The Heir of Mondolfo by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Read Free Book Online

to her murderer. Yet--is she dead? I kneel--I call you
father--I appeal to that savage heart--I take in peace that hand
that often struck me, and now has dealt the death-blow--oh, tell
me, does she yet live?"
    Fernando seized on this interval of calm to relate his story. He
told the simple truth; but could such a tale gain belief? It
awakened the wildest rage in poor Ludovico's heart. He doubted
not that Viola had been murdered; and, after every expression of
despair and hatred, he bade his father seek his heir among the
clods of the earth, for that such he should soon become, and rushed
from his presence.
    He wandered to the cottage, he searched the country round, he
heard the tale of those who had witnessed any part of the carrying
off of his Viola. He went to Salerno. He heard the tale there told
with the most determined incredulity. It was the tale, he doubted
not, that his father forged to free himself from accusation, and to
throw an impenetrable veil over the destruction of Viola.
    His quick imagination made out for itself the scene of her
death. The very house in which she had been confined had at the
extremity of it a tower jutting out over the sea; a river flowed at
its base, making its confluence with the ocean deep and dark. He
was convinced that the fatal scene had been acted there. He mounted
the tower; the higher room was windowless, the iron grates of the
windows had for some cause been recently taken out. He was
persuaded that Viola and her child had been thrown from that window
into the deep and gurgling waters below.
    He resolved to die! In those days of simple Catholic faith,
suicide was contemplated with horror. But there were other means
almost as sure. He would go a pilgrim to the Holy Land, and fight
and die beneath the walls of Jerusalem. Rash and energetic, his
purpose was no sooner formed than he hastened to put it in
execution. He procured a pilgrim's weeds at Salerno, and at
midnight, advising none of his intentions, he left that city, and
proceeded southward. Alternate rage and grief swelled his heart.
Rage at length died away. She whose murderer he execrated was an
angel in Heaven, looking down on him, and he in the Holy Land would
win his right to join her. Tender grief dimmed his eyes. The
world's great theater closed before him-of all its trappings
his pilgrim's cloak was alone gorgeous, his pilgrim's staff
the only scepter--they were the symbols and signs of the power he
possessed beyond the earth, and the pledges of his union with
Viola. He bent his steps toward Brundusium.4 He walked on fast, as
if he grudged all space and time that lay between him and his goal.
Dawn awakened the earth and he proceeded on his way. The sun of
noon darted its ray upon him, but his march was uninterrupted. He
entered a pine wood, and, following the track of flocks, he heard
the murmurs of a fountain. Oppressed with thirst, he hastened
toward it. The water welled up from the ground and filled a natural
basin; flowers grew on its banks and looked on the waters
unreflected, for the stream paused not, but whirled round and
round, spending its superabundance in a small rivulet that, dancing
over stones and glancing in the sun, went on its way to its
eternity--the sea. The trees had retreated from the mountain, and
formed a circle about it; the grass was green and fresh, starred
with summer flowers. At one extremity was a silent pool that formed
a strange contrast with the fountain that, ever in motion, showed
no shape, and reflected only the color of the objects around it.
The pool reflected the scene with greater distinctness and beauty
than its real existence. The trees stood distinct, the ambient air
between, all grouped and pictured by the hand of a divine artist.
Ludovico drank from the fount, and then approached the pool. He
looked with half wonder on the scene depicted there. A bird now
flitted across in the air, and its form, feathers, and motion, were
shown in the waters. An ass emerged from among the