my endeavours to cheer,
with poetry and music, the declining spirits of the benevolent old
man. He became attached to me, and finding that I had a painter's eye,
he imparted to me some invaluable secrets of his art, a compliment the
more gratifying and important, because it opened to me a source of
honourable and independent provision, in case my paternal estate
should never be restored to me.

"Last autumn I received intelligence from Florence that my father had
entered the service of your republic on his arrival in the Levant, and
had received the appointment of captain in the garrison of Candia,
under General Malatesta, a Florentine, whose son had been assassinated
by order of Cosmo, on the discovery of an intrigue between this youth
and his eldest daughter, Maria de' Medici. Nor did the hapless female
escape the vengeance of her cruel parent. Her death was premature, and
attended with circumstances which amounted to the clearest evidence
that she was poisoned by her monstrous and unnatural parent. I had
completed my preparations for departure, and waited only a change
of wind to sail for Candia, when I received from my aunt the
heart-rending communication that my father had shared the fate of
young Malatesta, and been assassinated some years since, at the
instigation of the ferocious Cosmo. This intelligence fell upon
my soul like a thunderbolt. The wound which my beloved father's
disappearance had inflicted on my happiness opened anew, and my
lacerated heart bled at every core. I vowed implacable hatred and
deadly vengeance against the prime mover and every subordinate agent
in this atrocious murder of my noble parent. He was a great and
admirable man, and I shall never cease to venerate his memory, and
lament his untimely death. For many months, life was an intolerable
burden to me, and I endured existence only in the hope of avenging
him. The cruel instigator, Cosmo, was, alas! equally beyond the reach
of my personal defiance and of my dagger. Hedged round by guards and
minions, and compelled by his infirmities to seclude himself within
the recesses of his palace, every attempt to approach him would have
been vain, and my youthful and unenjoyed existence would have been
sacrificed without an equivalent. Nor have I yet been able to trace
the agents of his bloody will; but my investigations have been
vigilant and unceasing, and revenge, although delayed, is ripening
over their heads."

Here the noble youth was