She, too, on her part, had an exhaustless theme in telling how, by degrees, _his_ soul had, as it were, become a part of hers; how every emotion in his own mind, by an imperceptible and view-less magnetism, awakened hers to action. The simplest speech had a charm for him; there was music in her voice; her thoughts were dimless mirrors reflecting the spirituality of her soul; to use his own language, "each word was the spray of her heart, which mirrored in its sparkling globule all the beauty and none of the defects of the world around it!" The days glided by upon the swift pinions lent by unclouded happiness.
They lived in an atmosphere where all was of the past, save their love and their hopes; the multitude of traffickers and idlers that crossed their daily path were as unheeded shadows; they mingled only with beings of other times. Their friends--for the friends of the scholar became those of the maiden--were Homer and Virgil, Tasso and Marino, the graceful Catullus, and the rough, but noble-tongued Lucretius! They strolled in imagination through Ilion's Scæn gate, along the luxuriant banks of her winding rivers, and lay down to repose beneath her wild and broad-leaved fig-tree. And then, when they had gathered around them the heroes and the poets of past and buried ages, unlike Alaric, they would weigh the myrtle crown against the laurel wreath, and see glory kick the beam!
Could year after year of their lives have rolled away with such feelings and amid such employments, they would have indeed been blessed! But no! Alas! that could not be! Love, and youth, and hope, are but the sun-fringe of the cloud of life, the flame that gilds the bark it consumes, the lightning flashes that foretell a rent and shattered heart! For love, if no outward influences assail (or assailing, are conquered and driven back), there is custom, that slow, insidious lullaby, singing in Morphean tones unceasingly, till, wearied and overcome, _that_ passion, that would have repelled a visible foe, sinks at his post in quietness--asleep!
It came! It burst upon them without a warning! Fate had suspended a sword above their heads; but, unlike the tyrant's envious favorite, they saw it not ere it fell! It came--crushing and blighting the flowers that had blossomed for them, and, tearing their young hearts from the beautiful dream-world in which they revelled, brought them back to the harsh and dull and cold realities of this! The father of the lover was suddenly arrested by the myrmidons of the terrible Council of Ten. It was discovered he was the head of a wide-spread conspiracy against the state, and the expiration of the month of his arrest saw the noble and powerful family of Zanotti exiles--its lord sent forth with the boon of life, but with ruined fortunes and a tarnished name--its heir an outcast, though spotless of a single crime.