inally interrupted. This change came to me, as
surely as it comes to all. One day--how well I remember it!--one sultry
evening toward the end of May, 1881, I was in Naples. I had passed the
afternoon in my yacht, idly and slowly sailing over the bay, availing
myself of what little wind there was. Guido's absence (he had gone to
Rome on a visit of some weeks' duration) rendered me somewhat of a
solitary, and as my light craft ran into harbor, I found myself in a
pensive, half-uncertain mood, which brought with it its own depression.
The few sailors who manned my vessel dispersed right and left as soon
as they were landed--each to his own favorite haunts of pleasure or
dissipation--but I was in no humor to be easily amused. Though I had
plenty of acquaintance in the city, I cared little for such
entertainment as they could offer me. As I strolled along through one
of the principal streets, considering whether or not I should return on
foot to my own dwelling on the heights, I heard a sound of singing, and
perceived in the distance a glimmer of white robes. It was the Month of
Mary, and I at once concluded that this must be an approaching
Procession of the Virgin. Half in idleness, half in curiosity, I stood
still and waited. The singing voices came nearer and nearer--I saw the
priests, the acolytes, the swinging gold censers heavy with fragrance,
the flaring candles, the snowy veils of children and girls--and then
all suddenly the picturesque beauty of the scene danced before my eyes
in a whirling blur of brilliancy and color from which looked forth--one
face! One face beaming out like a star from a cloud of amber
tresses--one face of rose-tinted, childlike loveliness--a loveliness
absolutely perfect, lighted up by two luminous eyes, large and black as
night--one face in which the small, curved mouth smiled half
provokingly, half sweetly! I gazed and gazed again, dazzled and
excited, beauty makes such fools of us all! This was a woman--one of
the sex I mistrusted and avoided--a woman in the earliest spring of her
youth, a girl of fifteen or sixteen at the utmost. Her veil had been
thrown back by accident or design, and for one brief moment I drank in
that soul-tempting glance, that witch-like smile! The procession
passed--the vision faded--but in that breath of time one epoch of my
life had closed forever, and another had begun!

* * * * *

Of course I married her. We Neapolitans lose no time in