Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/69

58 if he be ignorant of her history, and give her headlong faith. But that is such a hazard!—he is in love with her beauty, what would he care though one proved to him that she were vile as Messalina? Ah, Idalia! bellissima Idalia! yon are haughty as a queen, and beautiful as a goddess, and dangerous as a velvet-voiced cardinal, and brightly keen as the wisest statesman, but"

And while these thoughts strayed through his mind, he thrust the knife he held up to its haft in a pomegranate amongst the citrons; and while the red juice welled out, and the purple pulp seemed to shrink as though wounded, he plunged the blade, down and down, again and again, into the heart of the fruit, as though the action were a relief to him, as though the stab to the pomegranate were an allegory.

Yet with it a nobler feeling, a melancholy that was for the moment too deep to be able to replace regret by retaliation, came on him. "She could have made me what she would!" he thought. "I could have won a throne for her. Greece swings in the air for any bold hand to seize; a turn of the wheel, and Hungary may be thrown in the lottery; free Venetia, and she would give the sceptre to her deliverer. Such things have been;