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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Tales and Stories
Now First Collected
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664130624
Table of Contents
VII. A TALE OF THE PASSIONS; OR, THE DEATH OF DESPINA.
| I. | The Sisters of Albano, | 1 |
| II. | Ferdinando Eboli, | 20 |
| III. | The Evil Eye, | 42 |
| IV. | The Dream, | 66 |
| V. | The Mourner, | 83 |
| VI. | The False Rhyme, | 103 |
| VII. | A Tale of the Passions; or, The Death of Despina, | 112 |
| VIII. | The Mortal Immortal, | 148 |
| IX. | Transformation, | 165 |
| X. | The Swiss Peasant, | 186 |
| XI. | The Invisible Girl, | 210 |
| XII. | The Brother and Sister, | 227 |
| XIII. | The Parvenue, | 262 |
| XIV. | The Pole, | 274 |
| XV. | Euphrasia, | 311 |
| XVI. | The Elder Son, | 328 |
| XVII. | The Pilgrims, | 359 |
I.
THE SISTERS OF ALBANO.
“And near Albano’s scarce divided waves
Shine from a sister valley;—and afar
The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves
The Latian coast where sprang the Epic war,
‘Arms and the Man,’ whose re-ascending star
Rose o’er an empire; but beneath thy right
Tully reposed from Rome; and where yon bar
Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight
The Sabine farm was till’d, the weary bard’s delight.”
It was to see this beautiful lake that I made my last excursion before quitting Rome. The spring had nearly grown into summer, the trees were all in full but fresh green foliage, the vine-dresser was singing, perched among them, training his vines: the cicada had not yet begun her song, the heats therefore had not commenced; but at evening the fire-flies gleamed among the hills, and the cooing aziola assured us of what in that country needs no assurance—fine weather for the morrow. We set out early in the morning to avoid the heats, breakfasted at Albano, and till ten o’clock passed our time in visiting the Mosaic, the villa of Cicero, and other curiosities of the place. We reposed during the middle of the day in a tent elevated for us at the hill-top, whence we looked on the hill-embosomed lake, and the distant eminence crowned by a town with its church. Other villages and cottages were scattered among the foldings of mountains, and beyond we saw the deep blue sea of the southern poets, which received the swift and immortal Tiber, rocking it to repose among its devouring waves. The Coliseum falls and the Pantheon decays—the very hills of Rome are perishing—but the Tiber lives for ever, flows for ever, and for ever feeds the land-encircled Mediterranean with fresh waters.
Our summer and pleasure-seeking party consisted of many: to me the most interesting person was the Countess Atanasia D——, who was as beautiful as an imagination of Raphael, and good as the ideal of a poet. Two of her children accompanied her, with animated looks and gentle manners, quiet, yet enjoying. I sat near her, watching the changing shadows of the landscape before us. As the sun descended, it poured a tide of light into the valley of the lake, deluging the deep bank formed by the mountain with liquid gold. The domes and turrets of the far town flashed and gleamed, the trees were dyed in splendour; two or three slight clouds, which had drunk the radiance till it became their essence, floated golden islets in the lustrous empyrean. The waters, reflecting the brilliancy of the sky and the fire-tinted banks, beamed a second heaven, a second irradiated earth, at our feet. The Mediterranean, gazing on the sun—as the eyes of a mortal bride fail and are dimmed when reflecting her lover’s glance—was lost, mixed in his light, till it