t sufficiently share in his dreams of a renewed Roman Republic,
or his in hatred of the Byzantines; in whom he sees the deadly enemies,
not only of his family, but of Italy. Valeria, too, soon bestowed her
friendship upon me, and who knows if at that time this friendship and
her reverence to her father's wishes would not have sufficed to induce
her to accept my love. But I thank--shall I say God or Fate?--that this
did not happen. To sacrifice Valeria to a married life of indifference
would have been a sacrilege. I do not know what strange feeling
prevented me from speaking the word, which, at that time, would have
made her mine. I loved her deeply; but each time that I was about to
take courage and sue to her father for her hand, a feeling crept over
me as if I were trespassing on another's property; as if I were not
worthy of her, or not intended for her; and I was silent and controlled
my beating heart. One day, at the sixth hour--it was sultry and the sun
scorched both land and sea--I went to seek coolness and shade in the
grotto of the garden. I entered through the oleander-bushes. There
Valeria reposed upon a soft, mossy bank, one hand resting upon her
gently-heaving bosom, the other placed beneath her head, which was
still crowned with a wreath of asphodels worn during the evening meal.
I stood before her trembling; she had never looked so lovely. I bent
over her, lost in admiration; my heart beat quickly. I bent still
lower, and would have kissed her delicate rosy mouth, but all at once a
thought oppressed me: what you are about to do is a robbery! Totila! my
whole soul cried within me, and as gently as I had come I left her.
Totila! why had I never thought of him before? I reproached myself for
having almost forgotten the brother of my heart in my new happiness.
The next day I returned to Neapolis to fetch him. I praised the beauty
of the maiden, but I could not prevail on myself to tell him of my
love. I preferred that he should come and find it out for himself. On
our arrival at the villa we did not find Valeria in the house. So I led
Totila into the garden--Valeria is passionately fond of flowers--and as
we issued from an avenue, she appeared before us in all her dazzling
beauty. She was standing before a statue of her father and crowning it
with freshly-plucked roses, which she held heaped up in a fold of her
tunic.

"It was a surprisingly beautiful picture--this lovely girl, framed in
the dark green of the