138 GENTLENESS IS POWER. 
wanton murder of the citizen, had totally failed ; and he felt this. 
He disgusted, shocked, but could not frighten her ; and this con- 
sciousness of inferiority stung him into madness. Whenever, there- 
fore, he had committed some act of wholesale enormity, he usually 
absented himself, upon a pretended hunting excursion, for a few 
days. These days of recess from pain and brutality were uniformly 
turned by Caranza to a golden advantage. She would seek out the 
families of those who had suffered from tyranny, and by her sym- 
pathy and worldly comfort redeem, so far as lay in her power, the 
melancholy privations they had undergone. With an extraordinary 
assiduity, too, she had brought her former plan, pursued towards her 
own people, into action ; very partially, indeed, for the oppressed, 
the degraded, and the mistrustful, are ever slow at improvement, 
Nevertheless, in a few months so much good had been effected, that 
the report of it reached the ears of Aborzuf. His envious rage now 
knew no bounds. He stormed from room to room of the palace, till 
he came to the small private apartment devoted by Caranza to her 
meditations and communions with the spirit of her sainted mother. 
Here was enshrined her poor pitcher; and here he disturbed her as 
she was singing, in low and sweet tones, a hymn of praise and gra- 
titude to the giver of all good, for the blessing of hopeful thoughts, 
and of such a mother as rarely falls to the lot of mortal. In fright- 
ful contrast with her soothing voice and tranquil occupation, he 
taxed her, in a tone of frantic vehemence, with plotting against his 
government ; and before she could reply to his insane charge he 
seized the pitcher, and knowing it to bea relic she prized above 
every earthly gift, he dashed it through the casement. It fell with- 
out the wall of the castle, and was scattered into fragments. With 
a piercing cry of grief, the devoted creature sank for a few moments 
upon her seat, then, collecting her thoughts, she approached her tor- 
turer with a look of dignity and emotion that quelled for a time the 
storm in his transported and fierce mind ; while, in a fervid strain of 
complaint, and with a strength and energy of tone she had never 
before been called upon to exert, she said, “‘ Months have passed 
away, Aborzuf, since you tore me from my home. I was made the 
victim of your unjust power; and though a feeble and an unprotected 
maiden, you have never, in one instance, made me a compensation 
for the sacrifice to which you doomed me. In all these months I 
have known no happy moment, except when in the exertion of that 
simple office which you would now wrench from me—the comforting 
the afflicted, and the making my fellow beings happy. Do not sup- 
pose, however, great as is your power, that you are enabled to bend 
| 
