"What silence!" said Ginevra, presently."Dear friend, I take great pleasure in sitting up.The majesty of Night is so contagious, it awes, it inspires.There is I know not what great power in the thought: all sleep, I wake.""Oh, my Ginevra," he cried, "it is not to-night alone I feel how delicately moulded is your soul.But see, the dawn is shining,--come and sleep.""Yes," replied Ginevra, "if I do not sleep alone.I suffered too much that night I first discovered that you were waking while I slept."The courage with which these two young people fought with misery received for a while its due reward; but an event which usually crowns the happiness of a household to them proved fatal.Ginevra had a son, who was, to use the popular expression, "as beautiful as the day." The sense of motherhood doubled the strength of the young wife.Luigi borrowed money to meet the expenses of Ginevra's confinement.At first she did not feel the fresh burden of their situation; and the pair gave themselves wholly up to the joy of possessing a child.It was their last happiness.
Like two swimmers uniting their efforts to breast a current, these two Corsican souls struggled courageously; but sometimes they gave way to an apathy which resembled the sleep that precedes death.Soon they were obliged to sell their jewels.Poverty appeared to them suddenly, --not hideous, but plainly clothed, almost easy to endure; its voice had nothing terrifying; with it came neither spectres, nor despair, nor rags; but it made them lose the memory and the habits of comfort;it dried the springs of pride.Then, before they knew it, came want,--want in all its horror, indifferent to its rags, treading underfoot all human sentiments.
Seven or eight months after the birth of the little Bartolomeo, it would have been hard to see in the mother who suckled her sickly babe the original of the beautiful portrait, the sole remaining ornament of the squalid home.Without fire through a hard winter, the graceful outlines of Ginevra's figure were slowly destroyed; her cheeks grew white as porcelain, and her eyes dulled as though the springs of life were drying up within her.Watching her shrunken, discolored child, she felt no suffering but for that young misery; and Luigi had no courage to smile upon his son.
"I have wandered over Paris," he said, one day."I know no one; can Iask help of strangers? Vergniaud, my old sergeant, is concerned in a conspiracy, and they have put him in prison; besides, he has already lent me all he could spare.As for our landlord, it is over a year since he asked me for any rent.""But we are not in want," replied Ginevra, gently, affecting calmness.
"Every hour brings some new difficulty," continued Luigi, in a tone of terror.
Another day Luigi took Ginevra's pictures, her portrait, and the few articles of furniture which they could still exist without, and sold them for a miserable sum, which prolonged the agony of the hapless household for a time.During these days of wretchedness Ginevra showed the sublimity of her nature and the extent of her resignation.
Stoically she bore the strokes of misery; her strong soul held her up against all woes; she worked with unfaltering hand beside her dying son, performed her household duties with marvellous activity, and sufficed for all.She was even happy, still, when she saw on Luigi's lips a smile of surprise at the cleanliness she produced in the one poor room where they had taken refuge.
"Dear, I kept this bit of bread for you," she said, one evening, when he returned, worn-out.
"And you?"
"I? I have dined, dear Luigi; I want nothing more."And the tender look on her beseeching face urged him more than her words to take the food of which she had deprived herself.
Luigi kissed her, with one of those kisses of despair that were given in 1793 between friends as they mounted the scaffold.In such supreme moments two beings see each other, heart to heart.The hapless Luigi, comprehending suddenly that his wife was starving, was seized with the fever which consumed her.He shuddered, and went out, pretending that some business called him; for he would rather have drunk the deadliest poison than escape death by eating that last morsel of bread that was left in his home.
He wandered wildly about Paris; amid the gorgeous equipages, in the bosom of that flaunting luxury that displays itself everywhere; he hurried past the windows of the money-changers where gold was glittering; and at last he resolved to sell himself to be a substitute for military service, hoping that this sacrifice would save Ginevra, and that her father, during his absence, would take her home.
He went to one of those agents who manage these transactions, and felt a sort of happiness in recognizing an old officer of the Imperial guard.
"It is two days since I have eaten anything," he said to him in a slow, weak voice."My wife is dying of hunger, and has never uttered one word of complaint; she will die smiling, I think.For God's sake, comrade," he added, bitterly, "buy me in advance; I am robust; I am no longer in the service, and I--"The officer gave Luigi a sum on account of that which he promised to procure for him.The wretched man laughed convulsively as he grasped the gold, and ran with all his might, breathless, to his home, crying out at times:--"Ginevra! Oh, my Ginevra!"
It was almost night when he reached his wretched room.He entered very softly, fearing to cause too strong an emotion to his wife, whom he had left so weak.The last rays of the sun, entering through the garret window, were fading from Ginevra's face as she sat sleeping in her chair, and holding her child upon her breast.
