Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 edition. Excerpt: ... BOOK XIV. HISTORY OF CORINNE. CHAPTER I. "Oswald, I begin with the avowal which must determine my fate. If, after reading it, you find it impossible to pardon, do not finish this letter, but reject and banish me: yet if, when you know the name and destiny I have renounced, all is not broken between us, what follows may then serve as my excuse. "Lord Edgarmond was my father. I was born in Italy: his first wife was a Roman; and Lucy, whom they intended for your bride, is my sister, by an English lady--by my father's second marriage. Now, hear me! I lost my mother ere I was ten years old, and as it was her dying wish that my education should be finished ere I went lived till I was fifteen. My tastes and talents were formed ere her death induced Lord Edgarmond to have me with him. He lived at a small town in Northumberland, which cannot, I suppose, give any idea of England; yet was all I knew of it for six years. My mother, from my infancy, impressed on me the misery of not living in Italy; my aunt had often added that this fear of quitting her country had broken her heart. My good aunt herself was persuaded, too, that a Catholic would be condemned to perdition for settling in a Protestant country, and though I was not infected by this fear, the thought of going to England alarmed me much. I set forth with an inexplicable sense of sadness. The woman sent for me did not understand a word of Italian. I spoke it now and than to console my poor Theresina, who had consented to follow me, though she wept incessantly at leaving her country; but I knew that I must unlearn the habit of breathing the sweet sounds so welcome even to foreigners, and, for me, associated with all the recollections of my childhood. I approached the north unable to...