so far away from each other, and poverty
separated us so widely. I must first become rich, you must make your
career. Only then might we hope to belong to each other. I waited and
was silent."

"You waited and were silent till you forgot me," said Ranuzi, playing
carelessly with her long, soft curls; "and, having forgotten me, you
discovered that Signer Taliazuchi was a tolerably pretty fellow, whom it
was quite possible to love."

"Taliazuchi understood how to flatter my vanity," said she, gloomily;
"he wrote beautiful and glowing poems in my praise, which were printed
and read not only in Florence, but throughout all Italy. When he
declared his love and pleaded for my hand, I thought, if I refused him,
he would persecute me and hate me; that mockery and ridicule would take
the place of the enthusiastic hymns in my praise, with which Italy
then resounded. I was too ambitious to submit to this, and had not
the courage to refuse him, so I became his wife, and in becoming so,
I abhorred him, and I swore to make him atone for having forced me to
become so."

"But this force consisted only in hymns of praise and favorable
criticisms," said Ranuzi, quietly.

"I have kept my oath," said Marietta; "I have made him atone for what
he has done, and I have often thought that, when afterward compelled to
write poems in my favor, he cursed me in his heart; he would gladly have
crushed me by his criticisms, but that my fame was a fountain of gold
for him, which he dared not exhaust or dry up. But my voice had been
injured by too much straining, and a veil soon fell upon it. I could but
regard it as great good fortune when Count Algarotti proposed to me
to take the second place as singer in Berlin; this promised to be more
profitable, as the count carelessly offered Taliazuchi a place in the
opera troupe as writer. So I left my beautiful Italy; I left you to
amass gold in this cold north. And now, I no longer repent; I rejoice!
I have found you again--you, the beloved of my youth--you, my youth
itself. Oh, Heaven! never will I forget the day when I saw you passing.
I knew you in spite of the uniform, in spite of the many years which
had passed since we met. I knew you; and not my lips only, but my heart,
uttered that loud cry which caused you to look up, my Carlo. And now
you recognized me and stretched your hands out to me, and I would have
sprung to you from the window, had not Taliazuchi held me back. I cried
out, 'It is Ranu