Although little apprehensive of persecution, many motives concurred to
render Paris an undesirable residence for the survivor of the duel in
which Fatello met his death. The day after the fatal meeting, a
travelling carriage left Paris by the road to Brussels. It contained
Ernest von Steinfeld and his bride. In spite of some practice in
duelling, and of the triple armour of selfishness in which he was
habitually cased, there was a cloud upon the baron's brow which change
of scene and the caresses of his young wife did not always suffice to
dissipate. And, although sensible to his bride's beauty and fascination,
and grateful, as far as it was in his nature to be so, for the
passionate affection she showed him, it may be doubted whether he would
not have repulsed her endearments, and spurned her from him, had he
detected a secret that lay buried in the innermost recesses of her
heart--had he recognised, in Sebastiana Gonfalon, the writer of the two
anonymous letters that tended so materially to bring about her marriage,
and the violent death of Sigismund Fatello.
As it was, the Baroness von Steinfeld had not long to congratulate
herself on the success of her culpable manoeuvres, whose sole
extenuation was to be found in the fiery passions of her race, and in a
moral education totally neglected. Doubtless, when planning and carrying
out her guilty scheme, the possibility of so terrible a result never
occurred to her; and it were attributing improbable depravity to one so
young to doubt that she felt remorse at the catastrophe. She did not
long await her punishment. Bright as were her hopes of happiness when
led to the altar by the man she adored, she soon was bitterly convinced,
that no true or permanent felicity could be the consequence of a union
achieved by guilty artifice, and sealed with a brother's blood. A few
months were sufficient to darken her destiny and blight her joys. Her
fortune swallowed up by Steinfeld's debts and extravagance, her person
speedily became indifferent to the sated and cold-hearted voluptuary;
and whilst her reckless husband, faithful to nothing but to his hatred
of matrimonial ties, again galloped upon the road to ruin, in the most
dissipated circles of the Austrian capital, she saw herself condemned to
solitude and unavailing regrets, in the very castle where she had
anticipated an existence of unalloyed bliss.
THE BOXES.
[_MAGA._ FEBRUARY 1829.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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