Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/170

 inspiration like any pythoness of old, and at such times her eyes flashed, her lips grew eloquent, her colour came and went, her voice rose in cadence that stirred the sluggish sickly souls around her with joy and with terror. All the fire and the force that were in her blood came out of prison in those recitations, and, listening to her, Joconda thought, with a shudder, 'that is Saturnino who speaks so, of love, and hate, and war, and death!'

A thousand memories that were not of her life, yet seemed of her remembrance, thronged on the child at such hours. She seemed to hear the clash of arms, the roll of artillery, the shrieks of slaughtered children, the hiss of the hot blood pouring out as the cold steel plunged in through flesh and sinew; strife, combat, violence, fierce courage, ghastly death, all seemed familiar to her, and she sang of them as Tasso sang of strife before Jerusalem that never his eyes looked on in life. Higher and higher, stronger and stronger, her voice would rise as the rhyme rushed from her lips, and the lute under her fingers would scream and sob like a suffering thing, and a great fear would come over all her listeners; and when, all suddenly, she stopped, pale, breathless, with dilated eyes—