Chapter XV

It will now be necessary to go back a few steps of this history, and return to Oriana, whose vengeful rage, and unabated malice has been in a former period alluded to, and stated to have remained long abortive. But though such was in reality the case, and although upwards of two years had elapsed in fruitless machinations and vain attempts, Oriana was not to be thus baffled; obstacles which long since must have discouraged a less vindictive mind, seemed but to add fuel to the hate which burned in her; she still continued to watch every movement of the objects of her long-desired vengeance; the desire of vengeance was the predominent sensation of her soul, and for that she seemed to abandon every other consideration.

Not even her regard for the opposite sex had now a power of detaching her mind, for any length of time, from the contemplation of her highest aim. In every blooming youth she beheld a second Eugene; the remembrance of the shame and disgrace she had suffered was excited afresh; and she trembled lest deception might lurk, and she again commit herself. Against Gabrielle were her long-continued turbulent emotions chiefly indulged. Angelo, whom she had never loved, she did not now hate sufficiently to desire above every thing his destruction. She considered him merely as a means to work the misery and destruction of Gabrielle. She knew him well, for artless and undisguised was the character of Angelo. She knew him to be fickle, variable, ardent, and susceptible; and it was upon this knowledge that she chiefly grounded her hopes of compassing the mischief she meditated.

Wearied by a recourse to arts and stratagems hitherto unavailing, she determined upon organising a system which should be so perfectly regulated in all its parts, and so indefatigably persevered in, that no human foresight or skill should be capable of circumventing it. Oriana was truly a Genoese, cunning as they all are, inured to hardships, patient, and persevering, above the rest of the Italians; and, naturally poor, they make up, by an indefatigable industry, for the niggardliness of fortune towards them. There is a celebrated proverb respecting them, that they have a sea without fish, a land without trees, and men without faith: perhaps women may be included in the latter stricture, which could not be better applied than to Oriana.

When a child, she had been placed by her parents with the wife of a poor fisherman, living in a hut by the side of the Bonzevera, to be nursed; but subsequently these parents, whose infamy and want of principle appeared to have been transmitted to their offspring, abandoned her to the mercy of poverty-struck wretches, who had grounded their chief hopes of decent support upon the pay they expected to have received for the care and nouriture of their charge. When however, after a short time, they discovered that so far from being amended in their situation, her parents had absconded, and left their forlorn infant upon their hands, they determined, though sorely smarting under the lash of poverty, and bitterly disappointed, to endeavor to do the best they could, rather than abandon to destruction an unoffending child.

Oriana accordingly remained with the fisherman and his wife, who did not find that the addition of her slender support rendered them poorer than they were before. Nor when the wife of the fisherman, a few years after this event, presented him with a daughter, did they look with altered eye upon the little Oriana, or turn her adrift; they brought her up with their own daughter, and still contrived to live. When Oriana arrived at an age to comprehend, she was made fully sensible, but without reproach, of the obligations under which she existed to her benefactors, and she promised, that if she lived she would endeavour to repay to the utmost the kindness she had received. This promise, without entering more minutely than is necessary into her history, the unhappy girl faithfully kept. In process of time, when requiring no longer their protection or care, but towering above them in meretricious splendor, she did not add ingratitude to them, in the catalogue of her vices; she did not forget, or consider inferior to her, the obscure guardians of her early youth, but transferred them from the wretched hovel where long she had existed with them, to a commodious and comparitively sumptuous residence; bestowed on them a share of her comforts and advantages, and suffered the tide of her fortune to flow in a degree towards them.

In consequence of this, the fisherman Mezzotetto, and his family, were devoted both from gratitude and early habit to her, who, from a deserted and dependant orphan upon them, had become their benefactress; and it would have been a task of difficulty for Oriana to have proposed to them that which they would have hesitated to comply with. These were the persons then, who in the organisation of her proposed plan presented themselves to her mind, as ready and willing assistants, and fit and perfect instruments for carrying into execution her cherished vengeance, too long delayed. Hastening to them, therefore, soon as her ideas were sufficiently arranged, she first exacted from each an oath of secrecy, and then imparting to them as much of her views as she considered necessary, she explained to Mezzotetto the part she desired him to act, and in what way he could best forward the hope of vengeance, burning at her heart, which long she confessed had destroyed (from being unaccomplished) her every pleasure, and which, if remaining much longer thus, must hasten her, in despair, to an untimely grave.

Mezzotetto, his wife, and daughter, the latter of whom was intended to act a most conspicuous part in this infamous drama, at hearing this last declaration of Oriana, prayed her to dismiss such gloomy thoughts, and to rely upon them wholly, entering with the deepest interest into the sentiments of their adopted child, sympathising in the bitterness of her insulted feelings, approving of her determination to revenge the outrages she had sustained, and promising to go hand in hand with her, in whatever she should decree; and unhesitatingly exert their best efforts to meet her views.

This was no more than Oriana expected; she thanked her father and mother, however, for such she would still continue, to their great satisfaction, to call them, for the aid they so readily offered, and bidding them farewell, departed with the utmost exultation, accompanied by Paulina Mezzotetto, their daughter, whom they cheerfully resigned to be governed by her will and pleasure.

Paulina was some years younger than Oriana, and bore the appearance of being still younger than she was. Her beauty was of that peculiar cast which may be termed heavenly, for her face accurately resembled all that the finest painting has suggested, or the imagination conceives, of the Angel; her form possessed a sylphic delicacy, and that want of careless ease which in another might have been the result of ignorance, or vulgarism, but seemed in her the graceful timidity of innocent beauty. It appeared as though nature, in a freak, had determined to combine all that was beautiful and perfect in an obscure individual, but to give her neither mind, heart, nor soul, that she might show how gloriously she could embellish a casket, which yet should contain nothing. The loveliness of Paulina’s person was, indeed, the only quality of beauty she possessed.

Frequent communication with Oriana had early corrupted her principles. She had praised her exquisite beauty, and this had excited a confusion of ideas in her mind, which inevitably laid the foundation of her future depravity, from having taught her to value this cherished beauty, as her highest merit, and most valuable possession. She had entered eagerly into the designs of Oriana, yielded implicitly to all she had proposed, and in the prospect so pleasing to her ignorant and contaminated mind, of being called into action, though only as the tool of another, she hoped that a field might be opened for herself, wherein her beauty might procure her similar advantages with those appearing to be enjoyed by the vile and miserable Oriana.

Accordingly the Genoese had found it no difficult task to instruct so willing a pupil in the part she was to act. Paulina, whose natural cunning was on a par with the depravity of Oriana, readily comprehended, and as readily acquiesced in all that was required of her. Every arrangement then being accurately made, and their plan of action put in train, the Genoese experienced a sensation of joy in the prospect of at length scattering and destroying those she hated, such as long had been unknown to her breast; for the continued contemplation of her desired and insatiate revenge had literally deprived her of peace and rest; already she led the life of the tortured upon earth, racked with never-ceasing pain.

How her dire hopes became realized, how her arts succeeded, and how justly she had estimated the weakness of Angelo, has been seen; assisted in her efforts, and powerfully seconded by the seducing auxiliary of matchless beauty in the person of Paulina, her triumph was complete, and the full measure of destruction, full even as the craving vengeance of _her_ soul could desire, heaped upon the head of the miserable Gabrielle.

To her, unconscious as yet of the horrors bursting over her, we now return. It was long ere this unhappy victim of early error and misfortune suspected the full extent of her misery; true, she had long seen, and seen with pain, that Angelo had differed strangely during the last few months from the excellent and tender Angelo that for two years preceding he had uniformily been; but this change of demeanor she attributed to almost any thing but the true cause. She knew that Angelo had a propensity to deep play, that he loved wine, and that when he had indulged in the latter, he was but too apt to fall into the error of the former. She conceived it probable that he might have lost considerably, and she was in this case too delicate and too high minded to remark his varying deportment,--now restless, now abstracted, now fretful, or reserved. She fondly flattered herself, that kindness and attention would recal him to himself, and that, if circumstances were as she suspected, they might ultimately even prove beneficial, by operating as a severe though radical cure against all future similar excesses.

What still more tended to exclude every idea of a different nature, was the doting fondness with which he still continued to regard his child, and sometimes with an enthusiasm of tenderness, even till the tears started to his eyes. Little did she surmise the real source of those tears, which were excited at the thought of soon ceasing to behold him, or of becoming a wretch still viler, by snatching him from the bosom of a mother. Even in his moodiest moments he would play with him, and fondle him with a mixture of pain, and eager delight, such as to dispel for a time his guiltier thoughts.

Never could Gabrielle suspect so far the honor and faith of Angelo, as, situated as he was, to suppose for an instant, that any other female could attract, much less employ his attention,--for the insinuation of the base Paulina to Angelo was wholly unfounded:--Gabrielle had neither suspected, nor had ever watched his movements; the fabrication was at the instigation of the fiend Oriana, for the purpose of inducing the deluded Angelo to hasten every measure, and to commit himself beyond the power of redemption. Gabrielle was besides so rational, so liberally just in her conceptions, although so enthusiastic in her feelings, that she could make infinite allowances for the variations of manner, conduct, or disposition. She considered Angelo as a firm and faithful _husband_, who was fond in spirit, rather than in profession; not as a lover who, with a new object, is all rapture and tender endearment. Superior sense, and fine discrimination, taught her, that the female who desires to be happy, must forego all the idle gratifications of vanity, or foolish egotism; and that the female who loves, and is beloved, may readily sacrifice these nothings at the shrine of reason.

Thus, then, when at last the fatal truth burst upon her, it came like the lightning’s flash, which for a time dries up and palsies every faculty. Angelo had been for some time past in the habit of returning home at an extreme late hour of the night, but had never yet remained absent for the whole of it. Still, when the first night elapsed and he did not return, Gabrielle in her mind palliated it, for she considered that he might have been by some friends prevailed on to dine at a distance from town, and afterwards not to venture back over some unfrequented road, at an unseasonable hour. Thus, though she experienced a slight pang at the inattention of Angelo, once so unusual with him, but now, alas! too frequent, she did not suffer much uneasiness or alarm. When the following morning arrived however, noon, evening, and night came on, and still no appearance of Angelo, the thoughts of Gabrielle were of some terrible cause for delay, some unforeseen accident or disaster. How could a mind so generous, so noble, and so conscious in itself of not meriting the cruelest injury that could be offered woman, suspect for an instant the real cause of Angelo’s absence?

At length the second night passed away, and Gabrielle, now alarmed and agitated beyond endurance, imagined nothing less than midnight assassination.

Her thoughts wandered to Oriana; she dismissed in horror the idea; again and again they reverted to her, fixed on her, and could not be withdrawn. Angelo did not return; who but _her_ could desire or plan his death? Yielding to a sudden impulse of despair, scarce knowing what she intended, and incapable of consideration, she determined to see her. The thought and the execution were almost one, she flew to her house with a wild rapidity, and on gaining admittance, burst immediately into the well-known apartment, where usually Oriana sat: there she beheld the fierce machinating fiend, who, calm and triumphant, was exulting in idea over the havoc she had caused. Gabrielle stood before her--gazed upon her for a moment; she read her fate in her eyes, and clasping her hands together, with pale and frenzied countenance, she exclaimed, “Tell me--tell me, I conjure you, where is Angelo! Where is my husband!”

Oriana cast on her a glance, in which all the dreadful passions of her mind were depicted--hate, malice, ruthless revenge, and barbarous triumph; then, with a smile which language cannot describe, she said, “Angelo D’Albini is not with me you perceive, Signora; where else he is, no doubt himself will soon inform you.”

“Oh, lives he, lives he to inform me?” wildly exclaimed Gabrielle; “sure, if he did, long since I should have known.”

“It is quite impossible, you know, Signora,” observed Oriana, with a cutting coolness, “to account for the caprices of men; in all probability the Conte is still living; but as he once preferred you, and then me, and then you again, you being condescending enough to receive him, it is not impossible but he may now prefer another to you. However, fear not, perhaps he may return to you again still.”

At this horrible insinuation, and the air with which it was delivered, the most distracting ideas presented themselves to Gabrielle, who knew not on what to fix. That Oriana was informed respecting Angelo, she could not avoid believing; but to the hint of his infidelity she attached not the smallest credit, conceiving that Oriana merely intimated this to delude and give her pain. From her obdurate and malicious countenance, however, she clearly beheld she had nothing to expect; to interrogate her would be vain and she therefore merely said, while her towering spirit gained for a moment some ascendancy over the anguish of her heart, “Wretched woman! though I shudder at your depravity, I disdain your insinuations, and despise your malice; Angelo has so long escaped your abominable machinations, I trust in heaven he may escape them still, and, to the confusion of your hopes, unchanged and uninjured soon return.”

“But not to you;” exclaimed Oriana, bursting into a loud laugh, as Gabrielle, struck with horror, hastened from her presence; “not to you, not to you,” she repeated, and her demoniac peals of laughter continued to echo in her ears till she had escaped beyond the verge of its sound.

The next step of the distracted Gabrielle was to make application to all those friends of Angelo with whom she was acquainted, for some intelligence respecting him, but in vain; not any of his friends had been lately in the habit of seeing him; and now for the first time it was, when Gabrielle called to mind his perpetual absence from home, that something like suspicion glanced for a moment across her mind. Where, then, could he have been, if, as it appeared, not among his friends? Wonder, alarm, and uncertainty possessed her wholly, and, in undescribable suspense and anguish, she found she had no alternative but to await the moment that should explain to her his mysterious disappearance, his present fate, or future intention.

At length this anxiously desired, yet terrible moment arrived,--the moment which was to give her information of the man, who having first involved her in the most dreadful misfortunes, prepared now to give them a climax; to let her behold, traced by _his_ hand, those horrible characters, which were to reveal to her his perfidy and ingratitude! A letter, post-mark of Calais, was the form, in which this cruel communication met the astonished and almost incredulous eyes of the bewildered Gabrielle. At each line she read, her heart beat with increased violence--dreadful ideas of her own situation, and the future fate of her child, like horrible phantoms gleamed before her;--the power of thought gradually forsook her;--her eyes glared on the paper, without power to decypher it to an end;--in vain she struggled to collect herself, to retain her fleeting senses; violent convulsions seized her--she staggered--and fell prostrate to the floor! The contents of the letter were these:--

“_Calais._

“Conscious that I owe to you an explanation for my conduct, I have
not till this moment found courage to address you; and even now,
oh, Gabrielle! I can explain to you nothing. I am attracted, and
borne away from you by a dazzling constellation which ravishes my
eyes, which maddens my senses, and which fills up my heart. Oh,
Gabrielle! Oh, unfortunate daughter of Montmorency, pity my
baseness--pity my ingratitude!

“What shall I say more?--Return to you I cannot;--for, to return to
you with affections changed would be an insult to that celestial
goodness and virtue of your’s which my soul reverences and adores.
But though my soul reverences and adores your virtues, my heart, my
weak erring heart, doats upon the beauty of another. Oh, wretch
that I am! God! why do I live to write thus to her I once so fondly
loved, whom reproachful conscience sternly tells me I ought still
to love!--to the mother of my child? To---- oh, Gabrielle, these
falling tears bear witness of my anguish and remorse; and shew you
that your wrongs are revenged, even in the very centre of my guilty
heart, torn as it is by the most impetuous passion. Our child---- I
have left him with you, beloved Gabrielle; _beloved_, did I say?
Oh, heaven have mercy! where will this confusion of feeling, this
distraction of idea end?

“My destination is to England--to London, where I shall fix; my
reasons for not remaining at Naples, after the guilt I have avowed
to you, must be obvious; perhaps other considerations swayed me
too: at all events, respect for your feelings had its share in
determining me. I could not, Gabrielle, I could not openly dare
outrage that delicate tenderness that you bore me;--ah, its
remembrance throbs at my heart in bitterest reproach, and the
conviction of it increases my crime. But attempt not to recal me,
Gabrielle; ah, no, I know you too well; nor reproach me, I implore
you; it will be unnecessary; I could almost say, confound me
not--sink me not to the earth--even by beholding your hand
writing!--Cherish our boy;--believe me, he is dear to me as to
you; but in leaving him with you, I have preferred you to myself;
cherish him for the sake of his father--for the sake of his father,
did I say? No, no, no--for his _own_ sake, sweet innocent! be
happy, too, if you can, and endeavour to forget that such a wretch
exists as

“ANGELO D’ALBINI.”

“My banker’s agent, at Naples, has orders to answer your drafts to
any amount.”

Thus wrote the weak, the erring Angelo, whose pleasure in the gratification of his passion was more than counterbalanced by the pangs of his remorse; whose heart, when the vain hours of dalliance had palled, missing the refined delight of intellectual intercourse, was continually reproached by his reason for abandoning a being like Gabrielle, and who, while he shuddered at, and lamented his vices, had not the fortitude to oppose them.

The unhappy Gabrielle, whose fall had been heard by a domestic in the next room, was conveyed immediately to bed, and every means administered to restore her senses; but her mind had received a blow which reason could not overcome; violent fever and delirium seized her, and she was speedily reduced to a state such as made it improbable she would long live to deplore, or smart under her manifold injuries.

Angelo in the mean time proceeded to England, reached London, and there establishing himself for a time, the stings of remorse and uneasy reflection were blunted by the frivolous gaieties in which he indulged, by exhibiting the beautiful Paulina to the ephemeral flutterers of the day, by hearing the praises bestowed on her person, and by exciting her idle wonder, and shallow observations, at the scenes so new to her.

But it is impossible to be always immersed in amusement, which soon ceases to be esteemed so, when the spirits become exhausted; it is impossible to gaze always upon a lovely countenance with equal admiration, for the senses becoming satiated, the _heart_ requires something more--something to interest, to delight, to fix beyond the moment. In a union like that of Angelo with Paulina, where passion and the wandering senses were alone the basis, the rapture of enthusiasm soon cools, the effervescence of the senses subsides, indifference succeeds to ardour, and to indifference disgust. In such an union, too, where there is no solid foundation for the mind on which to rest, there are inevitably many moments and many hours, which, if not dedicated to passion, for love in this instance we may not call it, must be vacant, oppressive and inane. The mind cannot be for ever on the stretch, the calm and social pleasures of intellectual intercourse are necessary to refresh, and to invigorate it, and then alone can it be truly said that love becomes a rational, blissful, and refined enjoyment.

Though still intoxicated by her matchless beauty, the eyes of the misguided Angelo opened by degrees. He still beheld before him those enchanting features, and that blooming form, but he saw nothing beyond them, and even those he saw daily with decreased admiration, because daily they became more familiar in his sight. He could now discern, e’en through the delusive charms of that beauteous countenance, a dearth of every finer quality of the mind; but time convinced him soon it wanted not the more ignoble characteristics of cunning, and mercenary selfishness; for Paulina, having now gained her aim, and satisfied Oriana, was no longer anxious to appear to Angelo the thing she was not. Her modest deportment, bashful innocence, and timidity, gradually, nay quickly, vanished. She became bold, tyrannical, capricious, and, presuming on the misplaced fondness of Angelo, extravagant and ridiculous in her requests. Thus, while she disgusted him by her extreme folly, she made him wretched by the conduct she pursued, and painfully awakened him from the dream of enchantment by which he had been misled.

Now then it was, that the ill-fated Gabrielle appeared before him in the full perfection of _her real beauty_; never, till this time, had he so fully appreciated her; she stood before him, decked in the bright glory of her various virtues; she held his forsaken child in her arms, and regarded him in mournful accusation. From this vision of pain, because of happiness scorned and cast away, he hurried in anguish to Paulina for consolation; he saw still that fair face, but he saw in it those traces of a grovelling and worthless mind, which experience had revealed to him existed, disguised no longer by the transitory smiles of artless innocence.

“Oh, is it possible!” would he mentally exclaim, in regarding the altered object before him, “is it possible, that I could ever have been so deceived? Can this be the soft creature, whose trembling innocence, whose blushing simplicity, excited first my love? No, no, it cannot be her, but some fiend rather, who, to punish me, has assumed her form.”

Mean time Paulina, who, like her mistress Oriana, was utterly incapable of such a sentiment as love, and who felt towards Angelo a perfect indifference; respecting his pride and his feelings as little as she did his happiness, took every opportunity of mortifying the one, and of insulting the other, by the most flagrant levity of deportment towards such of his friends, as, to divert the vacuum of those hours he must have passed in her society only, he thought it expedient to invite. Indeed she did not disguise from Angelo that she preferred the conversation of other men to his, and gave as her reason, with an appearance of archness, but real sincerity, that she was weary of continually regarding the same object. Thus had he the mortification of seeing himself foiled at his own weapons,--fickleness and love of novelty.

A few months elapsed, and a perfect revolution having taken place in the mind of Angelo, he decided, in the bitterness of his mournful retrospection, to lay open his guilty heart to the deeply injured Gabrielle, to acknowledge his present conviction of his folly and baseness, to cast himself repentant at her feet, implore the tender charities of her nature for forgiveness, and supplicate her to receive him once more to her bosom.

According as his letter should be answered, he determined to act; and having written and dispatched it, he awaited in trembling anxiety for some reply.

But day after day elapsed, and he did not receive any; a line at least he had expected from the well-known goodness of Gabrielle--a line, however cold, however severe: in vain his hopes, not a word arrived to cheer him, and, overwhelmed by sorrow and regret, he said to himself, “Alas! even the supreme excellence of Gabrielle has undergone a change; but it is my baseness which has contaminated it, and taught her noble nature to desire revenge. Ah! Gabrielle, Gabrielle, thou hast it fully!--fully are thy wrongs revenged!”