But Charney had now to deplore a far more important privation. The commandant, resolved to visit upon Girardi, the only victim within his reach, the reprimand originally addressed to him by General Menon, had consigned the venerable Italian to a stronger part of the fortress, secure from all communication with the exterior; and the Count could not refrain from bitter self-reproaches, when he reflected upon the miserable isolation of the poor old man. The greater portion of the day his eyes remained mournfully fixed upon the grating in the wall, the little window of which was now closed up. In fancy he still beheld Girardi extending his arm through the bars, and trying to bestow upon him a friendly pressure of the hand; nay, he still seemed to see his precious memorial to the Emperor, fluttering against the wall and gradually drawn up from his own hands to those of Girardi—thence to proceed to the hands of Teresa and the Empress. The very glance of pity and pardon cast down upon him by Girardi in his moment of anguish seemed to shine ineffaceably on the spot; and often did he hear again the cry of exultation which burst from the window on the arrival of Picciola’s reprieve. That very sentence of pardon is in fact the gift of Girardi and Girardi’s daughter: and though solely serviceable to himself, has become the fatal origin of their separation and the sorrows of the parent and his child. Even the countenance of Teresa was restored, by the efforts of his imagination, to the spot where alone it had been momentarily revealed to his eyes, at the close of the uneasy dream which he now believed to have foreshown the approaching perils of his plant. Inseparably united in his mind with the Picciola of his dreams, it was always under _her_ form and features that the living Teresa Girardi was revealed to him. One day, as, with his eyes upraised towards the grating, the prisoner stood indulging in these and similar illusions, the dim and dusty window was flung open, and a female form appeared behind the grating. But the new-comer was a swarthy, savage-looking woman, with rapacious eyes, and an enormous goître, in whom the Count soon recognised the wife of Ludovico. From that moment Charney never cast his eyes towards the window. The charm was broken. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER II. Relieved from all constraint, imbedded in new earth, and capaciously framed in the wide pavement, Picciola seemed to rise triumphantly from her tribulations. She had, however, survived her summer blossoms; with the exception of that single flower, the last to open and the last to fall.