APPLETON'S JOURNAL:
A MONTHLY
MISCELLANY OF POPULAR LITERATURE.
NEW SERIES—VOL. II
JANUARY-JUNE, 1877.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
549 & 551 BROADWAY
THE HEIR OF MONDOLFO
BY
MARY SHELLEY
In the beautiful and wild country near Sorrento, in the Kingdom ofNaples, at the time it was governed by monarchs of the house of Anjou,there lived a territorial noble, whose wealth and power overbalancedthat of the neighboring nobles. His castle, itself a stronghold, wasbuilt on a rocky eminence, toppling over the blue and lovelyMediterranean. The hills around were covered with ilex-forests, orsubdued to the culture of the olive and vine. Under the sun no spotcould be found more favored by nature.
If at eventide you had passed on the placid wave beneath the castellatedrock that bore the name of Mondolfo, you would have imagined that allhappiness and bliss must reside within its walls, which, thus nestled inbeauty, overlooked a scene of such surpassing loveliness; yet if bychance you saw its lord issue from the portal, you shrunk from hisfrowning brow, you wondered what could impress on his worn cheek thecombat of passions. More piteous sight was it to behold his gentle lady,who, the slave of his unbridled temper, the patient sufferer of manywrongs, seemed on the point of entering upon that only repose "where thewicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest."[1] The PrinceMondolfo had been united early in life to a princess of the regal familyof Sicily. She died in giving birth to a son. Many years subsequently,after a journey to the northern Italian states, he returned to hiscastle, married. The speech of his bride declared her to be aFlorentine. The current tale was that he married her for love, and thenhated her as the hindrance of his ambitious views. She bore all for thesake of her only child—a child born to its father's hate; a boy ofgallant spirit, brave even to wildness. As he grew up, he saw with angerthe treatment his mother received from the haughty Prince. He dared comeforward as her defender; he dared oppose his boyish courage to hisfather's rage: the result was natural—he became the object of hisfather's dislike. Indignity was heaped on him; the vassals were taughtto disobey him, the menials to scorn him, his very brother to despisehim as of inferior blood and birth. Yet the blood of Mondolfo was his;and, though tempered by the gentle Isabel's more kindly tide, it boiledat the injustice to which he was a victim. A thousand times he pouredforth the overflowings of his injured spirit in eloquent complaints tohis mother. As her health decayed, he nurtured the project, in case ofher death, of flying his paternal castle, and becoming a wanderer, asoldier of fortune. He was now thirteen. The Lady Isabel soon, with amother's penetration, discovered his secret, and on her death-bed madehim swear not to quit his father's protection until he should haveattained the age of twenty. Her heart bled for the wretchedness that sheforesaw would be his lot; but she looked forward with still greaterhorror to the picture her active fancy drew of her son at an early agewandering forth in despair, alone and helpless, suffering all theextremities of famine and wretchedness; or, almost worse, yielding tothe temptations that in such a situation would be held out to him. Sheextracted this vow, and died satisfied that he would keep it. Of all theworld, she alone knew the worth of her Ludovico—had penetratedbeneath the rough surface, and become acquainted with the rich store ofvirtue and affectionate feeling that lay like