With the fierceness of a maniac, he bounds down the declivity. Constantine hears his pursuer, and quickens his pace. He is near the boat. On! on! if you would save your bride. Too late—too late. Yet there is one, though a desperate resource. Antonio’s pistol rings upon the air. Hah! he staggers with his burthen, but struggles forward—in vain—he supports his sinking form against a rock, while his life blood ebbs fast away. With the look of a baffled fiend, he turns towards his pursuer. Rage and disappointment writhe his lip, while his brow grows pale in death. He seeks his sash, and a stiletto gleams in the moonlight. What means that strange, ghastly smile? Oh God! he cannot mean——the blow is struck, and as he sinks to the earth, the life blood of Zara mingles with his own upon the sands. In an instant her lover kneels over her, but she hears him not, she answers him not. Thy pure soul has fled, unconscious of the blow thy ‘demon lover’ dealt. Thou hast gone ere the storm had desolated thy beautiful island-home—ere the sorrows of thy country had entered into thy soul. It is well with thee, sweet enthusiast, it is well with thee as thou art.
Antonio knelt over her, and called loudly upon her name, but he only heard it repeated, as if in derision, by the echoes of the cliffs. That tremendous moment when doubt struggles against a dreadful certainty passed by, and he knew that she was dead.
Pride, wealth, ambition, glory, what now are they to him? One word from those pale lips, one ray of light from those darkened eyes were worth them all.
The bodies were found the next morning on the spot where they had fallen, but Antonio had disappeared. He was never seen again in his native island. Life with him had ceased to have any attractions, and he sought release from it in the most desperate engagements with the enemies of Greece. He perished in battle, but not till he had obtained the glad assurance that the cause in which he had suffered so much would eventually triumph. As for Zara,
“She sleeps well,
By the sea-shore whereon she loved to dwell.”
STORY AND SENTIMENT,
OR, CONVERSATIONS WITH A MAN OF TASTE AND IMAGINATION.
No. 1.
‘His thoughts were not the thoughts of other men.’
In the spring of 18—, in consequence of ill health I betook me to one of those lovely vallies on the Connecticut, where the traveler if he has taste enough to look about him, may find grouped within the circuit of half a mile, one of the loveliest villages in the world. Its clear warm airs gently tempered by the winds of the ocean—the freshness and verdure of the landscape sloping gradually backward from the water side—the high hills which surround it, still covered with dark and rolling forests, as when first the white man took possession of them—and the thousand other natural beauties which are ever found in quiet New England villages, made me bless the fate which carried me thither, and the hour I made it my home.