Chapter VIII

The hour of vespers had passed, and Camilla Donati sat alone with Buondlemonte. She was attired for the altar, and in her bridal robes outrivaled e’en her own loveliness. Yet she was sad with all her beauty, and amidst all the aids to happiness that surrounded her. A cloud shaded her fair brow, and the rosy lips sought in vain to wreath themselves in smiles.

“Thou art grave, dear Camilla!” Buondlemonte said, speaking in a subdued tone; “dost thou repent thy promise to be mine?”

She turned her beautiful eyes, liquid with tenderness and trusting affection, to his, and placed her snowy hand lightly upon his shoulder,

“Dost thou think it?” she asked.

“Forgive me!” he replied; “I only meant to banish thy sad thoughts, and make thee gay.”

“I should be happy,” she said, as his arm stole round her waist, “but yet I cannot feel so. Thy form is ever in my thought, and bliss smiles at thy side, yet when I seek to clasp it in my embrace, a dark phantom interposes, and with a hollow laugh, mocks my baffled purpose. In the air there is a murmuring dirge, and thy voice swells with sepulchral sound. I cannot feel happy,” she said; “an icy coldness settles round my heart.”

“Let love,” he replied, “banish it from thence. Thou shall not yield thy soul up to sickly fancies. ’Tis part of mine, dear Camilla, and must take its hue from the cheerful coloring of its other half. Thy fears for my safety have faded the rose-tint from thy cheeks, but within an hour—when the holy father has performed the sacred rite, and thou art mine own—thou wilt smile at the fantastic thoughts that now make thee look so grave.”

“Would that the rite were over, and safely so!” Camilla fervently whispered, as she turned aside her blushing face.

The wish seemed uttered only to be answered, for at that moment her mother entered the apartment to summon the couple to the chapel.

“The priest is at the altar,” she said, “and the guests await the presence of the bridegroom and his bride.”

Buondlemonte rose, and supporting Camilla on his arm, passed into an adjoining room, where Guiseppo Leoni and the maidens who were to officiate as bridemaids, were assembled.

The wedding-party passed from the palace to the chapel. The lamps were all lighted, and beneath the arched roof a gay crowd was collected. Jewels glittered, rich silks rustled, lofty plumes waved, and happy smiles circulated on every side.

When Camilla and Buondlemonte appeared, the crowd fell back, and opened a passage for them to the altar, where for a moment they stood—the admiration of every beholder—till the ceremony should commence.

The holy man commenced the marriage-service, and propounded to the parties concerned, the questions which the church directs shall be put on such occasions. Those addressed to Camilla were answered in a low, musical voice, while Buondlemonte made his responses boldly and with pride.

The ceremony was over—they were man and wife. A happy smile already diffused itself over the countenance of the bride, and the priest raised his hand to pronounce the benediction; but he spoke not. His attention was arrested by voices elevated in anger, and sounds of rude strife at the entrance of the chapel.

All turned to inquire the cause of this interruption, and as they did so, the huge doors were forced back upon their hinges, and a band of armed men, with weapons bared, rushed up the tesselated aisle toward the altar. At their head was the youthful stranger who had appeared that morning at the Amedi palace. In his hand gleamed a naked poignard; his plumed cap had fallen from his head, and upon his shoulders there fell a luxuriant mass of long, dark hair. His eyes were bloodshot, and his voice sounded hoarse and unnatural as he called upon those who came after, to follow him. Casting with desperate strength all impediments aside, he paused not in his course until he stood fronting Buondlemonte.

The latter had drawn his sword, but Camilla Donati threw herself impulsively before him to shelter his person with her own; the stranger took advantage of the act of devotion, and burying his poignard up to the hilt in Buondlemonte’s body, he exclaimed,

“Die, traitor! even in thy act of treachery!”

The unfortunate young nobleman fell to the ground weltering in his own blood; and Camilla, with a shriek of heart-piercing agony, sunk fainting and prostrate upon his body.

The stranger gazed for an instant at the harrowing sight before him, then bent his knee beside Buondlemonte, and said, in a voice which already was touched with remorse,

“Buondlemonte, thou hast grievously wronged Francesca Amedi, and she has been her own avenger!”

The dying noble turned an inquiring glance upon the speaker, and with difficulty recognized the person of Francesca in the habiliments of the stranger.

“Thou art indeed avenged,” he murmured, in a weak voice, as he endeavored to embrace his fainting bride.

“Thou hadst canceled my hopes of happiness,” she said, as she rose to her feet, “and I have put the seal to the act by destroying thine!”

With a solemn step she stalked from the chapel, protected by those who had supported her; while Buondlemonte, after breathing a prayer to Heaven for Camilla’s peace, resigned his soul into the hands of its author.

It would be too melancholy a task to detail the particulars that followed this unhappy bridal. A few words will be sufficient to explain all that is necessary.

Camilla Donati, after many months, recovered from the fearful shock she had received in seeing her lover slain; but this world had ceased to delight her. She entered a convent, and in the course of time became its abbess. Francesca Amedi had accomplished her vengeance, but with its accomplishment she had ensured her own misery. With the vulture, remorse, ever preying upon her heart, she knew but one wish, and that was for death, while she lacked the power to terminate her own existence and solve the problem of eternity. After a vain effort to secure forgetfulness by mingling in society, she, too, retired from the world, and within the walls of the same convent over which Camilla Donati presided, she became a nun.

The death of Buondlemonte added virulence to the wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines; and many generations passed away before the families of Amedi and Donati became reconciled.