"And now I will tell you my dream," said poor foolish Luise; "and you will see why I looked happy in sleeping, and sorry in waking. I thought I was sitting here in the garden—crying over what I have been telling you—and suddenly an angel stood before me, and bade me weep not. Strange as was his form, and sunny in its exceeding brightness, I was not frightened; for his words were very, very gentle, and his look too full of kindness to give me one thrill of alarm. And he said that what I had longed for so much should be granted; that my father and mother should not grow old, nor Carlos cease to be the boy he now is, nor Isabel grow up into a sedate woman, nor Manuel lose the gay childishness for which we all pet him, nor I feel myself forsaking the old familiar past, and launching into dim troublous seas of perpetual change. He promised that we should one and all be freed from the great law of time; and that as we are this day parents and children, so we should continue forever—while vicissitude and decay must still have sway in the great world at large. Can you wonder that I smiled? Or that it pained me when I awoke, and found that the bright angel and the sweet promise were only—a dream?"...
There was no lack of conversation that evening in that Lisbon cottage. All loved Luise; and she, in the midst of so many artless tokens of affection and of triumph at her return, forgot all the morbid fancies that had given rise to her dream, and was as light-hearted, and as light-footed, as in days of yore. All gave themselves up to the reality of present gladness; every voice trembled with the music of joy; every eye looked and reflected love. There was no happier homestead that evening in Lisbon, nor in the world.
But ere many hours, Lisbon itself was tossing and heaving with the throes of dissolution. The sea arose tumultuously against the tottering city; the ground breathed fire, and quaked, and burst asunder; the houses reeled and fell, and thousands of inhabitants perished in the fall. Among them, at one dire swoop, the tenants of that happy cottage home. Together did these mortals put on immortality.
And thus was the dream fulfilled.
THE HOUSEHOLD OF SIR THOS MORE.[7]
LIBELLUS A MARGARETA MORE, QUINDECIM ANNOS NATA, CHELSEIÆ INCEPTVS.
"Nulla dies sine linea."
This morn, hinting to Bess that she was lacing herselfe too straightlie, she brisklie replyed, "One wd think 'twere as great meritt to have a thick waiste as to be one of ye earlie Christians!"
These humourous retorts are ever at her tongue's end; and, albeit, as Jacky one day angrilie remarked, when she had beene teazing him, "Bess, thy witt is stupidnesse;" yet, for one who talks soe much at random, no one can be more keene when she chooseth. Father sayd of her, half fondly, half apologeticallie to Erasmus, "Her wit has a fine subtletie that eludes you almoste before you have time to recognize it for what it really is." To which, Erasmus readilie assented, adding, that it had ye rare meritt of playing less on persons than things, and never on bodilie defects.