“It was because of my brother’s persuasion that I did not—he wished not that thou should’st come to evil.”
“And thou forgiv’st me, Aurelia—from thy very heart thou forgiv’st me?”
“All, all—from my heart and soul, my husband.”
“It will not, then, be very hard to die!”
An hour after and the chamber was silent. The wife had yielded first. She breathed her last sigh upon his bosom, and with the last effort of his strength he lifted her gently and laid her in the sarcophagus, composing with affectionate care the drapery around her. Then, remembering the picture, he looked around him for his sword with which to obliterate the portraits which his genius had assigned to so lamentable an eternity; but his efforts were feeble, and the paralysis of death seized him while he was yet making them. He sunk back with palsied limbs upon the bier, and the lights, and the picture, faded from before his eyes, with the last pulses of his life. The calumny which had destroyed his hopes, survived its own detection. The recorded falsehood was triumphant over the truth; yet may you see to this day, where the random strokes of the weapon were aimed for its obliteration. Of himself there is no monument in the tomb, though one touching memorial has reached us. The vaulted chamber buried in the earth was discovered by accident. A fracture was made in its top by an Italian gentleman in company with a Scottish nobleman. As they gazed eagerly through the aperture, they beheld an ancient warrior in full armor, and bearing a coronet of gold. The vision lasted but a moment. The decomposing effects of the air were soon perceptible. Even while they gazed, the body seemed agitated with a trembling, heaving motion, which lasted a few minutes, and then it subsided into dust. When they penetrated the sepulchre, they found the decaying armor in fragments, the sword and the helmet, or crown of gold. The dust was but a handful, and this was all that remained of the wretched Lucumo. The terrible picture is all that survives—the false witness, still repeating its cruel lie at the expense of all that is noble in youth and manhood, and all that is pure and lovely in the soul of woman.
THOUGHTS.
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BY MARIE ROSEAU.
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