Alvira: The Heroine of Vesuvius

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eath had lingered in his approach. The gay, the ambitious, and healthy he had taken all too soon; but for Madeleine, WHO LONGED TO GO, he tarried. Her little violets had already given their first fragrant kiss to bree

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ll be withered by the vicissitudes of destiny; fond ones w

finally amongst the victims of the lunatic asylum. The suicide is the prophet of his own doom; the presentiment of death by drowning has but too often ended in a watery grave. Perhaps where the fibres of the heart are weakest, the strain brought on them by excited fancy snaps them in the misfortune that is dreaded; o

in the circles of the great and learned, Heaven itself could not build up a greater joy in the limited horizon of her hopes; but an awful conviction crept over her that some misfortune would tear from her the object of her love like the fruit torn from the stem, like the young branch from the oak. In dreams she

ver her thoughts, Louis Marie came towards her. A beam of joy lit up her hectic cheek; she impressed a kiss

f worlds, and keeps them flying around him with immense velocity, could occupy himself with us human beings, who are no more than insects moving on this world, which is but a speck in the immensity of the universe. But I know how it is-our souls are immortal, and hence we must soar higher than the countless worlds, were they ten times as great. Our blessed Lord, by coming amongst us and dying to save those souls, showed us that he thought more of us

f virtuous sentiment that made her still more proud of her child, she had caught the end of a golden thread and wished to unravel it further, but feare

ng heart will misguide you. I know, from the serious tone of your voice and look in asking that question, you have been feeling your way to make some crushing disclosure. I saw you crying in the garden this afternoon, and for some time past I have noticed

any moment, like sullen rivers, overflow and betray their existence in a flood of tears. Fearing to venture suddenly on the subject that was fullest in his he

g commanded the youth of the country to gird on the sword for our

eine, feigning a patriotism she scarcely felt. "But, thanks be to God, I am no

eclared, and I am to be a

e defeat of Lepanto? or Christian Spain still intoxicated with its own dream of ambition? Whence come the sound of arms, Loui

on his mother's ears. "And I am going to join a religious community immediately, to become a soldier in the great war of right against wrong-of this world against the n

into the garden, and Madeleine was agai