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before Christ by Saba, surnamed Pistio, elder broth Nimrod, and Noah's great grandson-what was th me? I bade him push on, through the midday sun, ing even in October, to the Tesoretto of the Valdica Leading by the hand a lovely little sister, whom I here call Mary, Désirée at the sound of wheels ran to come me in the hall. My driver, struck by the saint beauty of the fair English children, called out, I remer 'Vergine santissima, che miracolo, Madonna dell' Umi (a venerated image at Pistoia); but I remember not more of the scene, except that exquisite sense of rac and confusing happiness which accompanied always, effaced by excess of joy, the first moments with Désirée

XXVIII We spent the soon-closing afternoon in a c nut wood above the white Tesoretto. This grove, slop four hundred feet up from the torrent, appeared like a nat temple; a vast labyrinth of almost equal columns, as read of the mosque of Cordova; and, like that, vau over at the same elevation (reckoning from the immed ground-level) throughout, but with curve and fretwor even more than Arabian fancy. The high-channe stems, scarcely narrowing for forty feet, allowed our eye range unimpeded to the topmost crest, where the last le age was lighted with a silver brilliance; or, if direc before the sun, leafage and boughs seemed dark with cessive glory. Here and there above us, as we climbed sliding cliff with delight, the wind that could not reach stirred in the extreme pinnacles and shook them in feathery sparkles; and high, then, over the highest boug we saw the pale trembling of the crystalline heavens. Furth on and nearer the summit, as we seemed by measurable a vances to approach the sun, stars, green and golden, blaz

brother of as this to un, glowIdicampo. I shall n to welSaint-like member, Umiltà'! nothing radiant ys, and

sirée.

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flickeringly amongst the leaves, or at any more dividing
gust pierced as with sudden radiancies, fitful shafts :-
we looked at each other with laughing dazzling eyes, and
turning for relief to the green shade, traced the lightning
lines which, in silent swiftness of curvature, ran over grey
rock, and woodbine net, and the first fallen autumnal leaves
that strewed our Vallombrosa. God seems expressly to
have created such scenes that in their largess of beauty
they might alone suffice to still the sighs, and efface for a
moment the regretful remembrance of His creatures; to
ransom existing pain, and hint a recoverable Paradise. But
by Désirée's dear side the chesnut grove of Valdicampo
was my present Eden. That suppression of the heart
which joy delights in', I had not yet learned to feel; we
were sensible indeed of a 'spirit in the woods', but our
talk was on the gay experiences of a summer in Italy; of
what I had seen in Naples and Rome; of the parents and
sisters lately left in Florence. A thousand forgotten words
rang through the holy halls', I remember so well; and
as Désirée's brave simple spirit led her on to thread every
waterbreak and attempt all rocks of promising difficulty,
what scramblings followed, what precious instants of assist-
ance, what shouts and silver accents of divine and inex-
tinguishable laughter! In her wild caprice of gaiety she
seemed one of the water fairies of some northern forest, in-
toxicated with the deep fresh breath of the woods; she
should have been crowned, I thought, with mint and lake-
lilies: the hem of her dress at least, like the Nixes', was
wet with struggling up the beds of runlet torrents, and
gathering the ferns and reeds and golden St. John's wort
which feathered every bend and pool where the waters
grew level and lingered. Each instant our words ran

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more riot, till hand in hand we reached a stone on w below the lily shield of Florence, was written the d

FEDELE LEALE', and over it saw Valdarno at a gl one hollow of hot haze to the hills beyond Fiesole were silenced.

XXIX That evening, when, after Désirée had ro the Tuscan echoes with old-remembered English airs the manly pathos of Handel, through a long corridor reached my room, many childish thoughts, but amo them the first conscious thoughts for life, crowded on n the darkness. 'God's glory, watchfulness', has been John Henry Newman touchingly called 'man's dise but I was far from this bitter-this, I trust, not univ experience: to me, at least, the silences of the night then filled with memories of more than earthly sweetness wake from the death of sleep, and at one instant's thou be with Désirée, appeared often almost to equal the mi of a resurrection. And to this pleasure was here added exquisite sense that not only was I lying within shelt the same house, but that, by the fact of her parents' abse that house might be considered her's: there was ness in the walls, and peace in the timbers :- the furniture, I extravagantly thought, had something sa in it a certain sweet personality. Now, however, c the heart-quickening conviction, shouted by many voice once-by that day's delight in her undivided compani ship, by growing sensations of life, by approaching entra on what I might not unjustly call life itself, and loud and purest, by the voice of love; that though there co be but two answers, and one-I could not think of that yet it might be timely time to speak; that the hour struck; that, for fear of risking all, I must risk somethi

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Silent I had hitherto been, in part from the mere fact of
youth, in part from a familiarity dating almost before
youth itself. There seemed no room to say one morning,
Love me more than yesterday. Désirée was in truth so
identified with every thought-so incorporated, I might say,
in the actual texture of my heart- so much myself— that
I hardly had words to address her. Thus circumstanced,
even could I have doubted her love, had I not this day
proof the strongest and the most exquisitely winning of
her frank and confiding affection, of interest which entrusted
me with every incident of her life, and asked my story in
return, her soul open to mine, and no veil interposed; how
should I ask more, or how ask at all? Ah! for such
requests, even although at last we say something, not know-
ing what we say, there are no human words: how compass
the Infinite through the Finite? ... Feal and Leal should
be heart's device:-My career of work now opening, and
my
inaugurated by hours of happiness so transcendent, should
prove me worthier my desire, and my eyes watch every
hint of its accomplishment. It was enough, meanwhile, to
be sure that no one held a dearer place in her true sisterly
affection,—to triumph in the security of passion which,
as the wise of old said of wisdom, brought with it first
silence, and then peace.

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XXX Stormy and pale,' to quote a song not then written, arose the next morning. For a half-hour's interval the little Mary was on my knee: she praised her sister with a child's warm-hearted admiration; her eyes brightened at my answer; she rewarded me with kisses for loving Désirée. Then my passionate evocations, which had already a hundred times traversed the chesnut stair, appeared to have fulfilled their innocent mission; and

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'Paradise', as Wordsworth has it (under shield of great calm spirit let me shelter myself from the hin excess), 'by the simple opening of a door, let itself upon me'. Again came the long discourse on a thous household and summer memories; again the mut 'smile when hearts are of each other sure'; again impulse to speak; again the terror with which Love rec from the syllable Love-the mysterious Anteros of E Meantime rain fell fast, and the sun-dried Ombr breathed a thanksgiving in vaporous exhalations; the r and swirl of its waters deepened, and, listening at an of window, we heard fresh cataracts burst into life a answer from the heart of the forest ravines above us.

But the hour for starting to meet the diligence at summit of the pass had arrived; their English nurse monstrated to no purpose; Désirée, with her frank si plicity, would accompany me to the roadshed at La Collin That drive is among the treasures of memory I do not en him who does not envy. Why, however, is recollectio clear as if on familiar matters of to-day in recalling t local circumstances of happiness, silent on the words whi were one main portion (Désirée's simple presence, and Hop the other) of that felicity? As by the bridge of Guad we drove slowly up the winding way, the mist was ofte fitfully withdrawn, and we saw the massy chesnut dome the keen cypress spires, the shoulders of gleaming pi through veils of silver. The hill-haze, by degrees meltin in fine fringes, went aloft into the clouds of the uppe sky, and the blue now opened through a torn silke chasm like a lake suspended, and with its own swanlik specks of vapour, in soft inversion' above us. The suddenly the heaven cleared-sunbeams travelling from

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