Miriam Monfort

Mrs. Catherine A. Warfield
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Miriam Monfort

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Title: Miriam Monfort A Novel
Author: Catherine A. Warfield
Release Date: May 27, 2004 [EBook #12453]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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MONFORT ***

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[Transcriber's note:

Part III contains two chapters labeled
Chapter VI.]
MIRIAM MONFORT:
A NOVEL.
BY THE AUTHOR OF
"THE HOUSEHOLD OF BOUVERIE."
"Fancy, with fact, is just one fact the more."
"Let this old woe step on the stage again, Act itself o'er anew for men
to judge; Not by the very sense and sight indeed, Which take at best
imperfect cognizance. Since, how heart moves brain, and how both
move hand, What mortal ever in entirety saw? Yet helping us to all we
seem to hear, For, how else know we save by worth of word?"
BROWNING, "_The Ring and the Book_"
NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 549 & 551
BROADWAY. 1873.
DEDICATION
_This book is dedicated to the memory of one most dear, who saw it
grow to completion with pleasure and approbation, during the last
happy summer of a life since darkened by misfortune. Peace be his!_
_MONFORT HALL._
"Not one friend have we here, not one true heart; We've nothing but
ourselves."
"There's a dark spirit walking in our house, And swiftly will the destiny
close on us. It drove me hither from my calm asylum; It lures me
forward--in a seraph's shape I see it near, I see it nearer floating-- It

draws, it pulls me with a godlike power, And, lo, the abyss! and thither
am I moving; I have no power within me--but to move."
"He is the only one we have to fear, he and his father."
COLERIDGE'S _Translation of Schiller's "Wallenstein"_
MIRIAM MONFORT
* * * * *


PART I.
MONFORT HALL.
CHAPTER I.
My father, Reginald Monfort, was an English gentleman of good
family, who, on his marriage with a Jewish lady of wealth and
refinement, emigrated to America, rather than subject her and himself
to the commentaries of his own fastidious relatives, and the incivilities
of a clique to which by allegiance of birth and breeding he
unfortunately belonged.
Her own family had not been less averse to this union than the
aristocratic house of Monfort, and, had she not been the mistress of her
own acts and fortune, would, no doubt, have absolutely prevented it. As
it was, a wild wail went up from the synagogue at the loss of one of its
brightest ornaments, and the name of "Miriam Harz" was consigned to
silence forever.
Orphaned and independent, this obloquy and oblivion made little
difference to its object, especially when the broad Atlantic was placed,
as it soon was, between her and her people, and new ties and duties

arose in a strange land to bind and interest her feelings.
During her six years of married life, I have every reason to believe that
she was, as it is termed, "perfectly happy," although a mysterious
disease of the nervous centres, that baffled medical skill either to cure
or to name, early laid its grasp upon her, and brought her by slow
degrees to the grave, when her only child had just completed her fifth
year.
My father, the younger son of a nobleman who traced his lineage from
Simon de Montfort, had been married in his own estate and among his
peers before he met my mother. Poor himself (his commission in the
army constituting his sole livelihood), he had espoused the young and
beautiful widow of a brother officer, who, in dying, had committed his
wife and her orphan child to his care and good offices, on a battle-field
in Spain, and with her hand he had received but little of this world's
lucre. The very pension, to which she would have been entitled living
singly, was cut off by her second marriage, and with habits of luxury
and indolence, such as too often appertain to the high-born, and cling
fatally to the physically delicate, the burden of her expenses was more
than her husband could well sustain.
Her parents and his own were dead, and there were no relatives on
either side who could be called upon for aid, without a sacrifice of
pride, which my father would have died rather than have made. He was
nearly reduced to desperation
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