Only think how it began! You one day came rushing to my
room, you pressed me all trembling to your heart, and silently bore me
away. 'Natalie,' said you, 'danger threatens you; I will save, or
perish with you!' You mounted your horse with me in your arms. Behind us
screamed and moaned the servants of my house, but you regarded them
not, and I trustingly clung to your heart, for I knew that if danger
threatened me, you would surely save me! Oh, do you yet remember that
fabulous ride? How we rested in out-of-the-way houses, or with poor
peasant people, and then proceeded on farther and farther! And how the
sun constantly grew warmer, melting the snow, and you constantly became
more cheerful and happy, until, one day, you impetuously pressed me to
your bosom, and said: 'Natalie, we are saved! Life and the future are
now yours! Look around you, we are in Italy. Here you can be free and
happy!'"
"And was not that a good prophecy?" asked Paulo. "Has it not been
fulfilled? Are you not happy?"
"I should be so," sighed Natalie, "could I avoid thinking so often of
that past! Those words which you then spoke to me were the last I ever
heard in that language, which I had always spoken until then, but of
which I know not the name! From that hour you spoke to me in an unknown
tongue, and I felt like a poor deserted orphan, from whom was taken her
last possession, her language!"
"And yet whole peoples have been robbed of that last and dearest
possession!" said Paulo, his brow suddenly darkening, "and not, as in
your case, to save life and liberty, but for the purpose of enslaving
and oppressing them.
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