Mezzoni the Brigand — page 112: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

104 MEZZONI THE BRIGAND. ‘Then came the harsh injunction of your parents. I was poor, their daughter must mend the fortunes of their house by a wealthy alliance. Your husband must be rich. I did then plead with your father, and avowed to him that if he separated us he would ren- der my lifeablank. I told him that I would win fortune, that he need have no fear on that score, only let me hope that by and by, when I came to him, and showed that I was worthy of your love, and that I had the necessary means to meet all reasonable wants, he would give me your hand. “It was useless. His mind was fixed, and at that time I fancied, and I think rightly, that you cared far less for me than I did for you. You were all in all to me then. I had no object in life unconnected with you, anda happy future for us both together. So intimately had this idea interwoven itself with my hopes that it became a part of my very existence. Such love is destined nearly always to disappoint- ment, and rarely escapes a fatal end. So in my in- stance. It was to me ruin! I could not bear the disappointment that followed. Ambition, self-re- spect, hope, everything abandoned me. — “Ah, signora, | was innocent then, and really worthy of your love and trust, but despair gradually led me, step by step, to dangerous ways. The down- ward road is so easy! The backward track so nearly impossible! I became a gambler. Some one pas- sion must root out the other maddening one. Since that day, like Hamlet, I could accuse myself of such deeds that it were better I had never been born. You know what I was. Heaven only knows what I am! There is no room for love in my heart now— that place is usurped by the demon of play. ‘‘ALBERTO.”’ He spoke truly in those lines. Twelve years before » he had been a worthy representative of the noble house whose name he bore, and of which he was the last scion. He was but nineteen years of age when his heart had been literally broken by the sad disap- pointment to which his letter referred, There was comicbooks.com —