Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf. George W. M. Reynolds
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Название: Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf
Автор: George W. M. Reynolds
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 4057664639516
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His meditations were interrupted by Francisco, who, addressing him abruptly, said, “In respect to the missing young lady, whose absence will be so acutely felt by my sister, the only course which I can at present pursue, is to communicate her mysterious disappearance to the captain of police.”
“No time should be lost in adopting that step,” responded the doctor. “I am about to visit a sick nobleman in the neighborhood of the captain’s office: we will proceed so far in each other’s company.”
The young count summoned his page to attend upon him, and then quitted the mansion in company with the physician.
In the meantime Nisida had retired to her own apartment, where she threw herself into a seat, and gave vent to the dreadful emotions which had for the last hour been agitating within her bosom.
She wept—oh! she wept long and bitterly: it was terrible and strange to think how that woman of iron mind now yielded to the outpourings of her anguish.
Some time elapsed ere she even attempted to control her feelings; and then her struggle to subdue them was as sudden and energetic as her grief had a moment previously been violent and apparently inconsolable.
Then she recollected the note which Dr. Duras had slipped into her hand, and which she had concealed in her bosom; and she hastened to peruse it. The contents ran as follows:
“In accordance with your request, my noble-hearted and much-enduring friend, I have consulted eminent lawyers in respect to the will of the late Count of Riverola. The substance of their opinion is unanimously this: The estates are inalienably settled on yourself, should you recover the faculties of hearing and speaking at any time previous to your brother’s attainment of the age of thirty; and should you enter into possession of the estates, and allow your brother to enjoy the whole or greater part of the revenues, in direct contradiction to the spirit of your father’s will, the estates would become liable to confiscation by his highness the duke. In this case your brother and yourself would alike be ruined.
“Now, the advice that these lawyers give is this: A memorial should be addressed to his highness, exhibiting that you refuse to undergo any surgical treatment or operation for the restoration of the faculties of hearing and speech, inasmuch as you would not wish to deprive your brother of the enjoyment of the estates nor of the title conferred by their possession: that you therefore solicit a decree, confirming his title of nobility, and dispensing with the prerogative of confiscation on the part of the prince, should you recover the faculties of hearing and speech, and act in opposition to the will of your late father in respect to the power of alienating the estates from your own possession.
“Such, my generous-minded friend, is the counsel offered by eminent advocates; and, by the memory of your sainted mother, if not for the sake of your own happiness, I implore you to act in accordance with these suggestions. You will remember that this advice pretty accurately corresponds with that which I gave you, when, late on the night that the will was read, you quitted your sleepless couch and came to my dwelling to consult me on a point so intimately connected with your felicity in this world.
“Your sincerely devoted friend,
“Jeronymo Duras.”
While Nisida was occupied in the perusal of the first paragraph of this letter, dark clouds lowered upon her brow; but as she read the second paragraph, wherein the salutary advice of the lawyers was conveyed to her, those clouds rapidly dispersed, and her splendid countenance became lighted up with joyous, burning, intoxicating hope!
It was evident that she had already made up her mind to adopt the counsel proffered her by the eminent advocates whom the friendly physician had consulted on her behalf.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE SUBURB OF ALLA CROCE—THE JEW—THE ROBBER CHIEF’S LOVE.
It was past the hour of ten on Saturday night, when a tall, powerfully built man emerged from what might be termed the fashionable portion of the city of Florence, and struck into the straggling suburb of Alla Croce.
This quarter of the town was of marvelously bad reputation, being infested by persons of the worst description, who, by herding, as it were, together in one particular district, had converted the entire suburb into a sort of sanctuary where crime might take refuge, and into which the sbirri, or police-officers, scarcely dared to penetrate.
The population of Alla Croce was not, however, entirely composed of individuals who were at variance with the law, for poverty as well as crime sought an asylum in that assemblage of forbidding-looking dwellings, which formed so remarkable a contrast with the marble palaces, noble public buildings, and handsome streets of the city of Florence itself.
And not only did the denizens of penury and crushing toil, the artisans, the vine-dressers, the gardeners, the water-carriers, and the porters of Florence occupy lodgings in the suburb of Alla Croce, but even wealthy persons—yes, men whose treasures were vast enough to pay the ransom of princes—buried themselves and their hoards in this horrible neighborhood.
We allude to that most undeservedly-persecuted race, the Jews—a race endowed with many virtues and generous qualities, but whose characters have been blackened by a host of writers whose narrow minds and illiberal prejudices have induced them to preserve all the exaggerations and misrepresentations which tradition hands down in the Christian world relative to the cruelly-treated Israelite.
The enlightened commercial policy of those merchant princes, the Medici, had, during the primal glories of their administrative sway in the Florentine Republic, relaxed the severity of the laws against the Jews, and recognizing in the persecuted Israelites those grand trading and financial qualities which have ever associated the idea of wealth with their name, permitted them to follow unmolested their specific pursuits.
But at the time of which we are writing—the year 1521—the prince who had the reins of the Florentine Government, had yielded to the representations of a bigoted and intolerant clergy, and the Jews had once more become the subjects of persecution. The dissipated nobles extorted from them by menace those loans which would not have been granted on the security proffered; and the wealthy members of the “scattered race” actually began to discover that they could repose greater confidence in the refuse of the Florentine population than in the brilliant aristocracy, or even in the famous sbirri themselves. Thus had many rich Jews established themselves in the quarter of Alla Croce; and by paying a certain sum to the syndic, or magistrate of this suburb—a functionary elected by the inhabitants themselves, and in virtue of a law of their own enactment—the persecuted Israelites enjoyed comparative security and peace.
We now return to the man we left plunging into the suburbs of which we have afforded a short and necessary account.
This individual was dressed in simple attire, but composed of excellent materials. His vest was of dark velvet, slashed, but not embroidered; and on his breast he wore a jazeran, or mailed cuirass, which was not only lighter than a steel corselet, but was equally proof against poniard or pike. In his broad leather belt were stuck two pairs of pistols, and a long dagger; a heavy broadsword also hung by his side. His black boots came up nearly to the knee—in contravention of the prevailing fashion of that age, when these articles of dress seldom reached above the swell of the leg. A large slouched hat, without plumage or any ornament, was drawn down as much as possible over his features; and the broad mantello, or cloak, was gathered round the body in such СКАЧАТЬ