Vendetta! | Page 5

we are self-deceiving hypocrites--few of us are really sorry for the dead--few of us remember them with any real tenderness or affection. And yet God knows! they may need more pity than we dream of!
But let me to my task. I, Fabio Romani, lately deceased, am about to chronicle the events of one short year--a year in which was compressed the agony of a long and tortured life-time! One little year!--one sharp thrust from the dagger of Time! It pierced my heart--the wound still gapes and bleeds, and every drop of blood is tainted as it falls!
One suffering, common to many, I have never known--that is--poverty. I was born rich. When my father, Count Filippo Romani, died, leaving me, then a lad of seventeen, sole heir to his enormous possessions-- sole head of his powerful house--there were many candid friends who, with their usual kindness, prophesied the worst things of my future. Nay, there were even some who looked forward to my physical and mental destruction with a certain degree of malignant expectation-- and they were estimable persons too. They were respectably connected--their words carried weight--and for a time I was an object of their maliciously pious fears. I was destined, according to their calculations, to be a gambler, a spendthrift, a drunkard, an incurable roue of the most abandoned character. Yet, strange to say, I became none of these things. Though a Neapolitan, with all the fiery passions and hot blood of my race, I had an innate scorn for the contemptible vices and low desires of the unthinking vulgar. Gambling seemed to me a delirious folly--drink, a destroyer of health and reason--and licentious extravagance an outrage on the poor. I chose my own way of life--a middle course between simplicity and luxury--a judicious mingling of home-like peace with the gayety of sympathetic social intercourse--an even tenor of intelligent existence which neither exhausted the mind nor injured the body.
I dwelt in my father's villa--a miniature palace of white marble, situated on a wooded height overlooking the Bay of Naples. My pleasure-grounds were fringed with fragrant groves of orange and myrtle, where hundreds of full-voiced nightingales warbled their love-melodies to the golden moon. Sparkling fountains rose and fell in huge stone basins carved with many a quaint design, and their cool murmurous splash refreshed the burning silence of the hottest summer air. In this retreat I lived at peace for some happy years, surrounded by books and pictures, and visited frequently by friends- -young men whose tastes were more or less like my own, and who were capable of equally appreciating the merits of an antique volume, or the flavor of a rare vintage.
Of women I saw little or nothing. Truth to tell, I instinctively avoided them. Parents with marriageable daughters invited me frequently to their houses, but these invitations I generally refused. My best books warned me against feminine society--and I believed and accepted the warning. This tendency of mine exposed me to the ridicule of those among my companions who were amorously inclined, but their gay jests at what they termed my "weakness" never affected me. I trusted in friendship rather than love, and I had a friend--one for whom at that time I would gladly have laid down my life--one who inspired me with the most profound attachment. He, Guido Ferrari, also joined occasionally with others in the good- natured mockery I brought down upon myself by my shrinking dislike of women.
"Fie on thee, Fabio!" he would cry. "Thou wilt not taste life till thou hast sipped the nectar from a pair of rose-red lips--thou shalt not guess the riddle of the stars till thou hast gazed deep down into the fathomless glory of a maiden's eyes--thou canst not know delight till thou hast clasped eager arms round a coy waist and heard the beating of a passionate heart against thine own! A truce to thy musty volumes! Believe it, those ancient and sorrowful philosophers had no manhood in them--their blood was water--and their slanders against women were but the pettish utterances of their own deserved disappointments. Those who miss the chief prize of life would fain persuade others that it is not worth having. What, man! Thou, with a ready wit, a glancing eye, a gay smile, a supple form, thou wilt not enter the lists of love? What says Voltaire of the blind god?
"'Qui que tu sois voila ton maitre, Il fut--il est--ou il doit etre !'"
When my friend spoke thus I smiled, but answered nothing. His arguments failed to convince me. Yet I loved to hear him talk--his voice was mellow as the note of a thrush, and his eyes had an eloquence greater than all speech. I loved him--God knows! unselfishly, sincerely--with that rare tenderness sometimes felt by schoolboys for one another, but