[Illustration] CHAPTER VIII. In the purified heart of Charney, the blood now flowed more calmly: in his expanded mind, mild and consolatory ideas succeeded each other in gentle gradation. Like the wise Piedmontese, his friend, he was fully alive to the conviction that happiness connects itself indissolubly with love of our fellow-creatures; and in striving to people his imagination with those to whom he was bound by ties of gratitude; the Empress, Girardi, and Ludovico, presented themselves first to his mind. But at length two female shadows became perceptible at either extremity of this rainbow of love, expanding after the storm, just as we see in altar-pieces, two seraphim, with brows inclined, and half-closed wings, supporting the arch of the picture. One of these shadows was the fairy of his dreams—the maiden Picciola, emanating, fresh, fair, and blooming, from the perfumes of his flower; the other, the guardian angel of his prison—his second providence—Teresa Girardi. By a singular inconsistency, the former, whose existence was purely ideal, haunted his memory in a fixed, distinct, and positive form; he could discern the varying expression of her brow, the glittering of her eye, the smile of her lips—such as she had once appeared to him in his dreams, such was she ever manifested. Whereas Teresa, on whom he had never fixed his eyes, or only while still under the influence of a waking dream, under what traits could he summon her to his remembrance? In _her_ instance, the countenance of the seraph was veiled; and when Charney, in despair, attempted to raise the veil, it was still the face of Picciola that smiled upon him: of Picciola, multiplying herself as if for the purpose of interrupting the homage he would fain have offered to her rival. One morning, the prisoner of Fenestrella, though wide awake, fancied himself alarmingly dominated by this strange hallucination. The day was dawning. Having risen from his cheerless bed, he was musing upon Girardi, who, prepared for his speedy release from prison, had infused such tenderness into his adieu of the preceding night, that the Count had been kept all night sleepless by the impression of their approaching separation. After pacing his room for some time in silence, he looked out from his grated window upon the bench of conference, where, only the evening before, he had been engaged with Girardi in conversation relative to his daughter; and lo! through the gray-hued mists of autumn, he fancied he could discern a woman—the figure of a young and graceful woman—seated on the spot. She was alone, and in an inclining attitude; as if engaged in contemplation of the flower before her. Recalling to mind the probability of Teresa’s arrival, Charney naturally exclaimed, “It is herself! Teresa is arrived! I am about to see her for a moment, and then behold her face no more; and in losing her I shall also be deprived of my venerated companion.”