"Ah, Despina! had you trusted more to Providence, how much sorrow might have been spared us both!"
"True, dear one," said she, wafting me a kiss through the grate.
The superior hurried me away, and I left the convent giddy with delight at the sudden turn fortune had taken in my favour. Within the hour, I wrote to my uncle, the great Cardinal Ruffo, to intercede with his Holiness, and procure a dispensation for Despina; and I spent nearly my whole inheritance in bribing the greedy officials at the Papal court to hasten it, trusting; to God and mv own hands for the means of maintenance when Despina became mine. Meanwhile, I visited the convent daily, and though my interviews with her were very short, I became more than ever enchanted with her beauty and vivacity; which seemed to increase as the time flew past, and the day of her freedom and our happiness drew nearer.
Often have I whiled away the hours of a starry night in the Toledo, watching the taper which flickered in her dormitory; and I retired happy if I did but obtain even a glance of her figure passing the lattice. One night, while watching thus, a tall dark shadow fell on the muslin curtains of the window: it was not that of Despina. I paused—horrible suspicions floated before me, and I felt my blood run cold. The light vanished, the chamber became dark, and immediately a tall fellow dropped from the window into the street. My heart, which had ceased to beat for a time, was now on fire: the blood shot through my veins like lightning; my poniard gleamed in my hand.
"Olà, signor cavaliere!" cried I, crossing his path; "who are you that leaves the convent thus, and under the shadow of night?"
"One who will not brook questioning by you, whoever you are, per Baccho!" replied the other, drawing his hat over his eyes, and standing on his guard, with a poniard also. "Let me pass, cursed lazzarone! or it may be the worse for you."
Jealousy, anguish, and hatred, burned fiercely within me, and I rushed upon him with frantic vehemence. Parrying his blow with my mantle, I, with truer aim, slashed up his face from cheek to chin. My antagonist fled, uttering a terrible malediction.
"Basta!" said I, while wiping my weapon, "he is only some craven robber after all! Thank heaven! my suspicions were vain. But her window!—I must have mistaken it—and yet the shadow—." A tumult of sad thoughts overwhelmed me, and I slept none that night, but wandered about the Toledo like a houseless dog. Sunrise found me at the parlour grate of the convent.
Despina appeared as usual, her eyes beaming with smiles expressive of equal pleasure and surprise on beholding me so early. The fair recluse, who had just arisen from her pure and peaceful couch, seemed so blooming—so fragrant—with beauty, youth, and innocence, that I cursed my vile suspicions, and concluded the strange visitor of the convent to have been a robber.
Three days afterwards, my uncle, the Cardinal Ruffo, sent a dispensation for Despina to the convent. I heard of its arrival, and with a heart brimming with exultation, I flew to embrace my inamorata. On hearing my well-known ring at the bell of the porch, Despina was not, as usual, at the grate, nor did the superior appear; but a letter from her lay on the table for me. I tore it open, and read the fatal confirmation of my suspicions: I found that I was the dupe of two of the most artful and inexplicable women in Italy. Despina had eloped! The moment her dispensation had arrived, she quitted the convent in a calesso, accompanied by a masked cavalier, and was gone no one knew whither. The letter concluded by a request that I would visit the convent no more, as the abbess was too much incensed at Despina Vignola to make welcome any one who had ever loved or been connected with her.