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Updated: June 28, 2025
Conceive that same Nisida who planned dark plots against Flora Francatelli, now tripping along the banks of the sunlit stream, bedecked with flowers and playing with the swans. Imagine that same being, who dealt death to Agnes, now seated beneath the shade of myrtles and embowering vines, distributing bread or pomegranate seeds to the birds that hopped cheerfully around her.
She then proceeded to arrange the toilet table of her mistress, preparatory to that lady's rising; and while she is thus employed, we will endeavor to make our readers a little better acquainted with her than they can possibly yet be. Flora Francatelli was the orphan daughter of parents who had suddenly been reduced from a state of affluence to a condition of extreme poverty.
Without stating by whom I was employed, I merely represented to him that I was deeply interested in the Francatelli family, and that it was of the utmost importance to obtain a delay for two or three months in the criminal proceedings instituted against those innocent females, as, in the meantime, I should undertake a journey to a place at some considerable distance, but the result of which would prove materially beneficial to the cause of the accused.
"Then there is a chance that Alessandro will rise in the service of the sultan?" continued Flora, naturally anxious to glean all the information she could respecting her brother. "There is not a more enviable personage in the imperial service than he whom you style Alessandro Francatelli."
And as the woman left in charge of the establishment knew not Francatelli, and never rose above the rude simplicity of "plain" cookery depressing word! and was only too glad when nothing was required beyond the homely familiar chop, with a vegetable spoiled in the usual way, dinner at Quebec Street, if no longer a pleasure, was not a burden.
Six days had now elapsed since Flora Francatelli became an inmate of the Carmelite Convent. During this period she was frequently visited in her cell by Sister Alba, the nun who had received her at the bottom of the pit or well into which she descended by means of the chair; and that recluse gradually prepared her to fix her mind upon the necessity of embracing a conventual life.
In order that the reader should fully understand the stirring incidents which yet remain to be told, it is necessary for us to explain certain particulars connected with Alessandro Francatelli, the brother of the beautiful Flora.
"Oh! my lord, suffer me to retire," exclaimed Flora Francatelli, in a tone of beseeching earnestness; "I should not have listened to your lordship so long in the gallery of pictures, much less have accompanied your lordship hither."
"This is fortunate, mother!" said Antonio, when Francisco and Flora had retired from the vicinity of the grove. "You are spared the trouble of a visit to the old Signora Francatelli; and I have learned sufficient to enable me to work out all my plans alike of aggrandizement and revenge.
It seemed as if some being, having right to reproach and power to taunt, whispered to her as she slept, stern remonstrances against the idle, voluptuous, and dreaming life she was leading, mocking her for passing her time in the maudlin delights of love, calling upon her to arouse her latent energies and shake off that luxurious lethargy, teaching her to look upon the island, beauteous though it were, as one vast prison in which she was confined, from whence there were, nevertheless, means of escape, raising up before her mental vision all the most alluring and bustling scenes of her own fair, native city of Florence, then bitterly reproaching her for having allowed her soul to be more wrapped up in the society of Fernand Wagner, than solicitous, as it was wont to be, for the welfare of her brother Francisco, creating, too, wild doubts in her imagination as to whether circumstances might not, after all, have united her brother and Flora Francatelli in the bonds of a union which for many reasons she abhorred, and lastly thundering in her ears the terrific accusation that she was perjured to a solemn and an awful vow pledged by her lips, on a dread occasion, and to the dictating voice of her dying mother.
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