"OUR AMBITION IS TO RAISE THE FEMALE MIND OF ENGLAND TO ITS TRUE LEVEL." Dedication to the Queen. MARCH, 1833. THE LOVE-DEMON. "DARE such a creature aspire to love?" exclaimed the haughty young Condesa del Palma, glancing her dark eyes over the singular figure of the object of our con versation. who sat within hearing of my remarks, as they severally glanced at the stranger with feelings of pity, contempt, ridicule,. derision, incredulity, curiosity, fear, and suspicion. can "Truth," returned I, solemnly, never be ridiculous. Trust not to appearances,' is an adage that has been, alas! but too fatally proven by the unaccountable powers of yonder womanhater. The mocking-bird of the forest hath not more music and variety in its tones than there are in that man's voice. His look is fascination; the apparently accidental touch of his hand, enchantment; his whisper, infatuation; his breath, an embrace; his love, revenge. Beware of him, innocent and unsuspecting maidens. He is the Demon of Love." Seeing the object of my cautionary remarks approaching the part of the room where we sat, I rose from the sofa, and bowing solemnly to the party I had been I me, addressing, walked slowly away. Hearing my name softly pronounced behind ere I had reached the other side of the room, I turned round, and found I had been followed by the beautiful and childlike Federica, the youngest of the three orphan daughters of the house of Del Palma, and sole representatives on earth of that ancient and honourable line. “Personification of purity and loveliness," said I, taking her hand, and placing it within my arm, upon which it lay light as the either-down; "surely you cannot be in want of a partner for the dance, that thus you seek me out for a distinction that should not unsought be won?"" "I am indeed disengaged," she replied; "and perhaps if you will lead me into the waltzing circle, the conversation I seek with you will appear less particular, while we promenade together after the dance.” "Ah," said I, laughing, "where learnt thou that cunning, child? But where discretion and virtue is, cunning is most innocent, and, with a laudable end in view, oftentimes leads to most beneficial and important effects. But come, here is an opening in the circle," and we whirled in among the waltzers. As the slender, graceful, and etherial form of Federica flew around me, I felt as if dandling a playful child, whose present happiness consisted in being borne up in the air. Every faculty of her soul seemed absorbed in her favourite dance, and as we were now in the last quick movement, I gave full swing to her spirits, and round we went with the speed of lightning, until a clapping of hands, from the cheering lookers on, led me to perceive that we alone occupied the floor, when gently arresting the velocity of our circlings, we stopped, and I led her forth, panting, to a seat. "You will give me your arm, pre,ently," said the nearly exhausted girl, shaking the flaxen ringlets from her face and forehead back upon her shoulders, with a playful, infantile movement of the head, so irresistibly sweet and beautiful, that I could have pressed her radiant forehead against my bosom as I would that of a younger sister. "You will give me your arm presently, for I have lost myself in the waltz, as I always do, and had altogether forgotten that it was not to dance with you that I left my sisters after your mysterious warnings. But tell me now," continued she, assuming a solem "Is not nity of air that astonished me. that dwarfish demon you spoke of, the Count de Rusi?" "The Count de Rusi!" exclaimed I, starting, and looking at the youthful creature beside me, with a feeling of horror that I could not conceal. "What, alas! can you know of the Count de Rusi? The person I spoke of is the Count D'Elmano." "He is De Rusi, nevertheless, I am confident," said Federica. "Is he not? Tell me, for you know him, and it is most meet that I should know him too." "Misguided maiden," whispered I, placing my hand upon her arm, "what wouldst thou with De Rusi ? Avoid him, I beseech thee, I conjure thee, as thou wouldst a venomous and hideous serpent, whose very atmosphere is a pestilence attractive to certain destruction; for what of female form, old or young, that knows aught of De Rusi, can escape his mysterious and fatal power? Tell me what thou wouldst with the demon, for thy youth, loveliness, and vivacity, have endeared thee to me even as a beloved sister, and sooner than harm should touch one hair of thy beauteous head, I would tear the monster to pieces even where he sits-Ah, look! between thy sisters, as I live, and see! a welcome and caressed companion!" Federica started up with an emotion and an energy so altogether at variance with her years and usual character, as considerably to alarm me for the sanity of her intellect, and taking my arm, led me to a window recess opposite to where her sisters sat, and that was so curtained as to ensure comparative seclusion. "That then is the Count de Rusi," said she, in a compressed low tone, that seemed the unconscious breathing of a spirit suddenly awakened to some momentous exertion; "that then is the Count de Rusi, and the old prophecy of our house is no legend, and is about to be fulfilled, and I must become a murderess! Well, be it so-I am a Del Palma, and though the youngest of my race, and a child in years, and a virgin, and sinless of the crimes of the world, yet still a Del Palma, and must fulfil the destiny I am born to." 66 "What fearful words are these, distracted maiden?" exclaimed I, grasping her arm, surely thou art mad. What is this silly legend; and how art thou predoomed to crime so horrible?" "The legend is no folly, and the crime no sin," returned the metamorphosed being before me, gazing at the hideous form of D'Elmano, as he sat between her sisters, whose whole attention he seemed to absorb, while she repeated the following lines: When Del Palma hath no son Let Del Palma's house beware. "Whence these rhymes, maiden ?" said I, astonished at the singular coincidence of the present position of the rival houses of Del Palma and De Rusi described by them, and at the extraordinary change that had so suddenly turned the playful child, whom I had but now seen glowing with the exhilaration of innocent enjoyment, into a high-toned maiden, elevated to heroism by the excitement of coming evil to her house, and the enthusiasm of becoming the preserver of her house's honour. "Whence these rhymes? Or are they the outbreakings of a romantic and diseased imagination?" "They are written in our house's annals," answered the maiden, her eyes still transfixed upon the sofa where her sisters and the count sat in familiar and merry conversation. "And my sisters have ever regarded them with derision; while they have burnt themselves into my brain as a terrible truth and a fate inevitable-and now I feel their horrible realization. Oh! the monster is breathing his poison even now upon those incredulous and infatuated creatures; for see! how they bend forward with charmed attention to his discourseand, oh, God! he has now an arm around each-and look! merciful Heaven! both are pressed to his hideous bosom !" The excited and shocked maiden swooned in my arms. Her sight had not deceived her; for the count, in his wonted enthusiasm and energy in the relation of some fictitious tale, had indeed clasped the condesa and her sister for a second in his arms; and so sudden and natural had been the movement, and so absorbed were they in his narrative, that they were perfectly unconscious of its impropriety. Such achievements of the count were familiar to me, and I could only think of the beauteous and lifeless creature that lay like a corpse upon my bosom. Throwing up the window to admit the air, I called upon those about me for assistance. In a few moments, after the usual restoratives had been applied, Federica opened her eyes, and encountered those of the count, who, with her sisters, was kneeling beside her. He had one of her hands in both of his, and he pressed it tenderly as he observed her gradually restored to animation. "Thou art not yet in heaven, beauteous angel," whispered the count; "but be alarmed not, for all are friends around thee." She gazed upon him for a moment with evident and most uncontrollable disgust; and feeling about her girdle as for a dagger, again swooned away into utter lifelessness. It was the first time in the life of the count that the eye of woman had been averted from him, while her hand was pressed in his, and the baneful influence of his eye and tongue had been exerted for the purpose of attraction. He started to his feet, and folding his unusually long and skinny arms over his contracted and fowl-like breast, scowled upon the lifeless figure before him with a smile of the most malignant determination of vengeance. In a moment, however, he resumed his usual quiet and abstracted manner, and patiently watched at a distance the result of the renewed applications for again restoring the beauteous Federica to animation. The Count D'Elmano, which title was one of the many appertaining to the house of De Rusi, was of very diminutive stature, considerably deformed in person, and of irregular and remarkably peculiar features. His forehead was exceedingly low and receding, and nearly covered with an outskirt of black eyebrow, which, thickly commingling over an aquiline nose, reached up nearly to the lowermost verge of the hair of his head. The brows themselves were uncommonly long and highly arched, and gave a peculiar expression to eyes of a gray so dark, that, under different moods of feeling, they might be taken for every variety in shade of black, blue, or brown. An uncommonly large mouth displayed a degree that these varied advantages of manner and intellect tended to throw a veil over his personal defects, they also served the purpose of facilitating the execution of all the impulses of a nature fierce, dark, impenetrable, and remorseless. Such was the Count D'Elmano; whose influence, up to the period of the present narrative, no woman, young or old, of high or low degree, was ever known to resist. What then must have been the astonishment, mortification, and impulses such a man would receive the evident, avowed, and public demonstration of disgust and hatred from such a being as Federica!-From that moment he marked her for an early victim. The poor girl, on being again restored to consciousness, was conveyed home by her sisters and attendants. The sudden appearance of the count at the Court of Madrid, from whence he had absented himself some years, was not without an object. Shut up one evening in the library of his favourite castle in Andalusia, indulging his passion for hunting up and perusing the ancient and musty records of his family, he discovered an almost decayed parchment, the nearly obliterated burthen of which was the following prophecy, personal to himself, and professing to foretel imminent danger to him, and the contingent extinction of his house: set of teeth which, though extremely white, were irregular, with a frontal projection of a most remarkable description, and which once seen could never be forgotten. His ears, arms, and legs, were of a length singularly disproportionate to his body. His hands and feet were of a most enormous size, the latter displaying almost as much of heel as of instep. His whole personal appearance denoted the most decided deformity; while his fascinating address, flexibility of feature, modulation of voice, versatility of accomplishment, universa-deep, dark, and dangerous,' with which lity of information, depth of thought, felicity of expression, readiness of wit, and uniform attention to each and all, indicated the man of birth, education, genius, and high breeding. Subject in his boyish days to the pity, taunts, or derision of his associates, and to the hootings of the low and vulgar of his own age, he was deeply impressed with the disadvantages of a deformed person, and became misanthropic and revengeful. At a later period, when the superiority of his intellect and the variety of his attainments and accomplishments, together with his high rank, rendered him an object of interest and envy to his compeers, and of fear and respect and wonder to his inferiors, and he became sensible of the importance which nature and fortune had combined to give him in society, despite the disadvantages of person, he determined to cultivate every faculty of his soul, in order to wreak his vengeance upon that world which in his days of boyhood had made him feel so cruelly the miseries of bodily deformity. As he had been more especially the aversion of females in his boyhood, he particularly resolved to study the nature of the sex, and the accomplishments and arts that tend most to attract their attention and awake their sympathies, that he might the more successfully, and at the same time, gratify the spirit of revenge he entertained against them, as well as the ardent and uncontrollable passion for them that nature had implanted in his bosom. These resolutions being adhered to with the strictest perseverance, and most indefatigable zeal, were attended with a success that seemed altogether supernatural, and was indeed considered to be so by others than the uneducated and inexperienced. In short he was a living personification of the superiority of mind over matter-of education and accomplishment over the hideousness of personal deformity. So that in the same Let De Rusi's house beware As is generally the case with men of vicious propensities and strong passions, the count was exceedingly superstitious, although extremely anxious to be thought incapable of such a slavish bias, and really desirous by both mental and personal bravery to shake off the degrading apprehension or conviction. After deeply pondering for some days over the fearful prophecy, the accidental discovery of which struck him as being equally remarkable The Love-Demon. with the existence and preservation of the prediction itself, which so correctly anticipated the then precise situation of his house, being, as he was, a dwarf, and the sole living representative of its honours, and the only heirs of Del Palma being three fair orphan daughters. He resolved, or was perhaps unconsciously led, between conflicting feelings of derision and fear, to seek the threatened impending danger, and at once to test the truth or falsity of the monkish or bardic legend. At the same time he felt the ancient hatred of his race against their rival house revive in his bosom, and mingle with his own vindictive feelings of revenge upon all that bore the hated, yet beloved, form of woman. With such feelings and intentions the count made his sudden appearance at Madrid, with a determination to bring the point at issue between him and the prophecy to a speedy decision. A few weeks after his first interview with the orphans of Del Palma, as recounted in the beginning of this narrative, the condesa gave a grand entertainment at her palace, to which the count was especially invited. In vain had the entreaties, prayers, and warnings of Federica been daily and hourly poured into the ears of her sisters-in vain had she repeated the words of the ancient prophecy concerning their danger from the dwarfish heir of De Rusi, and of her determination to act, on her own behalf, the predicted part that became a Del Palma, should the monster breathe one word of his hateful passion to herself. The poison that had been inhaled by them at their first interview, had, in frequent subsequent intercourse, penetrated to their hearts, and they were now only at the mercy of the Count de Rusi. Federica saw that one part of the prediction was but too truly verified, and she awaited with patience, resignation, and resolve, to fulfil that portion of it that depended on her own energy. The count had hitherto confined his attentions to her to the ordinary civilities of the drawing-room, in which, however, her vigilance and penetration had quickly detected that peculiar air of subdued sentiment and silent devotion, that led her to expect a speedy open avowal of his feelings towards her, and to be the more constantly prepared for the extraordinary part that she felt herself destined to act on such a disclosure. No indication, however, of such high and fearful resolve was discernible in the features and manner of Federica, who trod the lighted halls of her fathers with an air of calm composure, at least, if not with her wonted lightness of heart and elasticity of step. At a late period in the evening, when the company had returned from the banquet-room to the drawing-rooms, and were promenading to a popular march, preparatory to renewing the pleasures of the dance, the Count de Rusi, bowing to the Condesa and Manuela, offered his arm to Federica; a courtesy which, with a slight start and an almost imperceptible shudder, she felt herself bound to accept. "Nature," whispered the count, with a sigh, "has denied me the requisites of a dancer; but if thou wilt consider thyself, fair Federica, as partner of mine in conversation during the continuance of the first waltz, I shall esteem it a happiness that more than compensates for a whole life of deprivation of such an agreeable and social accomplishment." My time and attention, my lord count," replied Federica, "are equally at thy disposal; but not so my reason, which revolts at unmeaning words of compliment.' "Nay, wrong me not, sweet caviller," returned De Rusi, placing his hand lightly, for a moment, on that of Federica, which lay upon, yet scarcely touched, his arm, "for thy lovely presence has an influence like that of the magic within the palace of truth, which compels the tongue to tell what the heart feels.' "Flattery from thee to me is dangerous, my lord count, and I would warn thee beware of it, and speak of things reasonable and safe," returned Federica, trembling at the fearful approach of all that her bosom dreaded. |