Marie Louise de la Ramée

“ I fell in with them as I neared here; they are fugitives, and proscribed themselves; they lie hid by day in an old sea-den of Veni's; they look to get away by the coast in a night or so; they would give their bodies to shot and sabre to save your hand from a rough touch. Will you come to them?"
He could not tell whether she heeded him; he saw her face in profíle; it was still, cold, passionless, stem with a mute intolerable suffering, like some Greek head, in stone, of Destiny.
He spoke afresh, rather to break that death-like silence, than for the sake of what he uttered. ”

“ His voice was very low, and his words had a greater intensity because their passion was restrained in obedience to her: there was grandeur in their very simplicity. She raised her bead with her old stag-like gesture—looking to the sea, and not to him.
"Sir, you have no title to speak such words. You cannot say that I have ever given you the faintest."
"Have I ever said it? No! you have given me no title, but I claim one."
"Claim!"
"I claim one. The title that every man has to love, though be go unloved—to love better than life, and only less than honour." ”

“ Erceldoune cast one glance at him, and by sheer instinct forced the vessel, still half-filled with the liquid, into his hands.
"Drink!" he said, fiercely; "drink, and be a beast at once."
The monk, with whom there was but one sense left, that of desire for the alcohol that destroyed him, seized it thirstily, and drank—drank—drank—till the fiery stream flowed down bis throat like water. Erceldoune watched him with eager, aching eyes; every moment seemed an eternity, every thought maddened him till he felt like a desert brute; he could not stir till this priest lay senseless before him. ”

“ The first that were spoken were hers, while the pulse of her heart beat on his, and the low flame of the lamp sunk out slowly.
"What use! what use that you know the truth!"
she moaned. "You have been martyred for me. Through me you will perish!"
He smiled, as men smile in some sweet fancy of dreaming sleep.
"Though I may die with the dawn, I can thank God now I have lived."
"Lived to be cursed by me!"
"Lived to be loved by you;—it is enough."
"Loved by a love that destroys you! Can you ever forgive?" ”

“ But none the less she knew that through her he would perish; and none the less were the shame that she must reveal against her race, the taint of cowardly crime that must rest on her by implication, the degradation of her name that she must lay bare before him, bitter beyond all bitterness to the pride that was born at once of royalty and freedom, to the courage that would have faced a thousand deaths rather than have bent down to one act of baseness.
"Forgotten!" she echoed, where she bowed herself at his feet. "You are wronged so deeply, that no love but yours could ever outlive such wrong. ”

“ Erceldoune forced him downward into the circle of the burning pines, full in their light and full in her sight. He only knew that this was the man who had sought to assassinate him; that this was the man for whom and to whom she betrayed him.
Yet, beyond the memory of his vengeance, beyond the violence of his hatred, beyond the rage of jealousy in his soul, was a terrible pathos of wonder that looked out at her from the reproach of his eyes;—it was for a thing so vile as this she had betrayed him! it was for a life so infamous as this that she had given herself to guilt! ”

“ Moreover, when of late some sense of its tenderness had stolen on her, some echo in her own heart been awakened to the strong vibrations of his, she had known that the bonds which bound her could never be loosened, and she had told herself that she had no title to, no fitness for, a noble and unsullied homage.
Where she leaned now against the ruined altar-stones, remorse, keen as though their love were guilt, weighed on her. He had justly won his right to all of joy, of honour, and of peace, that she could give the liberator and defender of her life ”

“ If you did not merit it, you would see no treasure in it. It is not those who value trust that betray it."
"Betray it! No; I never betrayed yet."
Her face wore for a moment the fearless look of royal courage and strength that had ever been most natural to it; then, swiftly, it changed, and a darkness fell over it—the darkness of remorse.
"That is not true," she said, bitterly. "Betrayal—in men's sense of betrayal of comrade to comrade, of friend to friend, of honour to honour—never yet did touch me. But I betrayed as women mostly do—all those who loved me." ”

“ A statesman is great, a woman can make him a wittol; a chíef is mighty, a woman can make him a byword of shame and reproach; a soldier has honour firm as steel, a woman can make him break it like a stalk of green flax; a poet has genius to gain him immortality, a woman can make him curse the world and its fame for her sake, and die like a dog, raving mad for the loss of scarlet lips that were false, of eyes divine that were lies. ”

“ She drew herself from his embrace with something of her old smile, of her old scorn.
"No. Or no prayer of yours should make me your wife."
"And then you ask me if my faith be perfect still? There are scores of women—women who would censure you—who think it no shame to bring tainted lips to their husbands."
"Well," she said, wearily, "give me not too much praise for being prouder, and it may be colder, than many women are! If I never bent to the follies of love, I was but the more blameable, perhaps, for using them without mercy to my own ends. ”

“ The tired beasts were changed in haste and without question, and the young unworn ones raced on through the gloom as fleetly as wild horses sweep over prairie plaíns.
Behind them hunted Death; with the morning light the whole land would be as one host risen against them, as one snare spread to trap them; the bloodhounds of a Church were on their track, and the hate of a king and a priest ran them down; yet scarce a touch of fear, scarce a breath of the chillness of terror were on them; they had drunk deep of the rich wine of danger, and one at least was blind with the blindness of passion. ”

“ Erceldoune sprang to his feet as a lion springs from its lair; the priest's villanous chuckle rang like a rattlesnake in his ear; in his cups the Umbrian was but an animal—a very low one to boot—and the better instincts which had moved him when the lash had dropped from his hand were drowned and dead.
"Ay, to-night!" laughed the monk, while his head hung on one side, and his eyes closed with the fatuous cunning of intoxication; "he comes for the last time—do you mark me?—for the last time!" ”

“ All through the long day he worked unweariedly among the reedy waters, under the frowning shadow of the monastery-crowned rocks. And from her cell she gazed on him—on the bold heroic cast of the head, and the sun-warmed brow from which the waves of hair were dashed; gazed on him where, under the cypress shadows, through the sere rushes, through the sullen waters, he toiled as peasants toil, for her—for her, though she had bidden him forsake even her memory for ever, though she had told him that suffering alone could be his portion through her. ”

“ Send me at nightfall two of the fastest horses you have; let some boy ride them who cannot speak a word of Italian, and wait with them, unseen, in the cypress grove under the monastery of Taverna—wait all night till he sees me. Do no more than I ask, for God's sake. I know I need not say grant my request; our alliance is too old and too sure. Forgive all that sounds strange and vague in this, and send me simply word, 'yes' or 'no' by the Savoyard.
"Yours ever,
"Fulke Erceldoune."
Men of his temperament make firm and warm friendships amongst men. ”

“ The Ischian horse grazed quietly off the grasses and young shoots among the rocks; Erceldoune watched the villa which sheltered her, as a lion watches the lair of his foe.
The night was absolute torture to him; intolerable suspense possessed him, and a reckless hatred of all those who were now within the chamber on which he was forbidden even to look. So near to her, and yet as far sundered as though seas divided them! His rivals with her whilst he stood without!—his imagination was filled with their looks, their words, the bold passion in their eyes, the lovely smile upon her lips. ”

“ True, the liberty for which they had conspired was the just heritage of man, and the noblest cause for which human life can ever be laid down; true, it was for their country, and that country's welfare and freedom, that they had fallen; but this was no opiate to still the remorse that pierced and pursued her. She knew that the cause had been far less to those who had died before her than the smile of her own eyes; she knew that with her beauty, and her power, and her sorcery, she had wooed them to passion only to drive them there, by their fealty to her, to perish like netted stags. ”

“ Madame, I think I might let his passion run untroubled, and leave my vengeance to the future—some future when he should reach the truth from some chance word, from some side-wind, and hear the secret that a woman who 'honoured' him never had told all through the days and nights she lived in his sight and slept upon his heart: hear it when he was bound to her beyond escape, and could gain no freedom through knowing her traitress to him as to all others. Ah! I am not so certain that I will not let you wed him. It will be a surer stab to him than comes from steel—that one truth learned too late. ”

“ Erceldoune heard enough to convulse him with horror as he was stretched there on the naked stone, with the lustre of the Italian night finding its way dimly through the aperture above;—enough to know that he must rescue her to-night, or never.
"And I will tell you more," hiccuped the monk, laughing low and cunningly, too blind with drink to have much knowledge left of whom he spoke to, or of where he was. "Monsignore comes to-night—he often visits us, you know; we are his special children, and it has a fair odour for so great a man to leave the world for such holy, rigorous retirement!" ”

“ It may be that you have that which you repent of; few women have such sorcery as yours, and use it wholly blamelessly; but what I trust is, not your past but your nature, and what I ask is, not your secret but your love. It is too late to speak of our ever parting; I will make you mine in the teeth of all, even of your own will, now that once you have let me know that your heart is with me. And—do you not think that I have tenderness enough in me to pardon much, if there be ought to pardon? ”

“ That will be the end if we meet in your sight to-day, unless, indeed, fate turns the other way, and your lover falls through me. Sit there, Miladi, and watch the struggle; you will never have seen two harder foes. Turn your thumb downward, like those dainty, haughty Roman dames you copy in philosophies and seductions; turn it down for the slaughter-signal, if you see me at his mercy. How free you will be then! But—listen just a little—if he press me too close, we of the south and east have not the northern scorn of a timely thrust, and it will be but in self-defence! ”

“ The boat waited in a creek, floating there under so dark a shadow from the drooping boughs of lemon and acacia, that it was atmost in twilight: a few strokes of the oars, and it swept out of the brown ripples, flinging up their surf against the rocks, into the deep blue of the sunlit bay; below, above, around on every side, colour in all its glory, all its variety, all its harmony and contrast, melting into one paradise in the warmth of the summer day.
"I love the sea more dearly than any land. It is incarnate freedom!" ”

“ Liberty, for the breath of the wind on their brows, for the splash of river-spray on their lips, for the wild joy of fearless speed, for the fragrance of trampled flowers, for the limitless glory of sight free to range over the width of the earth, for the nameless rapture of living when every sense and pulse of life is hot as with wine, yet is lulled as with sleep, and holds the pain of the world well endured for the sake of one hour of joy;—Liberty, in whose sweetness lies all the ecstasy of life, and in whose loss lies all its anguish. ”

“ He would not have yielded her up—not even to herself. Evil is black in us all; love, that is love in my reading, does not surrender us to it, or for it."
The deep glow of his eyes gazed into hers, speaking a thousand-fold more than his words. He knew that the chains of some remorse bound her; to fear this for himself never dawned on the careless courage of that which she had well termed his "sublime folly," but to free her from its dominion was a resolve with him not less resolute than had been his resolve to deliver her beauty from her captor's fetters. ”

“ With one glance, in which his gaze met hers, and with a lion's spring, Erceldoune was on the mighty Prelate, his hand at the other's throat, as a forest hound's fangs fasten in a wolf's; the shock of the sudden collision dragged the Italian back staggering and breathless ere he heard or saw his antagonist. Then that sheer blood-instinct woke in Villaflor which wakes with the first sense of conflict in all men not cowards from their birth; he closed with this unknown foe, whose gripe was at his throat, holding him powerless. ”

“ You shall have no darkness on you from my past of my bringing. But—you do not fear to take to your heart a woman whom the world has called evil thus?"
"The world! What terrors do you think that liar has for me?"
She smiled—a smile in which there was as much of weariness as of sweetness.
"It is not always a liar; it was not so always in what it said of me. But we will leave that! Today is our own; we will not poison it. You think we may make our way to the sea to-night?"
"I do. There is little to be feared in the open country—almost nothing from the peasantry. ”

“ His voice choked in his throat; the muscles of his chest, where the fishing-shirt was open, swelled convulsively; he felt blind with rage and agony;—the monk watched him in wonder.
"The sight of her beauty beyond those bars has stirred you strangely, my son. Verily, she is a sorceress, as they say. You feel marvellously for a strange woman."
Erceldoune shook in every limb with the effort to control what, betrayed, must betray both her and him.
"That she is a woman, and you are brutes, is enough! What man that had not the heart of a cur could hear such infamy and keep his peace? ”

“ I bade him be brought to my judgment, that your vengeance might strike him, and lay him dead at my feet. I am no holier than you. There was an hour in which I longed for his life with that thirst you know now; there was an hour in which I would have taken it, and not spared, though his mother had prayed to me. Ah, friends! such hours come to all. But now, the darkness has passed. I see clearer. Death is not ours to deal. And were it ours, should we give him the nameless mystic mercy which all men live to crave—give it as the chastisement of crime? Death! ”

“ He feigned sleep afresh, lying as though still in the profound peace of that dreaming rest; lying so with the soft brown lashes on his cheek, and his head idly thrown back upon his arm, until the hoofs of the horses had ceased to crush the cyclamen and hellebore, and the screen of forest foliage had fallen between him and the man whom he hated with the reckless bitterness of the injurer to the injured, the woman whom he loved despite all, though he adored tyranny and evil, and gold and selfish gaíns, and the brutal exercise of a pitiless jealousy, far more. ”

“ I have no strength,—if once I pardon, never shall I resist you!"
Pardon! Its softened mercy took the shape of deadliest temptation. It looked sweet as life to forgive;—to forgive, and steep all wrong, all pain, all hate in one divine oblivion; to forgive, and heed not the pollution of the soul, so only the grace and graciousness of mortal form were his; to forgive, and call sin grace, shame honour, and treachery truth, if so alone the heaven he had lost were his. ”