re is Castruccio?" asked Maltravers.

"In his boat on the lake," replied Teresa. "He will be inconsolable
at your departure: you are the only person he can understand, or who
understand him; the only person in Italy--I had almost said in the whole
world."

"Well, we shall meet at dinner," said Ernest; "meanwhile let me prevail
on you to accompany me to the _Pliniana_. I wish to say farewell to that
crystal spring."

Teresa, delighted at any excursion, readily consented.

"And I too, mamma," cried the child; "and my little sister?"

"Oh, certainly," said Maltravers, speaking for the parents.

So the party was soon ready, and they pushed off in the clear genial
noontide (for November in Italy is as early as September in the North)
across the sparkling and dimpled waters. The children prattled, and the
grown-up people talked on a thousand matters. It was a pleasant day,
that last day at Como! For the farewells of friendship have indeed
something of the melancholy, but not the anguish, of those of love.
Perhaps it would be better if we could get rid of love altogether. Life
would go on smoother and happier without it. Friendship is the wine of
existence, but love is the dram-drinking.

When they returned, they found Castruccio seated on the lawn. He did not
appear so much dejected at the prospect of Ernest's departure as Teresa
had anticipated; for Castruccio Cesarini was a very jealous man, and he
had lately been chagrined and discontented with seeing the delight that
the De Montaignes took in Ernest's society.

"Why is this?" he often asked himself; "why are they more pleased with
this stranger's society than mine? My ideas are as fresh, as original;
I have as much genius, yet even my dry brother-in-law allows _his_
talents, and predicts that _he_ will be an eminent man! while
_I_--No!--one is not a prophet in one's own country!"

Unhappy man! his mind bore all the rank weeds of the morbid poetical
character, and the weeds choked up the flowers that the soil, properly
cultivated, should alone bear. Yet that crisis in life awaited
Castruccio, in which a sensitive and poetical man is made or marred; the
crisis in which a sentiment is replaced by the passions--in which love
for some real object gathers the scattered rays of the heart into a
focus: out of that ordeal he might pass a purer and manlier being--so
Maltravers often hoped. Maltravers then little thought how closely
connected with his own fate was to be th