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Shut up within the dreary palace at Lucca, or in the mountain solitude of Corellia, Enrica yearned for freedom. She was like a young bird, full-fledged and strong, that longs to leave the parent-nest to stretch its stout wings on the warm air to soar upward into the light! Now the light had come to Enrica. It came when she first saw Count Nobili.
Enrica's eyes wandered over the address, "To the Noble Signorina Enrica Guinigi, Corellia," as if each word had been some wonder. She dwelt upon every crooked line and twist, each tail and flourish, that Nobili's hand had traced. She pressed the letter to her lips, then laid it upon her lap and gazed at it, eking out every second of suspense to its utmost limit.
The cavaliere accepted this silence for consent. He struggled out of the ponderous arm-chair, and went out into the garden. Behind them, at a respectful distance, stood Ser Giacomo, the notary from Corellia. Streamlets pure as crystal ran bubbling down beside them in marble runnels; statues of gods and goddesses balanced each other, on pedestals, at the angles where the steps turned.
The Corellia men, who with eager hands pass the buckets down the hill, stop, and stare, and wonder. Fra Pacifico, who had eyes and ears for every one, turned, and ran forward to where Pipa sat wringing her hands upon the ground, the marchesa leaning against her. "Is Enrica in the tower?" asked Fra Pacifico. "Yes, yes!" the marchesa answered feebly. "You must save her!"
High up overhead, crowning a precipitous rock, stands Corellia, a knot of browned, sun-baked houses, flat-roofed, open-galleried, many-storied, nestling round a ruined castle, athwart whose rents the ardent sunshine darts.
Children are born, and marriage-flutes wake the echoes of the mountain solitudes and mothers weep, hearing them, remembering their young days and present pinching want. The aged groan, for joy to them comes like a fresh pang! The marchesa's carriage passes through Corellia at a foot's pace. The driver has no choice.
"We are all in the hands of God," the marchesa repeated, solemnly, and crossed herself. "I believe little in doctors." "Still," said Trenta, "if there is no change, it is our duty to send for one. Is there any doctor at Corellia?" "None nearer than Lucca," she replied. "Send for Fra Pacifico. If he thinks it of any use, a man shall be dispatched to Lucca immediately."
Then a swirl of smoke swooped down and smothered all, while overhead the mighty company of constellations looked calmly down in their cold brightness! A crowd of men now came running down from Corellia, roused by the church-bells. Pietro, the baker, still hard at work, was the first to hear the bell, to dash into the street, and shout, "Help! help! Fire! fire! At the villa!"
He had left her but in her heart Nobili should forever sit enthroned and she would worship him! And they had been so happy, so more than happy from the first moment they had met and he had shattered it! Oh, his love for her was dead and buried out of sight! What was life to her without Nobili? Oh, those forebodings that had clung about her from the very moment he had left Corellia!
A circumstance I cannot reflect upon without being deeply sensible how incumbent it is upon me to endeavour not to disappoint the confidence so excellent a judge of human nature reposed in me. I shall therefore most readily give my assistance to Corellia in this affair, and willingly risk any displeasure I may incur by appearing in her behalf. Farewell. To HISPULLA
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