old), or teasing her calm and meditative husband, or pouring out
extempore verses, or rattling over airs which she never finished, on the
guitar or piano--or making excursions on the lake--or, in short, in
whatever occupation she appeared as the Cynthia of the minute, she was
always gay and mobile--never out of humour, never acknowledging a single
care or cross in life--never susceptible of grief, save when her
brother's delicate health or morbid temper saddened her atmosphere of
sunshine. Even then, the sanguine elasticity of her mind and
constitution quickly recovered from the depression; and she persuaded
herself that Castruccio would grow stronger every year, and ripen into a
celebrated and happy man. Castruccio himself lived what romantic
poetasters call the "life of a poet." He loved to see the sun rise over
the distant Alps--or the midnight moon sleeping on the lake. He spent
half the day, and often half the night, in solitary rambles, weaving his
airy rhymes, or indulging his gloomy reveries, and he thought loneliness
made the element of a poet. Alas! Dante, Alfieri, even Petrarch might
have taught him, that a poet must have intimate knowledge of men as well
as mountains, if he desire to become the CREATOR. When Shelley, in one
of his prefaces, boasts of being familiar with Alps and glaciers, and
Heaven knows what, the critical artist cannot help wishing that he had
been rather familiar with Fleet Street or the Strand. Perhaps, then,
that remarkable genius might have been more capable of realizing
characters of flesh and blood, and have composed corporeal and
consummate wholes, not confused and glittering fragments.

Though Ernest was attached to Teresa and deeply interested in
Castruccio, it was De Montaigne for whom he experienced the higher and
graver sentiment of esteem. This Frenchman was one acquainted with a
much larger world than that of the Coteries. He had served in the army,
had been employed with distinction in civil affairs, and was of that