Leonora

“ Leonora and Lorenzo were full of joy and anticipation. Perhaps never in history was a long journey over rough roads, through a wild country, with the prospect of but poor accommodation anywhere but in the large cities, contemplated with so much wild joy. Fancy was like a bird escaped from its cage, and it soared over the future on expanded wings--soared high and sang. ”

“ Lorenzo! Lorenzo! you have made my misery! Pray God that you have not made your own too. What has become of good Leonardo's auguries? what of his dream, that by the features you could read the spirit? But it matters not. I will steel myself to meet you, should you come--to gaze upon this fair wife you have preferred to Leonora, and who, men say, is so light, and so unworthy of the man I thought you. Perhaps she may suit you better than I should have done; for God knows she cannot be more fickle than you are. Yes, the momentary madness is passing away. ”

“ Where iron-hearted warriors were melted into tears, Fiesco uttered only imprecations of despair. (Kneels down, weeping, by her side.) Pardon me, Leonora—the decrees of heaven are immutable; they yield not to mortal anger. (With a melancholy tenderness.) O Leonora, years ago my fancy painted that triumphant hour when I should present thee to Genoa as her duchess—methought I saw the lovely blush that tinged thy modest cheek—the timid heaving of thy beauteous bosom beneath the snowy gauze— I heard the gentle murmurs of thy voice, which died away in rapture! ”

“ Happy woman! in you to love is not a crime; you may glory in your passion, whilst I must hide mine from every human eye, drop in shameful secrecy the burning tear, stifle the struggling sigh, blush at the conflicts of virtue and sensibility, and carry shame and remorse with me to the grave. Happy Leonora! happy even when most injured, you have a right to complain to him you love;—he is yours—you are his wife—his esteem, his affection are yours. On Olivia he has bestowed but a transient thought, and eternal ignominy must be her portion. ”

“ Oh Leonora! Leonora! A heart like mine should not be treated thus.
Leo. Carlos! Carlos! I have not deserv'd this usage.
Car. Barbarous Leonora! but 'tis useless to reproach you; she that is capable of what you have done, is form'd too cruel ever to repent of it. Go on then, tyrant; make your bliss compleat; torment me still, for still, alas! I love enough to be tormented.
Leo. Ah Carlos! little do you know the tender movements of that thing you name: the heart where love presides, admits no thoughts against the honour of its ruler. ”

“ Yes, it was she, it was Leonora, with this difference only, that this fair girl was a northern version of the Leonora of the south, but was none the less beautiful on that account. “Oh, Leonora, you child of the sun and of Nature, am I really to be so blessed, am I to find you here again—here where my heart was congealing, and longing for the sunny rays of delight from a fair woman’s eyes? Yes, Leonora, this is your sweet smile and kindling, childlike glance; it is you, and yet it is not you. God and Nature were reflected in your countenance, a whole heaven shone in your features. ”

“ This poor Leonora, in her craven frenzy, condoned in her mind the offences of the monster in whose relentless grasp she now felt herself writhing. Her leaning towards him, her desire to propitiate, was like a lust. She would swear herself his creature, his sympathiser, his fellow-passionist, if only he would accept and spare her as such. Do not blame her over-harshly. The spirit crazed with fear of darkness has no volition but towards the light. ”

“ Early one evening a few weeks later, Leonora, half attired for the gala night of the operatic performance, was again delicately fingering her hair in that large bedroom whose mirrors daily reflected the leisured process of her toilette. Her black skirt trimmed with yellow made a sudden sharp contrast with the pale tints of her corset and her long bare arms. The bodice lay like a trifling fragment on the blue-green eiderdown of her bed, a pair of satin shoes glistened in front of the fire, and two chairs bore the discarded finery of the day. ”

“ It was very like death; and Lorenzo and Leonora looked upon her with strange and mingled sensations. There lay the only obstacle to their happiness, pale and ashy as a faded flower. Seldom has the slumber of the grave been better mocked ”

“ No, Leonora always appeared to me at her best in a blue tailor-made. Then her glorious hair wasn't deadened by her white shoulders. Certain women's lines guide your eyes to their necks, their eyelashes, their lips, their breasts. But Leonora's seemed to conduct your gaze always to her wrist. ”

“ So, but in a less rapt and mystical sense than that in which the holy virgin of Siena had poured out her soul, thought the young Duchess Leonora, wife of Pietro, second son of Cosimo da Medici, Grand Duke of Florence.
The price of love, the price of love! For eleven days she had wept, burning to pay it—indignant, passionate, heart-broken, she had told herself. And now that the altar was ready and the blade bared, what was her desire? Only for mercy—only for life, shameful and abandoned if needs must be, but life on any terms, the least regarded, the most despised. ”

“ ACT I. SCENE 2.—Leonora's confidant evidently alive to the responsibilities of her position. Watch her, for example, when her Mistress is about to confide to her ear the dawn of her passion for Manrico. She walks Leonora gently down to the footlights, launches her into her solo, like a boat, and stands aside on the left, a little behind, with an air of apprehension, lest she should come to grief over the next high note, and a hand in readiness to support her elbow in case she should suddenly collapse. ”

“ Twice Leonora drew back the curtain and looked out. Once she asked, "Where is my father? Is this all true, signor maestro, or am I dreaming still?"
"Your father is at the citadel waiting for the French and Roman lords," replied Leonardo. "All is real, my child, and happy is it that it is so; for both Antonio and I had nearly been too late. The number of men we could introduce last night was too small; and, had you not left the postern key in my hands, the Lord of Vitry and the French forces could hardly have entered ere the axe had fallen." ”

“ The tall slightly-stooping girl, with her flat figure, her plain shabby serge frock, her tired white face, and the sinister glance of the idealist in her great, fretful eyes, seemed to stand there and accuse the whole of Leonora's existence. Utterly absorbed in the imminent examination, her brain a welter of sterile facts, Rose found all the seriousness of life in dates, irregular participles, algebraic symbols, chemical formulas, the altitudes of mountains, and the areas of inland seas. ”

“ As the dog-cart was crossing the railway bridge at Shawport, at the foot of the rise to Hillport, Leonora overtook her eldest daughter. She drew up. From the height of the dog-cart she looked at her child; and the girlishness of Ethel's form, the self-consciousness of newly-arrived womanhood in her innocent and timid eyes, the virgin richness of her vitality, made Leonora feel sad, superior, and protective. ”

“ Another miniature portrait, a precise copy of the one in hand, hung from the neck of the skeleton.
Leonora, with a loud shriek, covered her face; but the lover, though far from satisfied himself, strove to assure his mistress, and besought her not to indulge any apprehension.
"You are disturbed, lady," said the artist. "'Tis but a harmless piece of earth, a mouldering fabric of dust, a thing, a form we must all one day assume. But to-morrow, to-morrow, if you will, we resume our work."
Leonora, relieved by the intimation, gladly consented, fain for a while to escape from this terrible chamber. ”

“ But then it is grace which says nothing, a heaven only for a husband, the dignity more of a matron than of a heroine, and love that might have suited Eve before she had seen this world. Leonora is certainly a beauty; but then a beauty who does not know her power, and who, consequently, can make no one else feel its full extent. ”

“ Old people have only to pray and sleep. But, indeed, you had better come to rest; we have all to rise betimes."
After a word or two more, Leonora parted from her lover, and soon seeking her bed, lay down and dreamed, but not asleep.
As if the painter had heard her light foot on the stairs, she had not been gone a minute when Leonardo appeared. He took Lorenzo's hand eagerly in his, and said, in a low, earnest tone:
"Let her not go to Rome, I beseech you, young gentleman--let her not go to Rome." ”

“ Do you know, my Gabrielle, I have discovered that Leonora is inordinately selfish? For all other faults I have charity; but selfishness, which has none to give, must expect none. O divine sensibility, defend me from this isolation of the heart! All thy nameless sorrows, all thy heart-rending tortures, would I a thousand times rather endure. Leonora's selfishness breaks out perpetually; and, alas! it is of the most inveterate, incurable kind: everything that is immediately or remotely connected with self she loves, and loves with the most provoking pertinacity. ”

“ She was pleased particularly with the beautiful saloon, and the sweet retired garden on the terrace with the steps between.
"Oh! what a charming spot to meet a lover!" she said, gazing laughingly into Leonora's eyes.
"I meet no lover here but my own thoughts," replied Leonora; and the conversation dropped.
The next day every one of distinction was invited to the house of the young countess; and it seemed strange to Leonora to find there several gentlemen, both French and Italian, arrived that day from Rome. ”

“ Nay, delay not, beloved. I will send some men to keep guard."
"I am not afraid," replied Leonora, with a smile, leaning over towards him, and looking up in his face. "Am I not to be a soldier's bride, Lorenzo? I must accustom myself to the sound of cannon. Those good people must fire better ere they frighten me." ”

“ To be summoned daily into the presence of a Princess thus beautiful and amiable, to read aloud his verses to her, to hear his own praises from her lips, to bask in her approving smiles, to associate with her in her retirement, to behold her in all the graceful simplicity of her familiar life,—was a dangerous situation for Tasso, and surely not less so for Leonora herself. ”

“ There are many in the town that are sure of his innocence, but too few I fear--
"He is innocent! he is innocent!" cried Leonora, with her brow burning, and her cheek pale. "He is innocent as a babe. I will go down--I will return with you--I will see my father--I will save him or die with him."
"But, lady, they will let no one enter the town," said Leonardo; "they have trebled the sentries at the gates. All may come forth who will, but no one can return. ”

“ Do not imagine that I am so weak as to expect that the perusal of these letters will work a sudden change: but it is fit, that before you leave England you should know that Leonora is not a cold, sullen, or offended wife; but one who loves you most tenderly, most generously; who, concealing the agony of her heart, waits with resignation for the time when she will be your refuge, and the permanent blessing of your life. ”

“ You may not feel this now, Leonora, in the bitterness of disappointment, but the time will come when such thoughts will be comfort and consolation to you--when you will glory and feel pride in having loved and been loved by such a man. ”

“ I believe, from what I now feel, that every man under the dominion of passion is reduced to a most absurd and miserable condition.—I have just been reading some letters from Leonora, which have wrung my heart; letters addressed to her mother, laying open every feeling of her mind for some months. My dear friend, what injustice have I done to this admirable woman! With what tenderness, with what delicacy has she loved me! while I, mistaking modesty for coldness, fortitude for indifference, have neglected, injured, and abandoned her! ”

“ When Leonora moved from the great manufacturing city, which had been her home for fourteen years, to the home of her aunt, in a quiet suburb, where the children attending the high school were from homes of real culture and refinement, she was disconsolate. Voices, language, games, manner of recitation, behavior on the school grounds and street, perplexed her. She seemed lost in her new environment. She had never been a leader but had followed with all her heart. ”

“ But there is an innate modesty which requires no teaching of art, and Leonora answered:
"I pray you excuse me, sir; they are all men there without, and we should blush to obtrude ourselves upon the gaze of so many eyes."
As she spoke a warm glow came upon the face of Bianca Maria, but it was not her cousin's words that called it there. A shadow darkened the doorway, and the sound of a step well-known to the young girl's ear was heard, which brought the joyous blood from the heart to the cheek in a moment. ”

“ Why life might slip away, and Leonora never be mine. The present only is ours in this fleeting world of change, and we must not let it fly from us unimproved. Yet Mona Francesca will certainly oppose. At all events, she will wish to consult some one, to shield herself under the opinions of others from the world's comments. On Leonora only can I rely, and on her must I rely alone. Here, Antonio, ride up beside me here: I wish to speak with you."
The man rode up, and Lorenzo questioned him much and often. ”

“ Leonora became fond, too, of the decoration of her person. Jewels, and cloth of gold, and rich embroidery decked those lovely hands and arms, or were wreathed in the clustering masses of her jetty hair, or arrayed those graceful limbs; and her tire-women had no longer reason to complain that she forgot her station or neglected her apparel as they had once done. ”