[29] With this speech, which is not in _F of F--A_, Mary begins to develop the character of the Steward, who later accompanies Mathilda on her search for her father. Although he is to a very great extent the stereptyped faithful servant, he does serve to dramatize the situation both here and in the later scene. [30] This clause is substituted for a more conventional and less dramatic passage in _F of F--A_: “& besides there appeared more of struggle than remorse in his manner although sometimes I thought I saw glim[p]ses of the latter feeling in his tumultuous starts & gloomy look.” [31] These paragraphs beginning Chapter V are much expanded from _F of F--A_. Some of the details are in the _S-R fr_. This scene is recalled at the end of the story. (See page 80) Cf. what Mary says about places that are associated with former emotions in her _Rambles in Germany and Italy_ (2 vols., London: Moxon, 1844), II, 78-79. She is writing of her approach to Venice, where, twenty-five years before, little Clara had died. “It is a strange, but to any person who has suffered, a familiar circumstance, that those who are enduring mental or corporeal agony are strangely alive to immediate external objects, and their imagination even exercises its wild power over them.... Thus the banks of the Brenta presented to me a moving scene; not a palace, not a tree of which I did not recognize, as marked and recorded, at a moment when life and death hung upon our speedy arrival at Venice.” [32] The remainder of this chapter, which describes the crucial scene between Mathilda and her father, is the result of much revision from _F of F--A_. Some of the revisions are in _S-R fr_. In general the text of _Mathilda_ is improved in style. Mary adds concrete, specific words and phrases; e.g., at the end of the first paragraph of Mathilda’s speech, the words “of incertitude” appear in _Mathilda_ for the first time. She cancels, even in this final draft, an over-elaborate figure of speech after the words in the father’s reply, “implicated in my destruction”; the cancelled passage is too flowery to be appropriate here: “as if when a vulture is carrying off some hare it is struck by an arrow his helpless victim entangled in the same fate is killed by the defeat of its enemy. One word would do all this.” Furthermore the revised text shows greater understanding and penetration of the feelings of both speakers: the addition of “Am I the cause of your grief?” which brings out more dramatically what Mathilda has said in the first part of this paragraph; the analysis of the reasons for her presistent questioning; the addition of the final paragraph of her plea, “Alas! Alas!... you hate me!” which prepares for the father’s reply. [33] Almost all the final paragraph of the chapter is added to _F of F--A_. Three brief _S-R fr_ are much revised and simplified. [34] _Decameron_, 4th day, 1st story. Mary had read the _Decameron_ in May, 1819. See _Journal_, p. 121.