From it I learned that the Count Oliva was advertised for.  His abrupt departure, together with that of his newly married wife, formerly Contessa Romani, on the very night of their wedding, had created the utmost excitement in the city.  The landlord of the hotel where he stayed was prosecuting inquiries—­so was the count’s former valet, one Vincenzo Flamma.  Any information would be gratefully received by the police authorities.  If within twelve months no news were obtained, the immense properties of the Romani family, in default of existing kindred, would be handed over to the crown.

There was much more to the same effect, and I read it with the utmost indifference.  Why do they not search the Romani vault?—­I thought gloomily—­they would find some authentic information there!  But I know the Neapolitans well; they are timorous and superstitious; they would as soon hug a pestilence as explore a charnel house.  One thing gladdened me; it was the projected disposal of my fortune.  The crown, the Kingdom of Italy, was surely as noble an heir as a man could have!  I returned to my woodland hut with a strange peace on my soul.

As I told you at first, I am a dead man—­the world, with its busy life and aims, has naught to do with me.  The tall trees, the birds, the whispering grasses are my friends and my companions—­they, and they only, are sometimes the silent witnesses of the torturing fits of agony that every now and then overwhelm me with bitterness.  For I suffer always.  That is natural.  Revenge is sweet!—­but who shall paint the horrors of memory?  My vengeance now recoils upon my own head.  I do not complain of this—­it is the law of compensation—­it is just.  I blame no one—­save Her, the woman who wrought my wrong.  Dead as she is I do not forgive her; I have tried to, but I cannot!  Do men ever truly forgive the women who ruin their lives?  I doubt it.  As for me, I feel that the end is not yet—­that when my soul is released from its earthly prison, I shall still be doomed in some drear dim way to pursue her treacherous flitting spirit over the black chasms of a hell darker than Dante’s—­she in the likeness of a wandering flame—­I as her haunting shadow; she, flying before me in coward fear—­I, hasting after her in relentless wrath—­and this forever and ever!

But I ask no pity—­I need none.  I punished the guilty, and in doing so suffered more than they—­that is as it must always be.  I have no regret and no remorse; only one thing troubles me—­one little thing--a mere foolish fancy!  It conies upon me in the night, when the large-faced moon looks at me from heaven.  For the moon is grand in this climate; she is like a golden-robed empress of all the worlds as she sweeps in lustrous magnificence through the dense violet skies.  I shut out her radiance as much as I can; I close the blind at the narrow window of my solitary forest cabin; and yet do what I will, one wide ray creeps in always—­one ray that eludes all my efforts to expel it.  Under the door it comes, or through some unguessed cranny in the wood-work.  I have in vain tried to find the place of its entrance.