She flung away her handkerchief, threw back the locks which fell over her eyes and gave way to a burst of plaintive words, uttering them in a low voice. Thus, rising on a beautiful evening, does the breeze run through the dense stems of the water-weeds, and soft plaintive tones quiver, thrill, and melt away in the air, and the passing traveller, in unaccountable sadness, pauses without noticing either the evening which is fading away, or the gay songs of the people returning from the fields and their harvest labours. "Do not I, then, deserve everlasting pity? Is not the mother who brought me into the world, unhappy? Is not the lot which has fallen to me sad? Art thou not merciless, my cruel fate? All men hast thou brought to my feet, the greatest of our nobility, the wealthiest lords, counts and foreign barons, and the very flower of our knighthood! All these sought my hand, and as a great boon, would any one of them have received my love. I had but to wave my hand, and the choicest of them all, the handsomest in person and the best in lineage, would have been my husband! But for none of them hast thou warmed my heart, merciless fate! in spite of the most accomplished knights of my country, thou hast given it to a foreigner, to one of our foes! Why, most holy Mother of God, for what sins of mine, for what heavy crimes dost thou subject me to such relentless, to such unsparing persecutions? My life was passed amidst affluence and luxury; the costliest viands, the richest wines were my food and my drink; and for what? to what result has it brought me? Is it, that I must die the most cruel death which even the poorest beggar in the kingdom is spared? Alas! it is not enough for me to be doomed to this most horrible fate; to see, before my end, how my father and my mother will die in insupportable sufferings--they, for whose welfare I would readily give up twenty times my own life--all this is not enough, but I must previously to my death hear words and see love such as I have never heard or seen before; my heart must be torn to pieces by his speech: that my bitter fate may be still bitterer to me: that I may regret still more my young life: that death may appear to me still more frightful: and that I may before dying still utter more reproaches to thee, my cruel fate, and thee (forgive my sin) most holy Mother of God!" As she ceased speaking, an expression of hopelessness, of the most utter despair, spread over her features; every outline of them betokened sadness, and the brow bent down in sorrow, the downcast cast eyes, the tears which had remained and dried on her glowing cheeks, all appeared to tell that no happiness was there!