hority, and to rule the household and the court as a mistress. Love
of power had now become her ruling passion, and fierce and headstrong
was the will hidden under that brilliant and winning exterior. It was
like a wild beast, slumbering behind a bank of roses.

Far different, both in person and character, was the neglected Edith,
who grew up in the imperial court like a sweet wild-flower, overlooked
when the gorgeous exotic is nigh. Her slender girlish figure, with its
undeveloped grace; her airy step; her color, coming and going with the
varying feelings of her quick sensibility, like the delicate pink clouds
at sunset; her soft brown hair, waving around a face of child-like
purity and womanly tenderness: and her large gray eye, from whose
transparent depths an earnest and loving spirit looked out upon the
world--these were not the traits to win admiration in a sensual,
splendor-loving court, where all acknowledged the sway of Clotilda. Her
father lavished the whole of his affection upon his elder daughter: the
latter seldom noticed her, and thought her more fit for a nunnery or for
a peasant's cottage, than for the station of a princess. And so Edith
grew to womanhood, unspoiled by flattery--that incense was reserved for
Clotilda's shrine. Not in that crowd of selfish courtiers and of worldly
women, wholly given up to dress and gayety, could the refinement and
simplicity of the gentle Edith be appreciated. She was with them, but
not of them: hers was the loneliness most felt when in a crowd, the want
of congenial companionship. Her unassuming modesty and poor opinion of
her own worth, saved her heart from the sharp pangs of envy at the
thought of her sister's superiority: and thus, even in the impure
atmosphere of the palace, did this artless maiden live on, humbly
looking up to one infinitely her inferior, and dwelling in love and
peace. Her greatest enjoyments were of a kind despised by Clotilda. It
was her delight to steal away from the gay assembly, where she was never
missed, and to pore over the romantic lays of troubadours and monkish
legends, and to make to herself a world, different from the one in which
her lot was cast. Then she would be the lowly peasant-girl, singing
while she worked, beloved by those for whom she toiled, and rising
before the sun to deck the shrine of the Virgin with flowers. Or, if she
were a princess, she lived but to bless and to relieve her people, and
possessed the power of scatteri