The Daughter of an Empress

"Angels never have a name, they are only known as angels, and need no

further designation. As there is an Angel Gabriel, so there is an Angel

Natalie!"

"Mocker," said she, laughing, "there are no feminine angels! But now

come, be seated. Here is my guitar, and I will sing you a song for which

Carlo yesterday brought me the melody."

"And the words?" asked Paulo.

"Well, as to the words, they must come in the singing--to-day one set of

words, to-morrow another. Who can know what glows in your heart at any

given hour, and what you may feel in the next, and which will escape you

in words unknown to yourself, and which unconsciously and involuntarily

stream from your lips."

"You are my charming poetess, my Sappho!" exclaimed Paulo, kissing her

hand.

"Ah, would that you spoke true!" said she, with sparkling eyes and a

deeper flush upon her cheeks. "Let me be a poetess like Sappho, and I

would, like her, joyfully leap from the rocks into the sea. Oh, there

are yet poetesses--Carlo has told me of them. All Rome now worships the

great improvisatrice, Corilla. I should like to know her, Paulo, only to

adore her, only to see her in her splendor and her beauty!"

"If you wish it, you shall see her," said Paulo.

"Ah, I shall see her then!" shouted Natalie, and, as if to give

expression to her inward joy, she touched the strings of her guitar, and

in clear tones resounded a jubilant melody. Then she began to sing,

at first in single isolated words and exclamations, which constantly

swelled into more powerful, animated and blissful tones, and finally

flowed into a regular dithyramb. It was a song of jubilee, a sigh of

innocence and happiness; she sang of God and the stars, of happy love,

and of reuniting; of blossom, fragrance, and fanning zephyrs; and in

unconscious, foreboding pain, she sang of the sorrows of love, and the

pangs of renunciation.

All Nature seemed listening to her charming song; no leaflet stirred,

in low murmurs splashed the waves of the fountain by which she sat, and

occasionally a nightingale wailed in unison with her hymn of rejoicing.

The sun had descended to a point nearer the horizon, and bordered it

with moving purple clouds. Natalie, suddenly interrupting her song,

pointed with her rosy fingers to the heavens.

"How beautiful it is, Paulo!" said she.

He, however, saw nothing but her face, illuminated by the evening glow.

"How beautiful art thou!" he whispered low, pressing her head to his

bosom.

Then both were silent, looking, lost in sweetest dreams, upon the

surrounding landscape, which, as if in a silence of adoration, seemed

to listen for the parting salutation of the god of day. A nightingale

suddenly came and perched upon the myrtle-bush under which Natalie and

her friend were reposing. Soon she began to sing, now in complaining,

now in exulting tones, now tenderly soft, now in joyful trumpet-blasts;

and the night-wind that now arose rustled in organ-tones among the

cypress and olive trees.