University of Virginia Library

28. CHAPTER XXVIII.

It was night, and moonlight. Moonlight in
Rome! The Temples had retired early from the
Corso, and, after a few hours' repose and refreshment,
had formed a party, to visit, for the first time,
the Forum and Coliseum. Clairmont would have

been a useful guide; but he had been seized on
the Corso with a sudden indisposition, which caused,
indeed, their retiring from the ground very early
in the afternoon. He now wrote that his illness,
though but transitory, was sufficient to confine him
to his room. They started for the ruins.

Something there was of unusual romance in the
present aspect of the city. The sunlight had faded
from the heavens, and left the blue void hung with
trembling stars, and lighted by the radiance of a
round and spotted moon, that never lent its edges
of silver to objects of such deep and profound interest.
The streets were hushed, still, and lonely.
The maskers had vanished. The revelry had died
away. The night was warm and exquisitely clear;
and the light, as it fell across the Roman streets,
as it slanted down upon the sculptured fronts of
the many renowned churches, and touched the
immense and lofty piles, the palaces of the great
and the gay, now gone—there was something,
while it delighted, that saddened and awed the
mind.

Mrs. Temple proposed, that before they visited
the ruins they should drive to the most remarkable
part of the modern city, and receive their first impression
of its wonders from this heavenly night.
It is the true method to look on an ancient town.
It sends you back a thousand centuries—the soft
and shadowy reality so indulges and assists the
flowing imagination. Flora, during the latter years
of her life, had applied much to reading. History
had been with her ever a favourite study. Now,
in truth, she would have had her reward. One
richer, more stirring, more pregnant with the spirit
of enchantment, could scarcely be allotted to a
human breast. Ah! a very different thought occupied
her mind.

They drove to San Pietro and the Vatican.
They paused by the portico of the Pantheon, and
the stern and mighty palaces. They gazed at the
slender obelisks and the numberless fountains—
the tomb of Adrian—the Tiber, winding its way
silently beneath the arches of the bridge—the columns
of Antoninus and Trajan against the sky; and
statues and pillars ever and anon struck their gaze.
They stood on the Capitoline Hill, beneath the
equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius; they descended
to their carriage, and ordered it to the
Forum and Coliseum. The vast plain was at
length reached. Oh, what a dream of Flora's
young years was here at length imbodied before
her! and yet, as the shadowy and most consecrated
objects fleeted by, she could give to them no thrill,
no attention; but her abstractedness at such a
time seemed no more than natural. The voice of
the cicerone sounded like that of a necromancer, as
he pointed out the Tarpeian Rock—the Capitoline
—the Palatine—columns and temples—the enormous
fragments scattered about—arches, walls,
baths, aqueducts, lifted broken in the air, or strewn
in pieces on the ground.

At length, huge and vast, tier above tier—blasted,
ghastly, incredible, sublime—the Coliseum rose,
a startling, stupendous vision. Even Flora, for an
instant, forgot the knight of the red plume. Mute,
chilled, awe-struck, they gazed at its colossal proportions—its
stupendous walls lifted to the sky, its
broken fragments, the blackness of its shadows
upon the turf, and the bright moonlight streaming
down through its dilapidated apertures and into its
blood-stained arena. Long they gazed. They
walked round it. They raised their eyes to its vast
and rent summit. They entered its crumbling passages.
They trod across its earthy floor. They

penetrated its dens, its vomitories, its winding labyrinths.
What a world of associations rushed
across their minds. In the absorbed earnestness
of their feelings, they had separated. Each followed
the bent of her own deep impulse, stealing
along the shadow, and unconscious that they were
not together.

The cicerone and guard, with the lantern, had
accompanied Mr. Temple into a dark and winding
passage. Mrs. Temple passed out of the farthest
gate, and Flora, quite removed from both, stood in
the moonlight by an immense fragment of travertino,
which had fallen, no one knows when, from the
summit, and lay half buried in the soil. Thus
alone, she abandoned herself to her meditations,
when she heard a voice whose echoes had lived in
her heart for many a long year.

“Miss Temple!”

She started.

Norman Leslie was at her feet

“Flora!”

He seized her hand; she trembled, and would
have fallen, but he supported her with his arm.

“This agitation, these tears, loveliest, dearest,
what do they mean? Dare I think? Can I be so
deeply, so richly blessed? The hope of your love,
beautiful Flora, has sustained me through many a
weary year. Sweet girl, do I hope in vain?”

“Mr. Leslie,” faltered she, “if you value the
love of one so unworthy as I—”

“Flora—”

“It is yours.”

An instant—she was in his arms, on his bosom.

But, hark! A shriek—shrill, intense, piercing, as
if the voice of some mad spirit, now first whelmed
in its fiery fate, rose on the air. At the sound, Mr.
and Mrs. Temple, with the guide and guard, rushed

forward. Flora and Norman stood together, the
fair girl clinging to his arm. There was a moment's
silence. All stood as if expecting some horrid apparition,
when, on the second tier of the Amphitheatre,
there rose a wild form, her hair streaming
around her uncovered head, her white robes floating
in the air, her hands clasped in frantic pain and
terror, and her manner expressive of the wildest
agony and fear.

“It is he! it is he!” she cried, with wild and half-choked
accents. “O God! save me—save me!”

“Then stand, fool!” cried a hoarse, fierce voice,
while the unseen speaker seemed climbing up after
his victim.

“Oh! do not—do not kill me!”

“It is the wild maniac!” exclaimed Mrs. Temple.

“Yes! it is the wretched girl of the carnival,”
said Flora, trembling with alarm.

“God of heaven!” cried Norman, “it is she—
it is Rosalie Romain!”

It is impossible to depict the amazement of those
who beheld this remarkable scene. But the current
of intense curiosity was too deep and swift for
remark.

“Save me! oh, save me!” screamed the maniac.

“Stay!” cried Norman, in a voice of deep emotion,
and stepping into the middle of the arena,
where the moonlight fell full upon him; “Rosalie
Romain, I am your friend—I will come to your
aid!”

The shriek which replied to him froze his blood.

The before invisible pursuer, now first emerging
from the black shadow, stood full in the light. He
had lost his mask. His features were distorted with
rage and violent emotion.

“Heavens!” said the shuddering Mrs. Temple,
“it is Count Clairmont!”

“Villain!” cried Norman, “here the great hand
of God has at length held you forth for what you
are. Wretch! if you touch yon creature, I will
crush your head like a reptile's beneath my heel.”

“Leslie!—and, by G—d, Flora Temple! Off,
then, all my vain dreams!”

He drew a pistol, which glittered in the moonbeams,
cocked it, and, as he spoke, seizing the wrist
of the wretched lunatic, turned to Leslie.

The whole incident had scarce occupied a minute.
Leslie still stood alone in the arena.

“Clairmont!” he said, “you cannot escape me!”

“Detested coward!” cried Clairmont, with a
hoarse, fierce laugh, “that this gibbering fool is she
you seek I deny, and the world will never believe.
She is my wife, and I claim her. Stop us at your
peril! If you permit us free egress, you are safe,
and I will trouble your happiness no more; but”—
and he uttered an imprecation too dreadful to repeat
—“if you attempt to impede my way” (he raised the
pistol) “you die! By —, the temptation is almost
too sweet to forego. But I will forego it if
you come not in my path.”

“No!” said Norman, “not for all your threats
shall you ever pass from this spot. I will grapple
with you if twenty lives be the price. Guard, to
the opposite door! I cross him here!”

Clairmont moved to descend; and partly retreating,
endeavoured to draw after him the bleeding
girl, when she sank exhausted at his feet. He left
her as she lay, and was about to disappear, when
he paused and said,—

“Norman Leslie! at length we know each other.
To-night, both of us live, or both die! Pledge me
your sacred word that I may depart unmolested,
and you never hear of me again. Refuse, and this
is your last moment on earth!”

Without further reply, Norman sprang forward
towards the eminence where stood his foe, when
Clairmont, with an oath, raised the pistol.

A moment more, and his life-blood would have
flowed. Flora had darted towards Leslie in frantic
terror, when a powerful and unseen arm descended
upon the caitiff in the very act of murder. The
blow was sudden and tremendous, and directed
full against his head with a crushing force. Hurled
from his height as if by some deadly engine, he
was dashed heavily to the ground. For a moment
he lay as if he were indeed a senseless clod. He
turned, and it was observed that— But why dwell
on a dreadful scene? His head had struck against
the sharp edge of a stone, and he presented a spectacle
too fearfully awful for delineation. Rage,
hate, despair, and death, mingled in his dying features.

The guard now appeared with the senseless
form of Miss Romain on his arm. Flora and Mrs.
Temple vainly endeavoured to revive her, while a
domestic hastened for the carriage, which had
been left at some distance.

“Lift me,” said Clairmont, “some of you. What
accursed hand struck me?”

“Mine!” said a powerfully formed man, whom
all recognised as Kreutzner. “A kind stranger
directed me in time to the spot where, unhappy
man, you stood.”

“And the stranger is here!” said a voice, which,
although a woman's, had in its tones something so
stern, haughty, and bitter, that all started—Clairmont
most of all.

The new-comer stepped up to the side of the
dying man. It was the Countess D—. She
regarded him as he lay, with a glance so joyous
and malignant, that she appeared a fiend rather
than a human being.

“Louise!” he cried; “hateful, detestable wretch!
curses on you!”

“Curses, curses on you! Miserable, crushed
reptile!” she said, gazing down on him as on a
serpent she had slain—“die! I rejoice in your
calamity. I have already betrayed you. I—I—I
unlocked the cell of your wretched victim Rosalie.
I put Norman Leslie on your track. I saved him
last night from your dagger; and now that I behold
your torments and your death, I smile and triumph!”

“Oh, silence her slanderous tongue!” groaned
Clairmont.

“No! let me speak to your dying ear. Your
sin and your shame I will spread far and wide.
Do you curse me? You have already; and now I
repay you, and rejoice that I am the instrument.”

“Peace!—peace now,” said Norman, “fearful
woman. He no longer hears you—he is dead!”

Never fell the cold moonlight, even on that spot,
upon a group more hushed and awful.