One memorable day, a new face made its appearance at the window—a female face—fair, and fresh, and young. The stranger was a girl, whose demeanour appeared at once timid and lively; modesty regulated the movements of her well-turned head, and the brilliancy of her animated eyes, whose glances were veiled by long silken eyelashes of raven darkness. As she stood behind the heavy grating, on which her fair hand bent for support, her brow inclining in the shade as if in a meditative mood, she might have stood for a chaste personification of the nymph Captivity. But when her brow was uplifted, and the joyous light of day fell on her lovely countenance, the harmony and serenity of her features, her delicate but brilliant complexion, proclaimed that it was in the free air of liberty she had been nurtured, not under the dispiriting influence of the bolts and bars of a dungeon. She was, perhaps, one of those tutelary angels of charity, whose lives are passed in soothing the sick and solacing the captive?—No!—the instinct which brought the fair stranger to Fenestrella was still more puissant—even that of filial duty. Only daughter to Girardi the fly-catcher—Teresa had abandoned the gay promenades and festivities of Turin, and the banks of the Doria-Riparia, to inhabit the cheerless town of Fenestrella, not that her residence near the fortress afforded free access to her father: for some time she found it impossible to obtain even a momentary interview with the prisoner. But to breathe the same air with him—and think of him nearer to herself, was some solace to her affliction. This was her first time of admittance into the long-interdicted citadel; and such is the origin of the delight which Charney sees beaming in her eyes, and the colour which he observes mantling on her cheek. Restored to the arms of her father, Teresa Girardi has indeed a right to look gay, and glad, and lovely!
It was a sentiment of curiosity which attracted her to the window; a feeling of interest soon attaches her to the spot. The noble prisoner and his occupation excite her attention; but finding herself noticed in her turn, she tries to recede from observation, as if convicted of unbecoming boldness. Teresa has nothing to fear! The Count de Charney, engrossed by Picciola and her flower-bud, has not a thought to throw away on any rival beauty!
A week afterwards, when the young girl was admitted to pay a second visit to her father, she turned her steps, almost unconsciously, towards the grated window for a glimpse of the prisoner; when Girardi, laying his hand upon her arm, exclaimed, “My fellow-prisoner has not been near his plant these three days. The poor gentleman must be seriously ill.”
“Ill; seriously ill!” exclaimed Teresa, with emotion.
“I have noticed more than one physician traversing the court: and from what I can learn from Ludovico, they agree only to a single point—that the Count de Charney will die.”
“Die!” again reiterated the young girl, with dilating eyes, and terror rather than pity expressed in her countenance. “Unhappy man—unhappy man!” Then turning towards her father, with terror in her looks, she exclaimed, “People die, then, in this miserable place!”
“Yes, the exhalations from the old moats have infected the citadel with fever.”
“Father, dearest father!”
She paused—tears were gathering under her eyelids; and Girardi, deeply moved by her affliction, extended his hand tenderly towards her. Teresa seized and covered it with tears and kisses.