“My adored Matilda! this is to thy happiness--this is to thy every wish; and if I cherish a single thought which centres not in thee, may the most horrible tortures which ever poisoned the peace of man, drive me instantly to distraction. God of heaven! witness thou my oath, and write it in letters never to be erased! Ministering spirits, who watch over the happiness of mortals, attend! for here I swear eternal fidelity, indissoluble, unalterable affection to Matilda!” He said--he raised his eyes towards heaven--he gazed upon Matilda. Their eyes met--hers gleamed with a triumphant expression of unbounded love. Verezzi raised the goblet to his lips--when, lo! on a sudden, he dashed it to the ground--his whole frame was shook by horrible convulsions--his glaring eyes, starting from their sockets, rolled wildly around: seized with sudden madness, he drew a dagger from his girdle, and with fellest intent raised it high---- What phantom blasted Verezzi’s eyeball! what made the impassioned lover dash a goblet to the ground, which he was about to drain as a pledge of eternal love to the choice of his soul! and why did he, infuriate, who had, but an instant before, imagined Matilda’s arms an earthly paradise, attempt to rush unprepared into the presence of his Creator!--It was the mildly-beaming eyes of the lovely but forgotten Julia, which spoke reproaches to the soul of Verezzi--it was her celestial countenance, shaded by dishevelled ringlets, which spoke daggers to the false one; for, when he had raised the goblet to his lips--when, sublimed by the maddening fire of voluptuousness to the height of enthusiastic passion, he swore indissoluble fidelity to another--Julia stood before him! Madness--fiercest madness--revelled through his brain. He raised the poniard high, but Julia rushed forwards, and, in accents of distinction, in a voice of alarmed tenderness, besought him to spare himself--to spare her--for all might yet be well. “Oh! never, never!” exclaimed Verezzi, frantically; “no peace but in the grave for me.----I am--I am--married to Matilda.” Saying this, he fell backwards upon a sofa, in strong convulsions, yet his hand still grasped the fatal poniard. Matilda, meanwhile, fixedly contemplated the scene. Fiercest passions raged through her breast--vengeance, disappointed love--disappointed in the instant too when she had supposed happiness to be hers for ever, rendered her bosom the scene of wildest anarchy. Yet she spoke not--she moved not--but, collected in herself, stood waiting the issue of that event, which had so unexpectedly dissolved her visions of air-built ecstasy.