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Updated: October 14, 2025
Never did she seem more noble than when, thus lowly and humbling herself, she knelt beside the poor victim of her husband's love, and whispered to the diseased and withering heart tidings of comfort, charity, home, and a futurity of honour and of peace. But this was not a dream that could long lull the perturbed and erring brain of Lucilla Volktman.
To Volktman, more alive than even his countrymen are wont to be, to superstitious impressions, the science on which he had chanced came with an all-absorbing interest and fascination. He surrendered himself wholly to his new pursuit.
As, after a long dream, we rise to the occupations of life, even so, with an awakening and more active feeling, I return from characters removed from the ordinary world like Volktman and his daughter to the brilliant heroine of my narrative.
Stung by his thoughts, and impatient of rest, he hurried into the air; he traversed the city; he passed St. Sebastian's Gate, gained the Appia Via, and saw, lone and sombre, as of old the house of the departed Volktman. He had half unconsciously sought that direction, in order to strengthen his purpose, and sustain his conscience in its right path.
"Is it not so, then?" said Godolphin, doubtingly. "No, sir: no!" "Lucilla Volktman," said Godolphin, with a colder gravity than he had yet called forth, "I claim some attention from you, some confidence, nay, some esteem; for the sake of your father for the sake of your early years, when I assisted to teach you my native tongue, and loved you as a brother.
"My schemes are just, and the Heavens wrote their decrees in their clearest language," answered the astrologer. "Thou art on the eve of quitting Rome." "On what occasion?" The astrologer hesitated the young visitor pressed the question. "The lord of the fourth house," said Volktman, reluctantly, "is located in the eleventh house. Thou knowest to whom the position portends disaster."
I would I might see him soon." Lucilla's beautiful breast heaved, and her face was covered with blushes: these were symptoms of a disorder that never occurred to the recluse. "Thou rememberest the foreigner?" asked Volktman, after a pause. "Yes," said Lucilla, half inaudibly. "I have not heard from him of late: I will make question concerning him ere the cock crow."
He was shocked to perceive the physical alteration four years had wrought in his singular friend; and, with the warmth of a heart naturally kind, he sought to contribute to the comfort and enjoyment of a life that was evidently drawing to a close. Godolphin's company seemed to give Volktman a pleasure which nothing else could afford him.
At the sight of firearms, the ruffians felt their courage evaporate; they fled from their prey; and the Englishman assisted Volktman in conveying the Italian to her home. But the terror of the encounter operated fatally on a delicate frame; and within three weeks from that night Volktman was a widower.
The signora was fearfully alarmed; her shrieks brought a stranger to their assistance; it was the English youth who had so alarmed the jealousy of Volktman. Accustomed to danger in his profession of a gallant, the Englishman seldom, in those foreign lands, went from home at night without the protection of pistols.
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