“For God’s sake, Giovanni,” exclaimed Melburn, “what is the matter? You appal—you terrify me.”
The painter grasped his hand, and dragging him to an adjoining apartment, tore aside the snow-white veil that hung over a picture. Melburn looked upon the face of Alice—his Alice—the idolized love of the Italian. But it was Alice as an angel—for her beauty was so spiritualized, that the earthly seemed lost in the heavenly. Melburn hid his face in his hands for a moment; then stretching out his arms, the stricken child of destiny rushed into them, and sank insensible upon his bosom.
Hour after hour passed on, and still consciousness did not revive in that feeble frame. There was a glimmering of life, nothing more; and as Melburn watched beside his couch, tears, more burning than any he had ever shed, fell upon the inanimate form on which he gazed. “Poor Rosa,” he murmured, “thou hast indeed been the sport of adverse circumstances. This, then, is the link of the mysterious chain that bound me to thee; our hearts drank at the same fountain, and became united in the same stream. Peace, peace to thy parting spirit. God receive thy weary soul.”
The light of life never gleamed again. He lingered through another day. As the veil of night descended upon the world, the spirit of the unfortunate Italian took its flight to the shadowy far-off land.
It was midnight. Tapers were burning upon the coffin in which lay all that remained of Giovanni Rosa. Melburn, with two friends of the deceased, kept a sorrowful vigil beside the clay-cold form; and as the tedious hours crept on, the death-like silence became almost insupportable. At length a soft step was heard, and a female form in white glided noiselessly to the coffin’s side. She lifted the crape that shrouded the face beneath, and gazed fearlessly upon the lineaments so beautiful in their repose; then kissing the cold brow, she replaced the snowy covering, and silently departed as she came.
The next morning they heard that Bianca was dead. She had taken poison.
In the Chiesa di Santa Maria is a costly monument of marble, erected over the remains of the young painter by his English friend. Before they returned to England, Melburn and his betrothed visited the spot together, fulfilling the wish of the departed, “that she might stand beside his grave, and remember the heart that beat and broke for her.”
SONNETS
ON RECEIVING A CROWN OF IVY FROM JOHN KEATS—BY LEIGH HUNT.