ssness and
treachery. And was he, then, really guilty? Had he committed a crime
worthy of death?

Marietta was still motionless, hearkening to these whispered voices in
her breast.

"I will deliberate yet once more," said she, walking slowly through the
room, and sinking down upon the divan. "I will sit again in judgment
upon him, and my heart, which in the fury of its pain still loves him,
my heart shall be his judge."

And now she called back once again every thing to her remembrance. The
golden, sunny stream of her happy youth passed in review before her, and
the precious, blissful days of her first innocent love. She recalled all
the agony which this love had caused her, to whose strong bonds she had
ever returned, and which she had never been able to crush out of her
heart. She thought of the day in which she had first seen Ranuzi in
Berlin; how their hearts had found each other, and the old love, like a
radiant Phoenix, had risen from the ashes of the past, to open heaven
or hell to them both. She remembered with scornful agitation those happy
days of their new-found youthful love; she repeated the ardent oaths
of everlasting faith and love which Ranuzi had voluntarily offered; she
remembered how she had warned him, how she had declared that she would
revenge his treachery and inconstancy upon him; how indolently, how
carelessly he had laughed, and called her his tigress, his anaconda.
She then recalled how suddenly she had felt his love grow cold, how
anxiously she had looked around to discover what had changed him--she
could detect nothing. But an accident came to her assistance--a bad,
malicious accident. During the war there were no operas given in Berlin,
and Marietta was entirely unoccupied; for some time she had been giving
singing lessons--perhaps for distraction, perhaps to increase her
income; she had, however, carefully preserved this secret from
Ranuzi--in the unselfishness of her love she did not wish him to know
that she had need of gold, lest he might offer her assistance.

One of her first scholars was Camilla von Kleist, the daughter of Madame
du Trouffle, and soon teacher and scholar became warm friends. Camilla,
still banished by her mother to the solitude of the nursery, complained
to her new friend of the sorrows of her home and the weariness of her
life. Carried away by Marietta's sympathy and flattering friendship, the
young girl had complained to the stranger of her mother; in the desir