It had been a day of clouds and heavy rain, and now the night was closing over a dreary and scantily furnished apartment in one of those ruined palaces of Florence, which, like so many objects in Italy, are invested with the romantic prestige of grandeur passed away. A single rushlight threw into view the dilapidated marble walls, on which were the tattered remains of what might once have been gorgeous tapestry, and a large oriel window, in whose immediate vicinity stood a mean uncurtained bed, where lay a woman apparently dying. A single female, sitting near her to administer such assistance as she needed, and a cold, indifferent looking man, who had his chair drawn up in an opposite corner of the room, and evidently stationed there more from duty or necessity than any feeling of interest, were the sole occupants beside. Low murmuring sounds broke from the lips of the dying woman. She was talking incessantly, as in that thronging of indistinct, though perhaps not undelightful images that often flit across the brain of the departing, her thoughts seemed to be wandering over many varied scenes, and her consciousness of existence to be quickened as it was about to be closed forever. Her speech was of flowers and of sunshine, and of every thing fullest of life. Distant, happy years seemed to be restored to her, for her imagination transported her back to the era of her childhood, and she talked of wandering in old familiar places with her companions, many of them dead and gone—for by some subtle process of association, those of them mainly seemed present to her visions—and of “bounding,” as she said, “fast, fast” after something she could not detain. “Let me rest!” she would murmur, “I am breathless with running—let me rest!” The passionless placidity of the countenance was in strange contrast with this—and the helplessness of the limbs, which, cold and nearly motionless, began to assume the semblance of that clay to which they were fast returning. Suddenly she opened her eyes, restored to the full consciousness of her situation. The eyes—those mirrors of the soul which neither time nor sorrow can rob of their magic, as long as they are the reflection of that which is immortal—were all that told of Angelica Kauffmann—and the long chestnut hair, which, though now hard and icy to the touch, still clung round her temples with some of the old luxuriance of those days when she dreamed inspired visions by the Alpine streams, or shone, the star of genius, in metropolitan saloons. For the rest, her features were faded and pale, their classic outline vanished in the hollows of time and the sharpness of death—haggard, too, but bearing that pathetic expression which told it might be the result more of suffering than years. And that cold, almost repulsive looking man!—can he be the same who knelt beside her beneath the stars and talked of unperishing love? Yes, such is life! In those worldly reverses which are too often the doom of the mentally gifted, poverty and neglect arrived—years of indifference followed, the character of the lover soon merging into that of the selfish and somewhat exacting husband—and now it had come to this. Calling him toward her, he took her proffered hand with a look of cold compassion. “I have been dreaming strangely to-night, Alexander,” said she, “and have the strangest sensations, as if all past life were passing in review before me, and its experiences crowded into a few fleeting hours—circumstances which I had believed long since forgotten, and feelings which I had thought to have outlived or crushed into oblivion. Yet there is none that return to me with a more vivid consciousness than my old feeling for you; and even now I seem to leap back over long, weary years of coldness, indifference, and estrangement, and the sad imprints with which they have dimmed your features, and to see you stand before me, ardent and beautiful as when I dreamed that Heaven had no brighter reflection than the fondness of your eyes. You will pardon this,” said she, on perceiving that such sympathies moved him not; “I have no wish to recall you to the past, nor too late to revive an extinguished affection, which can so seldom be brought into review without pain—far less with a thought of reproach for any, except for myself. It is but to testify to you in parting, that with the life I have led, happy as it was before I knew you—spent amid dreams of beauty, and the caresses of a family that sympathized with the delights of my calling, and were proud of my fame, honored as it afterward became when my achievements as an artist, extolled in every country in Europe, drew me forth from my retreat to receive that brief and brilliant homage, less intoxicating to me on the score of my individual self, than as a tribute to the success of that art to which I had consecrated the energies of my existence—yet there is no part of it I would willingly live over again but the early, too brief moments spent near you—no part of it than this I more fervently hold to my heart, as the true gold hoarded from what else appears, in this hour whose solemnity dispels all illusions, the dross and scum of existence. Does not this prove that love is immortal? And now a thought has struck me, that that sweet, bright blossoming which, alas! for us yielded so little fruit, may yet offer a harvest to be reaped in some other world. Will you think of this, Alexander?—let us part forgiving each other—our next meeting will be happier—and brighter!”
She turned her eyes toward the window, which had been thrown open to admit the cool air of the evening, for the wind had died away, and the heavens were clear—and there, conspicuous amongst its fiery brethren, shone that bright, still, solitary star—still fair and tranquil, when life with all its excitements and hopes was passing away, as when shining above the passion of her young life. It spoke to her of the glory of other worlds contrasted with the vapidity of this, which she had weighed in the balance and found wanting—a high and unchangeable emblem of that which is above us amid all the storms, treacherous calms, and exulting yet bewildering spring-tides of life—the star of her destiny, indeed, if it pointed to Heaven as the haven where her hopes should at last find rest! Her soul passed away in that gaze; they could not tell the exact moment when, but by the dull fixture of the eye, and the dead weight of the hand which lay in his, Alexander knew that he gazed upon the dead.
That oracle spoke truth, which told there is nothing stable in the universe but Heaven and Love!
In her strange, shadowy coronet she weareth
The faded jewels of an earlier time;
An ancient sceptre in her hand she beareth?—
The purple of her robe is past its prime.
Through her thin silvery locks still dimly shineth
The flower-wreath woven by pale mem’ry’s fingers.
Her heart is withered—yet it strangely shineth
In its lone urn, a light that fitful lingers.
With her low, muffled voice of mystery,
She reads old legends from Time’s mouldering pages;
She telleth the present the recorded hist’ry,
And change perpetual of by-gone ages.
Her pilgrim feet still seek the haunted sod
Once ours, but now by naught but memory’s footsteps trod.
E. J. E.
