noblest maid in Venice for my bride! ...

In travel I sought forgetfulness and consolation. I went to Padua,
Verona, Milan; but heaviness did not leave my heart. Then came an
irrepressible longing to be back in Venice, to see Maria--a foreboding
of some new misfortune. I hastened back to Venice. The podestà received
me kindly; but when I inquired after Maria, he seemed to me to become
grave, as he told me she had gone to Padua on a short visit. During
supper I fell into a swoon, followed by a violent fever in which I had
visions of Maria dead, laid out before an altar. Then it was Lara I saw
on the bier, and I loudly called her by name. Then everything became
bright; a hand passed softly over my head. I awoke, and found Maria and
her aunt by my bedside.

"Lara, Maria, hear me!" I cried. "It is no dream. You have heard my
voice at Pæstum. You know it again! I feel it. I love you; I have always
loved you!"

"I have loved you, too," she said, kneeling by my side and seizing my
hand. "I have loved you from the day when the sun burnt your kiss into
my forehead--loved you with the intuition of the blind!"

I then learnt that Maria--my Lara--had been cured of her blindness by a
great specialist in Naples, the podestà's brother, who, touched by her
beauty and purity, had her educated, and adopted her as his own child.
On his death his sister took her to Venice, where she found a new home
in the podestà's palace.

* * * * *