the mere shadow of my love; but he was too far sunk in intellect to
take any more than a child-like notice of them.

When I received a letter from Bianca it was a new source of solitary
luxury. Her letters, it is true, were less and less frequent, but they
were always full of assurances of unabated affection. They breathed not
the frank and innocent warmth with which she expressed herself in
conversation, but I accounted for it from the embarrassment which
inexperienced minds have often to express themselves upon paper.
Filippo assured me of her unaltered constancy. They both lamented in
the strongest terms our continued separation, though they did justice
to the filial feeling that kept me by my father's side.

Nearly eighteen months elapsed in this protracted exile. To me they
were so many ages. Ardent and impetuous by nature, I scarcely know how
I should have supported so long an absence, had I not felt assured that
the faith of Bianca was equal to my own. At length my father died. Life
went from him almost imperceptibly. I hung over him in mute affliction,
and watched the expiring spasms of nature. His last faltering accents
whispered repeatedly a blessing on me--alas! how has it been fulfilled!

When I had paid due honors to his remains, and laid them in the tomb of
our ancestors, I arranged briefly my affairs; put them in a posture to
be easily at my command from a distance, and embarked once more, with a
bounding heart, for Genoa.

Our voyage was propitious, and oh! what was my rapture when first, in
the dawn of morning, I saw the shadowy summits of the Apennines rising
almost like clouds above the horizon. The sweet breath of summer just
moved us over the long wavering billows that were rolling us on towards