“A word to the wise is enough.”  The word has been uttered in trumpet-tones from the battle-fields of the South.  Let us prove that we are wise, by acting at once upon its suggestions.

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AGNES OF SORRENTO.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE PILGRIMAGE.

The morning sun rose clear and lovely on the old red rocks of Sorrento, and danced in a thousand golden scales and ripples on the wide Mediterranean.  The shadows of the gorge were pierced by long golden shafts of light, here falling on some moist bed of crimson cyclamen, there shining through a waving tuft of gladiolus, or making the abundant yellow fringes of the broom more vivid in their brightness.  The velvet-mossy old bridge, in the far shadows at the bottom, was lit up by a chance beam, and seemed as if it might be something belonging to fairy-land.

There had been a bustle and stir betimes in the little dove-cot, for to-morrow the inmates were to leave it for a long, adventurous journey.

To old Elsie, the journey back to Rome, the city of her former days of prosperity, the place which had witnessed her ambitious hopes, her disgrace and downfall, was full of painful ideas.  There arose to her memory, like a picture, those princely halls, with their slippery, cold mosaic floors, their long galleries of statues and paintings, their enchanting gardens, musical with the voice of mossy fountains, fragrant with the breath of roses and jessamines, where the mother of Agnes had spent the hours of her youth and beauty.  She seemed to see her flitting hither and thither down the stately ilex-avenues, like some gay singing-bird, to whom were given gilded cages and a constant round of caresses and sweets, or like the flowers in the parterres, which lived and died only as the graceful accessories of the grandeur of an old princely family.

She compared, mentally, the shaded and secluded life which Agnes had led with the specious and fatal brilliancy which had been the lot of her mother,—­her simple peasant garb with those remembered visions of jewelry and silk and embroideries with which the partial patronage of the Duchess or the ephemeral passion of her son had decked out the poor Isella; and then came swelling at her heart a tumultuous thought, one which she had repressed and kept down for years with all the force of pride and hatred.  Agnes, peasant-girl though she seemed, had yet the blood of that proud old family in her veins; the marriage had been a true one; she herself had witnessed it.

“Yes, indeed,” she said to herself, “were justice done, she would now be a princess,—­a fit mate for the nobles of the land; and here I ask no more than to mate her to an honest smith,—­I that have seen a prince kneel to kiss her mother’s hand,—­yes, he did,—­entreat her on his knees to be his wife,—­I saw it.  But then, what came of it?  Was there ever one of these nobles that kept oath or promise to us of the people, or that cared for us longer than the few moments we could serve his pleasure?  Old Elsie, you have done wisely! keep your dove out of the eagle’s nest:  it is foul with the blood of poor innocents whom he has torn to pieces in his cruel pride!”