world I knew not till you came. I fancied
Lenore returned, breathing Austrian air, and living under the same
horizon that girds me in. Sometimes I have seen a distant cavalcade
skimming over the vale, as once we careered over the Campagna, when she
handled her steed as another woman handles her needle, and the sweet
wind fanned peach-tints to her cheeks and drew out unravelled braids of
gold in lingering caress. She could have come to me, had she pleased,
then: this old chief who rules the place was her father's friend and
hers.--But look I but see! Who is it comes now,--sweeps round the donjon
flank? Lean over the embrasure, and learn! Ah, man, are my eyes so old,
my memories so treacherous, that I do not know day from night? They have
gone on,--or did they enter, think you? Or yet, there is to be carousal,
perhaps, in the halls beyond and below, and she comes to join the gay
feast; she will drink healths in red wine, will listen to flattering
dalliance with pleased eyes, will utter light laughs through the lips
that once glowed to my kisses, and will forget that the same roof
which shelters the revellers shelters also her lover dying in moans!
Careless--Best so! best so! What cavalier whispered in her ear as she
passed? Have years tarnished her beauty? Ah, God! this wind, that
maddens me now, a moment since touched her!

Anselmo, I will go in. This vault of heaven with its spotless blue, this
wide land that laughs in festive summer, these winds that lift my hair
and come heavy with odors,--these do not fit with me, I burlesque the
fair face of creation. O invisible airs, that softly sport round the
castle-towers, why do you not woo my soul forth and bear it and lose it
in the flawless cope of sky?

Nay, why, any more than Ajax, should I die in the dark? Never again
will I enter the cell, never again! The wide universe shall receive my
breath. Lower the back of my chair, pull away the cushions, wrap my
cloak round me, Anselmo. There! I will lie, and wait, and look up. Give
me ghostly counsel, my friend, console me. You are not too weary with
this long tale? Tell me I needed all the tears I have shed to quench the
fiery defiance, the independence of heaven and tumult of earth in my
being. If you could tell me that she had not been false, that she never
feigned her passion to decoy, that, Austrian though she were--Ah, but
I had evidence! I had evidence! his words, that ate out my life like
gangrene and rust.--Speak slow