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THERESA ABRUZZI. 



The joy of Mantua was great and undissembled at the approach- 

 ing nuptials of the bravest of her sons with the fairest and most 

 amiable of her daughters. Marco, the only child of the widowed 

 Marquis Petroni, had served under the viceroy Beauharnois, with 

 honor to himself and credit to his native city, and had even 

 attracted the particular observation of the penetrating and sagaci- 

 ous Napoleon, by his coolness and intrepidity on several occasions 

 of great difficulty and peril. The youth, in common with most 

 of his compatriots, had regarded the Emperor as the destined 

 emancipator of his country from her long slumber of thraldom 

 and abasement, but a clearer knowledge of the character and 

 views of that ambitious and selfish commander had long taught 

 him the fallacy of his hopes ; when the reverses consequent on 

 the battle of Leipsic dissolved the proud but baseless fabric of 

 despotism, and restored the young warrior to the arms of a fond 

 and doating father. The admiration that greeted his return to 

 Mantua was loud and deserved. Toil and travel had but 

 'perfected the graces of his noble form : the ever-changing life and 

 duties of a soldier had contributed only to foster the enthusiasm 

 of his soul, the ardent and generous impulses of his nature. He 

 had trod the red fields of war with unsullied step, and for him 

 its laurel had no poison. 



First among those who welcomed his return to his native city 

 were the long-attached friends of his father, the count and countess 

 Abruzzi, whose only daughter, with somewhat of a prophetic 

 spirit, had been playfully bethrothed to . him in their years of 

 childhood. Marco had left Theresa a blooming girl, lively as 

 a fawn, and not less gentle; he found her a lovely woman, whose 

 beauty was her least perfection. Amazed, delighted, enamoured, 

 with the natural ardour of his temperament he sought and won 

 her affections; and by families long united in friendship, and rich 

 in ancestry and wealth, what more could be desired than that 

 cementing tie which the union of children, mutually loving and 

 beloved, was about to produce ! The count Abruzzi, it is true, 

 was once heard to say, that, had not Theresa rejected the prince 

 of Castel-Monti, his house might have looked down on that of 

 Petroni; but a gentle remonstrance from the more generous 

 countess silenced the latent discontent which this observation 

 seemed to imply. On the other hand, the marquis Petroni, who 

 lived but in his son, hastened the nuptial preparations with an 



