YEARS passed, and in a foreign land Alfieri sought to win wealth and a new name to offer the idol of his heart. He succeeded beyond his wildest hopes, and with an impatience that would have been unsatisfied with the swiftness of the lightning, sped over the waters, in a richly freighted argosy of his own, back to his native city of the "Siren Sea."
Trusty adherents of his house had, in the mean time, procured the reversion of the attainder as far as it touched him, and, as his father was no longer alive, there was a strong prospect of his estate being restored to him.
Arrived at Venice, he learned that the Duke D'Alvarez had been recalled, and in the course of conversation the new ambassador mentioned that there was talk in Madrid of a projected nuptial between the Donna Leonora and the Prince Carlos of the blood royal of Spain.
Zanotti's lip quivered, and his eye flashed fiercely as he heard the rumor, but not a word escaped to betray the hot feelings that were pressing at his heart. Ere the sun sank into his bed of rosy clouds that night, his gallant ship, with straining masts and every stitch of canvas set, was speeding, like a gull, over the waters, and Zanotti paced the deck through that night and the next with a stride that betokened troubled thoughts. He reached Madrid in safety, and lost no time in finding the residence of the ambassador. There were bright lights flitting from window to window, and the sound of music was borne upon the night-wind, betokening revelry within. He stopped to question a lackey who was lounging at the entrance.
"The Donna Leonora was married this night three weeks ago, and Monseignor gives a feast to-night to his son-in-law, the prince!"
Zanotti clutched one of the pillars that supported the massive doorway, and kept his hold for a moment convulsively, for he felt his limbs failing him. This movement brought his face beneath the jet of a lighted chandelier, and the servant shrank with affright—it was like the countenance of the dead! Terrible as was the struggle in his breast; fearful as was the sudden contest of passion and despair; lost as he was to aught but a blighting sense of the wreck and desolation of his hopes, he still could not be oblivious to the significantly curious glance of the affrighted servant. By an almost superhuman effort he repressed further show of feeling, and his voice was without a particle of tremulousness, although very hollow, as he told the menial to announce "General di Romano." Such was his new rank and name! Many a fair dame started as that tall, majestic figure, with its proud head and features, pale and rigid as if hewn from the quarries of Pentelicus, passed her, as straight he proceeded to the extremity of the apartment, where, in a group conversing with smiling looks, stood the Duke de la Darca, his daughter, and the Prince Carlos of Spain. The count (or, as we should now call him, the general), unobserved by the group, placed himself near one of the large Gothic windows, opposite to which was a group of statuary that effectually concealed him from view. Here he paused to gaze upon the woman who had wrecked his happiness! Four years had passed without robbing her of a single grace, and she stood there sparkling with diamonds, radiant with beauty, and with a regality of bearing that well became her new and princely station.
An hour had elapsed, and he had watched her through many a stately measure in the pompous dances of her country, and heard her light jest and her gay laugh, and saw the same haughty fire in her magnificent black eyes, through all! Jealousy has often been described, and the burning words of the poet have wrought out an appalling picture; but if, during that hour, each wild throb of his bursting heart, if each shooting fire of his seething brain, if the madness and the agony and the fierce black promptings that fashioned each thought into shape, and called it murder! could have been conveyed in words or upon canvas to the minds of less volcanic natures, they would have laughed to scorn the artist or the author, and accused him of conjuring up the Titan agonies of hell to confine them in the contracted space afforded by the heart of a mere mortal man!
He turned from the revellers, sick and dizzy, and gazed out upon the night. The scene was as fair a one as God's smile ever lighted into beauty. The moon—floating in a sea of blue, cloudless, with the exception of one fleecy-looking mass of vapor that covered a small space like a veil of silver tissue—poured a flood of radiance upon a garden (surrounding the house on three sides) filled with rare exotics, and in the distance the steeples of the city rose up towards the sky, as if formed of luminous mist. The stars, too, were scattered round night's queen in rich profusion, and the air was fragrant with the breath of orange-blossoms. The Venetian, even in that land of sunshine and of flowers—his native Italy—had never looked upon as beautiful a scene. But it suggested no soothing fancies! It only revived the memory of hours of which it was now madness to think! Hours that were freighted with dreams and aspirations as lovely as itself! Hours that were passed—and forever; and aspirations that were coffined and dead! His brain seemed bursting with the heat of the room, and, as the window was a casement but a few feet from the ground, he sprang out, and walked with a hasty step in a direction in which, from a plashing sound that smote his ear, he hoped to find a spring or fountain. He found his conjecture a correct one, and, stooping down, laved his fevered temples in the liquid, which was as cold as ice, but seemed ineffectual when applied to the terrible fever that consumed him! He threw himself upon a richly sculptured seat that was supported by two marble Dryads on the edge of the fountain, and, in spite of every restraining effort, groaned aloud. He had remained thus for some time, regardless of time, place, everything but a dull leaden weight of misery, when a light footfall on the hard gravel roused him, and, springing from his recumbent position, he was about to conceal himself amid the foliage of the adjoining shrubbery, for he was in no mood for society just then. He also had been heard, however, and a rich, musical voice exclaimed—
"Dear father, are you there?"
Good heaven! it was her voice! He stood spell-bound—volition was suspended. The next moment they were face to face! With a low thrilling cry, she cast herself upon his breast. There was a gleam half of terror—partly of surprise and partly of joy—within her eyes. There were the two again! ay, even as of yore! Leonora and Carlo! The ruined noble and his betrothed bride—the princess and the soldier!