Page:Francesca Carrara 3.pdf/15

I look back to our too happy days in Italy, when I trusted that I was beloved, as if the rest of my life had been a vision, and only that brief space reality. How many new feelings then awoke within me! Till then I knew not how to enjoy—a sudden loveliness seemed to animate all nature; but it was from my own fresh and glad hopes that it came. Ah! did I not love him then? I cannot imagine sorrow or suffering that I could not have endured for his sake,—I never even dreamed of a separate future! How well I recollect the delight with which I listened to my own voice, when I strove to utter words of his language! And now I speak that tongue as if it were mine own,—I stand upon his native soil,—I can see in the distance those halls he so often described,—and yet I know that we are parted, and for ever—parted by his own false tongue and fickle mind! Alas, alas! it is not only his loss for which I weep—nay, for that I do not weep—pride alone would keep me from weeping for one whom I scorn; but I do weep over the warm feelings, the believing hopes—all that was good and kind in my nature, with which he tampered but to destroy. Never again can I love; for in whom could I trust and confide as I did in him who deceived me? The contrast between my past and present is too bitter.