After the Pardon

In this romance, the author has vividly pictured the ravishing fierceness of the love which sways the Latins and bends them to its desires. Graphically she has shown how their passions force them beyond all laws and duties, beyond all vows. In them the emotional nature and the finer intelligence are ever at variance. They confuse that rude instinct which is jealousy, physical and base, with the higher and more ardent love--the virile affirmation of possession with the fresher, more vigorous desire of love’s happiness--but this does not make their passions more trivial nor less consuming.

The author’s gifts are of rare quality. She delves alike into the souls of her characters and into their more animal humanity, and contrasts their weaknesses with their strength in a striking manner.

The story is of the intensest interest.

F. F.

CONTENTS

PART I PAGE

SOLIS OCCASU 7

PART II

THE PARDON 81

PART III

USQUE AD MORTEM 245

To that glorious soul ELEONORA DUSE

AFTER THE PARDON

PART I

SOLIS OCCASU

I

Donna Maria Guasco Simonetti, gracefully stretched on the sofa and immersed in the many soft cushions of all kinds of fabrics and colours, was reading alone. A steady light, opalised by the clear transparent silk of a large shade, was diffused from the tall pedestal at her side, on which was placed a quaint lamp of chased silver, so that the reader’s head, with her thick mass of chestnut hair, attired almost in harmony with its natural lines in broad waves and rich braids, received exactly the clearness of the light.

The pale face, slightly rosy beneath the fineness of its complexion, the large eyes bent over the reading, the little composed mouth, without smile but without bitterness, were delicately illuminated. The soft, opaque silk, of a sheenless silver, of her dress of exquisite style, blended itself with the colour of the cushions, while the soft fleecy lace which adorned the dress seemed a sort of superfluity of the large sofa. Amidst stuff and lace the feet peeped out in shoes of gold cloth, slightly peculiar and bright, the caprice of a lady in her own home.

She was reading alone, and the slow rustling of the pages, which she turned with a gentle movement, alone broke the silence of the room.

The tiny clock on a small table at her side tinkled clearly, striking half-past nine. Donna Maria started slightly, gave a rapid glance at the clock, and, from a long habit of solitude, said to herself almost aloud--

“Always later, always a little later.”

Suppressing a sigh of impatience, and shrugging her beautiful shoulders, she resumed her reading. Her fine sense of hearing told her that outside in the hall the lock of the front door was rattling, and a slight blush rose to her cheeks and forehead.

A servant knocked at the door, entered without waiting for a reply, and silently offered the evening papers on a tray. She took them and placed them on the small table, scarcely bestowing a glance on him as he withdrew discreetly. Then, all of a sudden, a kind of spasm of grief, of anger and of annoyance, contracted her pure countenance, and with a half-angry, and yet suppressed cry, she exclaimed--

“How annoying! How annoying!”