Count Zanotti had passed through each of the stages of which I speak--first, an unquenchable yearning for forbidden knowledge; next, the rapture that glows when the lip touches the sparkle on the brim of the cup--and then the flatness and the weariness that follow! But for _him_, there was yet a hope. His heart had never beat with the quick pulse of love! Its youthful vigor was unimpaired, and in a contest with the intellect there was strong hope of it proving victorious. The struggle came soon enough. * * * * * CHAPTER II. "Two souls with but a single thought, Two hearts that beat as one."--INGOMAR. AT the end of the long, gloomy day following the conclusion of the carnival, Zanotti accompanied his father to a midnight mass, and there for the first time saw Leonora D'Alvarez, the daughter of Spain's ambassador to the court of the winged Lion of St. Mark's. She was one of those beautiful creations that we so often dream of, and sigh for, and sometimes, but very seldom, see. _Soul_ there shed its spiritual attributes over one from whose features even the bloom of youth seemed to catch a brighter hue. Like all Italians, Zanotti had dreamed of love--the love of the poet and the dreamer; and now he felt it in its strength--the love of a pure, unselfish, yet deep and ardent nature! To shorten a long story (for we must leave much to be divined in this history), he felt the inspiration growing out of love impelling him to give him his feelings to the world in immortal song. He wrote, and he became famous! Then, when a nation bowed before his genius--when a world re-echoed his name with reverence--he sought the woman who had roused his soul to exertion; he told her that he loved her; he told her that all the bright thoughts and sparkling fancies the _universe_ had claimed as its own were hers--all hers; that she, and she alone, had made his name as deathless as the ethereal essence the Almighty had endowed his body with--and that unless she gave still another gift--_her heart_--fame, fortune, name, genius--were but empty, and hollow, and useless!