“No, no,” returned the boy, “urge me not to depart—father, I will remain and share thy fate.” He threw himself as he spoke upon the bosom of the old man who pressed him in his feeble arms.—“And oh! father, I _cannot_ go hence—I am weak—I am ill—father I die of hunger.”
An expression of keen anguish passed over the face of Zampieri, and he pushed his child from him.
“Boy,” he cried, “ask me not for bread—thou knowest I have it not. Have I not been laboring for thee—for thy wealth—for thy aggrandizement—ingrate—bread sayest thou—thou shalt have gold, boy, gold.”
The intellect of the adept wandered, and he laughed wildly. The large, soft, lustrous eyes of Adolf swam in tears, and his heart trembled within his bosom. With weak steps he retreated to the foot of the bed, and kneeling there, hid his face on his folded arms, and wept.
“Life!” he muttered, “how have I wasted thee. Time! Thou art no longer mine. Would that I could redeem thee—but it is too late. Zillia, my murdered love! Thou art avenged. I left thy fond and simple affections for the depths of mysterious research. I madly thought to realise the dreams of illimitable wealth. Vain and destructive ambition. For thy sake have I riven asunder every tie.”
The voice of the old man ceased, and the sobs of the child too were silenced—perchance in sleep.
The violence of the tempest had subsided, and all was still; save that the blast still shrieked at intervals by, making the old casements rattle as it passed—and the thunder muttered low at a distance.
The hours rolled on. A faint grey light dawned in the east. The clouds broken in heavy masses, rolled rapidly onward obscuring and revealing, as they flew, the few bright stars that appeared far beyond this scene of petty turmoil, shining on, in their own unchanging, never ending harmony.
And now the dawn strengthened, and the stars grew pale. The last blue flickering flame, that wandered _ignus-fatuus_ like, over the surface of the dying charcoal, had spent itself; and the wasting lamp looked ghastly in the beams of rising day.
A noise was heard at the lonely portal. It was that of forcible entrance, and came harshly over the deep silence that reigned within. Footsteps approached, not such as told the drawing near of a friend, the light, soft step of sympathy with sorrow. No. They heralded force and violence—bond and imprisonment—racks and torture.