s were obtained, the
immense properties of the Romani family, in default of existing
kindred, would be handed over to the crown.

There was much more to the same effect, and I read it with the utmost
indifference. Why do they not search the Romani vault?--I thought
gloomily--they would find some authentic information there! But I know
the Neapolitans well; they are timorous and superstitious; they would
as soon hug a pestilence as explore a charnel house. One thing
gladdened me; it was the projected disposal of my fortune. The crown,
the Kingdom of Italy, was surely as noble an heir as a man could have!
I returned to my woodland hut with a strange peace on my soul.

As I told you at first, I am a dead man--the world, with its busy life
and aims, has naught to do with me. The tall trees, the birds, the
whispering grasses are my friends and my companions--they, and they
only, are sometimes the silent witnesses of the torturing fits of agony
that every now and then overwhelm me with bitterness. For I suffer
always. That is natural. Revenge is sweet!--but who shall paint the
horrors of memory? My vengeance now recoils upon my own head. I do not
complain of this--it is the law of compensation--it is just. I blame no
one--save Her, the woman who wrought my wrong. Dead as she is I do not
forgive her; I have tried to, but I cannot! Do men ever truly forgive
the women who ruin their lives? I doubt it. As for me, I feel that the
end is not yet--that when my soul is released from its earthly prison,
I shall still be doomed in some drear dim way to pursue her treacherous
flitting spirit over the black chasms of a hell darker than
Dante's--she in the likeness of a wandering flame--I as her haunting
shadow; she, flying before me in coward fear--I, hasting after her in
relentless wrath--and this forever and ever!

But I ask no pity--I need none. I punished the guilty, and in doing so
suffered more than they--that is as it must always be. I have no regret
and no remorse; only one thing troubles me--one little thing--a mere
foolish fancy! It conies upon me in the night, when the large-faced
moon looks at me from heaven. For the moon is grand in this climate;
she is like a golden-robed empress of all the worlds as she sweeps in
lustrous magnificence through the dense violet skies. I shut out her
radiance as much as I can; I close the blind at the narrow window of my
solitary forest cabin; and yet do what I will, one wide ray creeps in