Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 6.djvu/155

 LUCRECIA.

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��ing and studious habits of Lucrecia. He tried to make her talk, but she was so taciturn that he gave it up. When the Bishop and her uncle questioned her, she fixed her great black eyes upon them without replying. Was it timidity, or was it defiance ?

One evening, however, as Monsieur Rospigliosi was speaking of God, of paradise, and the hereafter, and prom- ising himself that he should find there his father and brother, she interrupted him abruptly, —

"Monsieur," she cried with a depth of passion which confounded her lis- tener, " shall I also find Cornelia and Brutus there?"

This explosion revealed at once the child's unexpected education, and her uncle no longer disregarded and neglected her ; but on the contrary he took pride in teaching her and making her one of those votaries of the Muses, which are not rare in Italy. She learn- ed Latin, Greek, Music. Painting : she knew how to speak in public, to write verse and to declaim. At fifteen years of age she was admitted into the learned society of Pistoja as a young marvel. They loved her, they admired and applauded her. The old marquise Malespini, a friend of the Bishop's, took her to Florence and to Court : but all this magnificence only made her long for Pistoja. Every day life did not interest her • but when she heard them speak of Napoleon's vic- tories, her heart beat as at the recital of the combats of Themistocles and the Peloponnesians. This younggirl did not belong to the world of her own day. She was lost in a solitude which her imagination had peopled with all the heroes of antiquity. By constantly hearing of the famous Romans who have left their traces upon the soil of Italy, or the terrible struggles of the middle ages, she became absorbed in them. She read the Iliad with avidity, and searched in the ancient chronicles for the stories of the rivalries and struggles of earlier days ; taking the part of one side or the other.

��She often strolled in the mountains of Pistoja, full of heroic souvenirs of battles, and loved the old arms of her family which adorned the walls of her palace. In the streets or in the muse- ums she stood, mute with admiration, before the monuments of the ancient grandeur of her country. She was oblivious to those around h*er. These degenerate Italians seemed to her like phantoms who peopled a solitude in the country of giants. She had not yet formed an opinion upon the govern- ment of her time, nor a hatred for the established powers, but she admir- ed grandeur and despised mediocrity and feebleness. Her aspirations were vague and ardent, and when among those of her uncle's guests who wore the French uniform, she heard, like a far off echo, the reports of the great army, her eyes would glisten and her heart beat with strong pulsations.

Meanwhile she dreamed of modern heroes, and regretted that she had not been born in France, so as to enjoy their triumphs. "But Bonaparte is an Italian," she said to herself.

Of all the great ends and objects of life one alone remained for her a seal- ed book — the beauty of Christianity — because religion taught humiliation and resignation. On seeing the young nobility follow the priests and bow to the Madonnas, she smiled pityingly. "These are the present soldiers of Italy," she thought. "They dress in white, cover their faces and cam- candles ; but how many of them would march upon the enemy with sword in hand? What are these Christian virtues compared to those of the Roman Republic ?" When her uncle required her to read a chapter in the fives of the Saints, and she fell upon the history of a martyr, she became absorbed in it. She comprehended these heroic acts, these inflexible virtues, vengeance without remorse, and expiation without end. Her heart had no pity, and her mind never took the part of the weak. Her instincts were inconsistent and perverse, like the trace of the original sin in the human soul.

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