our sweet words, your assurances of love. And has it not been thus all
my life long? Have I not loved you since I was capable of thought and
feeling? Oh, do you remember our happy, glorious childhood, Carlo? those
days of sunshine, of fragrance, of flowers, of childish innocence?
Do you remember how often we have wandered hand in hand through the
Campagna, talking of God, of the stars, and of the flowers?--dreaming
of the time in which the angels and the stars would float down into our
hearts, and change the world into a paradise for us?"

"Ah! we had a bitter awaking from these fair dreams," said Ranuzi,
thoughtfully. "My father placed me in a Jesuit college; your mother sent
you to a cloister, that the nuns might make of you a public singer. We
had both our own career to make, Marietta; you upon the stage, I on the
confessor's stool. We were the poor children of poor parents, and
every path was closed to us but one, the church and the stage; our wise
parents knew this."

"And they separated us," sighed Marietta; "they crushed out the first
modest flame of our young, pure hearts, and made us an example of their
greed! Ah, Carlo; you can never know how much I suffered, how bitterly I
wept on your account. I was only twelve years old, but I loved you with
all the strength and ardor of a woman, and longed after you as after a
lost paradise. The nuns taught me to sing; and when my clear, rich voice
pealed through the church halls, no one knew that not God's image, but
yours, was in my heart; that I was worshipping you with my hymns of
praise and pious fervor. I knew that we were forever separated, could
never belong to each other, so I prayed to God to lend swift wings to
time, that we might become independent and free, I as a singer and you
as my honored confessor."

Ranuzi laughed merrily. "But fate was unpropitious," said he. "The
pious fathers discovered that I had too little eloquence to make a good
priest; in short, that I was better fitted to serve holy mother Church
upon the battle-field. When I was a man and sufficiently learned, they
obtained a commission for me as officer in the Pope's body-guard, and I
exchanged the black robe of my order for the gold-embroidered uniform."

"And you forgot me, Carlo? you did not let me know where you were? Five
years after, when I was engaged in Florence as a singer, I learned what
had become of you. I loved you always, Carlo; but what hope had I
ever to tell you so? we were