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never did we know our lips otherwise than adorned with the pearls 

 of smiles. Our eyes beamed with delight. Our tresses were not more 

 divided than our vows; they mingled as our heads rested against each 

 other when we were reading, as our steps were united when we 

 walked. Life was a long embrace. Our home the temple of bliss. 

 One day Theresa was pale, and said to me, for the first time, 'I am 

 unwell ;' and I was not unwell ! She never rose again. I saw, with- 

 out dying myself, her beautiful features shrink, her bright, wavy 

 golden hair turn dull and straight. She smiled, to conceal her suf- 

 ferings from me, but I read them in the azure of her eyes, of which 

 I knew how to interpret the faintest tremblings. She was whispering 

 to me, ' Honorino, I love thee,' at the moment that her lips blanched. 

 In fine, she was still straining my hands in hers when death chilled 

 them, and then I killed myself immediately, in order that she might 

 not rest alone in the cold and Immid bed of her sepulchre, under her 

 marble sheets. She is above, Theresa, and I am here. God has se- 

 parated us. Why then have united us upon earth ! Heaven is jea- 

 lous. Paradise is, doubtless, much more beautiful since the day that 

 Theresa ascended there. But do you see ? She is sad in her hap- 

 piness. She is without me. Paradise can be but a desert to her." 



— " Master," said I, weeping, for I was thinking of my own 

 amours, "from the moment in which this unfortunate desires para- 

 dise for the love of God alone, will he not be delivered ?" The fa- 

 ther of poesy gently inclined his head, in token of assent. We de- 

 parted, cleaving the air, and making no more noise than the birds 

 which sometimes pass over our heads when we are lying extended in 

 the shade under a tuft of trees. We might have, attempted in vain 

 to prevent the unfortunate from blaspheming as he had done. One 

 of the misfortunes of the angels of darkness is not to see the light 

 even when they are environed by it. He would not have understood 

 our words." 



Just then the rapid steps of several horses resounded in the midst 

 of the silence. The dog barked. The grumbling voice of the sergeant 

 answered him. Some horsemen alighted, knocked at the door, and 

 the noise arose all at once with the sudden violence of an unexpected 

 detonation. The two proscribed, the two poets, fell upon the earth 

 from all the height that separates us from heaven. The painful 

 shock of this fall from the clouds to the world ran, like another blood, 

 through their veins, but in whistling and flowing as if full of sharp 

 and cutting points. The suff*ering was in some sort an electrical 

 commotion. The heavy and sonorous step of an armed man, whose 

 sword, cuirass, and spurs produced an extraordinary clangour, was 

 heard upon the stairs, and presently the individual appeared before 

 the astonished stranger. 



— " We may return to Florence ," said the soldier, whose rough 

 voice appeared gentle in uttering these few words in Italian. 



— " What sayest thou ?" demanded the great man. 



— " The whites triumph." 



— " Dost thou not deceive thyself?" replied the poet. 



— " No, Dante," replied the soldier, whose warlike voice expressed 



