Page:Francesca Carrara 1.pdf/78

74 and well it is for them so to do; they would never reach it but for such onward gaze.

Their few arrangements were soon made, hastened by a letter from Henrietta, now Duchesse de Mercœur; and they found themselves in possession of a degree of wealth, which, however moderate, was sufficient to preclude anything like dependence. It was a bright morning when they embarked at the port of Leghorn. The blue sea spread far away, till lost, as it were, in light; the shore lay glittering behind, and the sunshine seemed to fall like a blessing around. The buoyant atmosphere gives its own lightness to the spirits; and our young voyagers felt as if the beautiful day were the augury of the future.

Yet, at that very time the power of their expected patron seemed on the verge of final overthrow. Cardinal Mazarin had, for the second time, been forced into exile by the Fronde, and Paris was in a state of equal confusion and excitement—excitement, that peculiarly Parisian word. The disturbance had commenced, like those of England, in the refusal of the parliament to sanction an obnoxious tax; but here all resemblance ended. The position of the two countries was, indeed, entirely opposite. In the English parliament the tax was refused on great and