_Ter._ My boy, she will accept them! Gracious Virgin, She would receive a poorer gift than this; She would accept the will without the gift, For she doth know the heart! There on the shrine Lay them, my boy, and pray if thou have need; Fear not, for she is gracious,--so is God! _Paol._ [_laying the flowers at the feet of the Virgin._ I have no prayer, dear mother, save for thee, And that is in my heart. I cannot speak it, Thou didst weep so, when last I prayed for thee! _Ter._ [_kissing him._] It is enough, my boy, the Holy Mother Knoweth what is within thy inmost heart! [_She again bows herself before the Virgin, then taking the child’s hand, goes out._ SCENE II. _Night--the same forest; the pine trees are old and splintered, and covered with snow; it is a scene of desolation--at a little distance a small house is seen through an opening of the wood._ _Enter_ ACHZIB, _as a northern hunter_. _Hun._ And this is their abode! A mighty change, From a proud palace on the Arno’s side, To a poor cabin in a northern wild! Let me retrace the history of this pair:-- He was Count Spazzi--young and rich, and proud, Ambitious and determined. Fortune brought Unto his knowledge fair Teresa Cogni, The daughter of an exiled chief of Corinth; Beautiful as her own land, and pure As her own cloudless heavens. It is a tale So long, so full of sorrow and of guile, Of heart-ache and remorseless tyranny, That now I may not stop to trace it out. But she was forced to marry that stern man, After her father’s death had given her Into his power.--Enough, it was a marriage Where joy was not; but where the tyrant smiled Because his pride and will were gratified. Next followed lawless years of heedless crime; To those, the desperate strife between us two, Wherein I made the vow which I have kept, How, it now matters not. I watched him fall, Impelled by my fierce hate, until at length I saw him banished from his native land. Meantime that gentle partner of his fall, Bore, with a patience which was not of earth, All evils of their cruel destiny. But she was now a mother--and for him, That docile boy, whose spirit was like hers, Ever-enduring and so full of kindness, What mother would not bear all misery And yet repine not, blessed in the love Of that confiding spirit! Thus it was. And they three went forth, exiles from their land: One with the curse of his own crimes upon him; Two innocent as doves, and only cursed In that their lives and fortunes were bound up With that bad man’s. He is a hunter now; And his precarious living earns with toil And danger, amid natures like his own: And here I might have left him to live out The term of his existence, had I not