of those narrow and vulgar minds that finds a pleasure in inflicting pain on higher natures; and still, by some strange infatuation, the passion she has kindled burns on in spite of me.”
“Promise me that you will forget her, George.”
“No, she has been too wise an enchantress for that—I may despise, but cannot forget her. She has changed the whole current of my life—my path shall be a track of bitter desolation, coruscating and destroying.”
“You are but a boy, George; and you speak and feel like a man!”
“That is, perhaps, because I am fated to die young—if I can be said to have ever been young: for I have long since sounded the pain-strung cord that vibrates in the human heart, and listened to its tones of sorrow. I have said farewell to hope and happiness!”
“What would you have, then?”
“Forgetfulness—the draught of Lethe.”
“At your age, George! when there is so much yet to learn and enjoy! You should have been born a Sultan or a Kalif, George. You would make woman the slave of the Zenana. Your idea is that we are born to obey?”
“I believe so. To our sex belong the stormy emotions of existence—the struggle and the triumph—the ambition that spans the world—the doubts that poison every joy—the hyena thirst of knowledge that soars above the actual and the visible. To you belong silence and repose.”
Years rolled away; and the name of that proud untameable boy was loud on every tongue. The dim and restless presentiments that haunted him while pacing those tomb-like halls, and watching with creeping nerves the spectre of the grey friar, had worked themselves out into realities.
CHAPTER II.
"What is this gloom that lies so heavily upon me? It is not the melancholy of the scholar, which is morbid emulation; nor that of the artist, which is the home-sickness of the soul; nor that of the courtier, which is ostentation; nor yet that of the lover, which is all those together: it is a void in my heart; the emptiness of a fountain whose spring is dried up for ever! Why do you return, after long years of forgetfulness, ye thoughts that the world should have crushed from memory? Thus it is that the spirit of poetry can never die. I have spread my sail to every breeze. Fame has cost me happiness and peace; and now, even still, it is the clash of arms, or some wild and thrilling tempest of emotion that can alone silence this ever sighing whisper of discontent.”
Some such was the half-spoken reflection of a man still young in years, but scathed and faded by storms of passion and suffering, who stood on a low balcony outside an open casement, looking down through the clear night air upon the slumbering town, and drinking in the mingled perfumes of the cool sea-breeze and the rich flowering plants that lay drooping at his feet; while here and there in the distance watch-fires with their lurid blaze marked the line of the coast, and, at intervals, the cry of a sentinel or the neigh of a charger rose on the air.
As he gazed upon the moonbeams breaking themselves into mimic lightning on the basin of a fountain in the public square—the agora of other days—some softer and more pleasing sentiment seemed to reflect itself upon his features: some far-off remembrance of times past or places distant, or it may be some dream of his youth taking him back to the old Abbey from which he had spread his wings like a young eagle; or the memory of some loved name: perhaps too, while retracing his former visit to the same scene, he asked himself what mysterious hand had guided him back, and if he were come there to return no more.
From this reverie he was awakened by the music of a feminine voice: it was that of a young Moreote girl, who sang a stanza of a love song as she glided like a shadow under the balcony.
“Poor innocent!” said he. “No sorrow like mine darkens your spirit. Love, of which perhaps you know but the name—the vague instinct that turns the opening flower to the sun—is the theme of your careless song. May your heart never be heavier than now!”
The next morning, after daybreak and before the stranger had retired to rest—for he was one of those who double existence by abstinence from sleep—she was passing again under the balcony on her way to the fountain. Again, too, she was singing the same ritornella; but paused suddenly as if she had lost the words. While she questioned her memory apparently, he improvised for her some lines in Romaic; and as he repeated them she looked up and smiled.
“Thank you,” said she, “I always forget those lines; they are so sad: but you are a foreigner; how have you learned our language so well?”
“I have learned so many languages,” said he, “that I almost forget my own; but I am not a stranger in Hellas. I have traversed your plains and scaled your mountains in years past. Then your people were asleep in their chains. I am come now to help to break them.”
“Oh!” said she, “I know now who you are—a hero to the world, a demi-god to our brave Palikars, who worship you.”
“Hush!” said he, “tell nobody that you have spoken to me.”
“Why?” said she. “Are you not the poet chieftain?”
“Because you are young and beautiful; and yet it would be a pleasure to meet you again.”
“There is no hindrance,” said the young Greek, artlessly. “I am Katinka, the daughter of Dimitri Soutsos: we live in the next street. My brother Theodoro is a Palikar.”
“Well, then, to-morrow.”
“To-day, if it please you,” replied Katinka;” and then took her way to the fountain, without looking back to see if the stranger’s eyes were following her.
Wayward and inexplicable are the emotions of the heart. It is a book of deep and wondrous knowledge, and who can read it? Every man has in his youth some dream of love and innocence; and there is a later hour, fixed long in advance, when he returns to those deep and long-forgotten impressions—an hour when he looks back through the dim perspective of years, and sighs in vain for