ridiculous, monstrous, absurd. For, as surely as thou art there, Nisida—as the heaven is above us and the earth beneath us—as surely as that I love thee so well as to be unable to reproach thee more for the deed which thou hast confessed—so surely, Nisida, was Agnes my own granddaughter, and I—I, Fernand Wagner—young, strong, and healthy as thou beholdest me, am fourscore and fifteen years of age.”
Nisida started in affright, and then fixed a scrutinizing glance upon Fernand’s countenance; for she feared that his reason was abandoning him—that he was raving.
“Ah! Nisida, I see that you do not credit my words,” he exclaimed; “and yet I have told thee the solemn, sacred truth. But mine is a sad history and a dreadful fate; and if I thought that thou would’st soothe my wounded spirit, console, and not revile me, pity, and not loathe me, I would tell thee all.”
“Speak, Fernand, speak!” she cried; “and do me not so much wrong as to suppose that I could forget my love for thee—that love which made me the murderer of Agnes. Besides,” she added, enthusiastically, “I see that we are destined for each other; that the dark mysteries attached to both our lives engender the closest sympathies; that we shall flourish in power, and glory, and love, and happiness together.”
Wagner threw his arms around Nisida’s neck, and clasped her to his breast. He saw not in her the woman who had dealt death to his granddaughter; he beheld in her only a being of ravishing beauty and wondrous mind, so intoxicated was he with his passion, and so great was the magic influence which she wielded o’er his yielding spirit. Then, as her head reclined upon his breast, he whispered to her, in a few hurried, but awfully significant words, the nature of his doom, the dread conditions on which he had obtained resuscitated youth, an almost superhuman beauty, a glorious intellect, and power of converting the very clods of the earth into gold and precious stones at will.
“And now, dearest,” he added, in a plaintive and appealing tone, “and now thou may’st divine wherefore on the last day of every month I have crossed these mountains; thou may’st divine, too, how my escape from the prison of Florence was accomplished; and, though no mortal power can abridge my days—though the sword of the executioner would fall harmless on my neck, and the deadly poison curdle not in my veins—still, man can bind me in chains, and my disgrace is known to all Florence.”
“But thou shalt return thither, Fernand,” exclaimed Nisida, raising her countenance and gazing upon him, not with horror and amazement, but in pride and triumph; “thou shalt return thither, Fernand, armed with a power that may crush all thine enemies, and blast with destructive lightning the wretches who would look slightingly on thee. Already thou art dearer, far dearer to me than ever thou wast before; for I love the marvelous—I glory in the supernatural—and thou art a being whom such women as myself can worship and adore. And thou repinest at thy destiny? thou shudderest at the idea of that monthly transformation which makes thy fate so grand, because it is so terrible? Oh, thou art wrong, thou art wrong, my Fernand. Consider all thou hast gained, how many, many years of glorious youth and magnificent beauty await thee! Think of the power with which thy boundless command of wealth may invest thee. Oh, thou art happy, enviable, blest. But I—I,” she added, the impassioned excitement of her tone suddenly sinking into subdued plaintiveness as her charming head once more fell upon his breast—“I am doomed to fade and wither like the other human flowers of the earth. Oh, that thought is now maddening. While thou remainest as thou art now, vested with that fine, manly beauty which won my heart when first I saw thee, and before I knew thee: I shall grow old, wrinkled, and thou wilt loathe me. I shall be like a corpse by the side of one endowed with vigorous life. Oh, Fernand; this may not be; and thou canst purchase the power to bestow unperishing youth, unchanging beauty upon me; the power, moreover, to transport us hence, and render us happy in inseparable companionship for long, long years to come.”
“Merciful heavens! Nisida,” exclaimed Fernand, profoundly touched by the urgent, earnest appeal of the lovely siren whose persuasive eloquence besought him to seal his own eternal damnation—“would’st thou have me yield up my soul to the enemy of mankind?”
“Do you hesitate? Can you even pause to reflect?” cried Nisida, with whose tongue the demon himself was as it were speaking. “Oh, Fernand, you love me not, you have never, never loved me.” And she burst into a flood of tears. Wagner was painfully moved by this spectacle, which constituted so powerful an argument to support the persuasive eloquence of her late appeal. His resolution gave way rapidly—the more agonizing became her sobs the weaker grew his self-command; and his lips were about to murmur the fatal assent to her prayer—about to announce his readiness to summon the enemy of mankind and conclude the awful compact—when suddenly there passed before his eyes the image of the guardian angel whom he had seen in his vision, dim and transparent as the thinnest vapor, yet still perceptible and with an expression of countenance profoundly mournful. The apparition vanished in a moment; but its evanescent presence was fraught with salvation. Tearing himself wildly and abruptly from Nisida’s embrace, Wagner exclaimed in a tone indicative of the horror produced by the revulsion of feeling in his mind, “No—never—never!” and, fleet as the startled deer he ran—he flew toward the mountains. Frightened and amazed by his sudden cry and simultaneous flight, Nisida cast her eyes rapidly around to ascertain the cause of his alarm, thinking that some dreadful spectacle had stricken terror to his soul. But ah—what sees she? Why do her glances settle fixedly in one direction? What beholds she in the horizon? For a few moments she is motionless, speechless, she cannot believe her eyes. Then her countenance, which has already experienced the transition from an expression of grief and alarm to one of suspense and mingled hope and fear, becomes animated with the wildest joy; and forgetting the late exciting scene as completely as if it had never taken place, but with all her thoughts and feelings absorbed in the new—the one idea which now engrosses her—she turns her eyes rapidly round toward the mountains, exclaiming, “Fernand, dearest Fernand! a sail—a sail.”
But Wagner hears her not: she stamps her foot with impatient rage upon the sand; and in another moment the groves conceal her lover from view.