Alice, or the Mysteries — Book 11

								

sudden strain of music from a village came on my ear, and I stopped
short, and crouched down, and held my breath to listen.  It ceased; and I
thought I had been with Florence, and I wept bitterly!  When I recovered,
memory came back to me distinct and clear; and I heard a voice say to me,
'Avenge her and thyself!'  From that hour the voice has been heard again,
morning and night!  Lumley Ferrers, I hear it now! it speaks to my heart,
it warms my blood, it nerves my hand!  On whom should vengeance fall?
Speak to me!"
Lumley strode rapidly on.  They were now without the grove; a gay throng
was before them.  "All is safe," thought the Englishman.  He turned
abruptly and haughtily on Cesarini, and waved his hand; "Begone, madman!"
said he, in a loud and stern voice,--"begone! vex me no more, or I give
you into custody.  Begone, I say!"
Cesarini halted, amazed and awed for the moment; and then, with a dark
scowl and a low cry, threw himself on Vargrave.  The eye and hand of the
latter were vigilant and prepared; he grasped the uplifted arm of the
maniac, and shouted for help.  But the madman was now in his full fury;
he hurled Vargrave to the ground with a force for which the peer was not
prepared, and Lumley might never have risen a living man from that spot,
if two soldiers, seated close by, had not hastened to his assistance.
Cesarini was already kneeling on his breast, and his long bony fingers
were fastening upon the throat of his intended victim.  Torn from his
hold, he glared fiercely on his new assailants; and after a fierce but
momentary struggle, wrested himself from their grip.  Then, turning round
to Vargrave, who had with some effort risen from the ground, he shrieked
out, "I shall have thee yet!" and fled through the trees and disappeared.

CHAPTER II.


AH, who is nigh?  Come to me, friend or foe!
My parks, my walks, my manors that I had,
Ev'n now forsake me.--HENRY VI. Part iii.
LORD VARGRAVE, bold as he was by nature, in vain endeavoured to banish
from his mind the gloomy impression which the startling interview with
Cesarini had bequeathed.  The face, the voice of the maniac, haunted him,
as the shape of the warning wraith haunts the mountaineer.  He returned
at once to his hotel, unable for some hours to collect himself
sufficiently to pay his customary visit to Miss Cameron.  Inly resolving
not to hazard a second meeting with the Italian during the rest of his
sojourn at Paris by venturing in the streets on foot, he ordered his
carriage towards evening; dined at the Cafe de Paris; and then re-entered
his carriage to proceed to Lady Doltimore's house.
"I beg your pardon, my lord," said his servant, as he closed the
carriage-door, "but I forgot to say that, a short time after you returned
this morning, a strange gentleman asked at the porter's lodge if Mr.
Ferrers was not staying at the hotel.  The porter said there was no Mr.