ou, whom I knew a hot-blooded Italian, jealous as a
Turk, and maintaining at thy rapier's point that women were like the steel
of thy sword, so easily tarnished by rust, or evil breath, or neglect,
that no father or brother could be easy on the score of honor, until the
last of his name was well wedded, and that, too, to such as the wisdom of
her advisers should choose! I remember thee once saying thou couldst not
sleep soundly till thy sister was a wife or a nun."

"This was the language of boyhood and thoughtless youth, and bitterly
rebuked have I been for having used it. I wived a beauteous and noble
virgin, de Willading; but I much fear that, while my fair conduct in her
behalf won her respect and esteem, I was too late to win her love. It is a
fearful thing to enter on the solemn and grave ties of married life,
without enlisting in the cause of happiness the support of the judgment,
the fancy, the tastes, with the feelings that are dependent on them, and,
more than all, those wayward inclinations, whose workings too often baffle
human foresight. If the hopes of the ardent and generous themselves are
deceived in the uncertain lottery of wedlock, the victim will struggle
hard to maintain the delusion; but when the calculations of others are
parent to the evil, a natural inducement, that comes of the devil I fear,
prompts us to aggravate, instead of striving to lessen, the evil."

"Thou dost not speak of wedlock as one who found the condition happy, poor
Gaetano?"

"I have told thee what I fear was but too true," returned the Genoese,
with a heavy sigh. "My birth, vast means, and I trust a fair name, induced
the kinsmen of my wife to urge her to a union, that I have since had
reason to fear her feelings not lead her to form. I had a terrible ally
too in the acknowledged unworthiness of him who had captivated her young
fancy, and whom, as age brought reflection, her reason condemned. I was
accepted, therefore, as a cure to a bleeding heart and broken peace, and
my office, at the best, was not such as a good man could desire, or a
proud man tolerate. The unhappy Angiolina died in giving birth to her
first child, the unhappy son of whom I have told thee so much. She found
peace at last in the grave!"

"Thou hadst not time to give thy manly tenderness and noble qualities an
opportunity; else, my life on it, she would have come to love thee,
Gaetano, as all love thee who know thee!" returned the baron, warmly.

"Thanks