Literary cadet and Rhode-Island statesman. [volume] (Providence, R.I.) 1827-1829, 1827-07-04

that bad beiallen her during her lethar-
gick paroxysm. 1t was no hard tale to
make her entertain grateful sense OF
the obligation she lay under to her de-
liverer. The love she had borne him
proved n moving and pa hetic orator in
his behalf; so that, when she was per-
fectly recovered, she justly concluded
that her life belonged to him who had
preserved it; and, to convince him OF
her affection, went along with him TO
England, where they lived for several
years, superlatively happy in all the
tender endearments of mutual love.
About ten years after they went to
Paris, where they lived without any care
to conceal themselves, because they inn
agined that nobody would ever suspect
what had happened; lut as fortune is
too often an implacable enemy to the
most sincere and rapturous love, the
collector unluckily met his wife in a
public ak, when the sight of her well
known person made such an impression
on his mind that the persuasion OF her
death could not eflace it. For this
reason, he not only accosted her, but,
notwithstanding the discourse she used
in order to impose upon him, parted
from her fully persuaded that she was
The very woman to whom he had been
married, and for whose death he had
gone into mourning.
GAS the whimsical nature Of this
event clothed the lady with set OF
charms which tho collector never before
imagined her to be mistress of, he not
only discovered her apartments at Paris
in spite of all the precautions she had
taken to conceal herself, but also claim
ed her as his spouse before the court au-
thorized to decide in similar cases. la
vain did the lover insist upon the right
he had to her, resulting from the care he
had taken other. TO no purpose did
he represent, that without the measures
taken by himself, the lady would have
been rotting in her grave-that his ad-
versary had renounced all claim to her
by ordering her to be interred-that he
might be justly arraigned as murderer
for not using the precautions necessary
to ascertain her death, and thousand
other reasons suggested by love, which
are always ingenious where it is sin
cere. But perceiving that the court
was not likely to prove favourable to
him, he resolved not to wait for its de-
csIon, and accordingly made his escape
along with the lady to foreign climate,
where their love continued sacred and
entire till death conveyed them to those
happy regions where love knows no end,
ana is confined within no limits"
Some defects IN the story, as thus
given, will at once occur to every one
1t is not said when it happened, or ,rhat
court it came before; and to account for
the want Of any record of the judgment
pronounced on the case, the parties are
made to evade judgment by flying into
foreign country. 1t is in fact, aliogeth
er but an imperfect version ofthe acci-
dent which is said really to have occur
red, not any where in France, but at
Florence, during the great plague, in
the year 1860. Dominica Maria Man
nj, who relates the story, says that the
sepulchre in which the lady was entomb-
ed alive I" was pointed out even to this
day." and that the path by which she
returned to the land of the living, had,
from this event, received and is still
known by the Way Of Death. The name
of the FIorentine heroine was Ginevra
de Bmiera, and that Of her lover, An
tonic Rondinelli. A fathers tyranny,
as in the French story, separated those
whom nature seemed to have destined
for each other; "bathed in tears, GIN
evra received the wedding ring from
the hand Of man who had no place in
her heart" On the breaking out of the
plague, shortly after, she becomes i'll,
dies Ito all appearances and is buried
the same day; "the law" says Manni,
"not perhaps then existing, which re-
quires that the dead should be kept at
least twenty four hours above ground "
Ginevra's lover does not, like the GauI,
disinter her on a mere speculation of
restoring her to life-a clumsy and i'm
probable contrivance-but, in the dead
of night, Ginevra herself awakes in the
tomb, to all the horrors of her situation,
forces her way out, and, as becomes a
dutiful wife talbeii in her shroud) hast
ems to her still weeping and disconsolate
husband A succession Of adventures
now await the wife again, and form, in
deed, an admirable foundation for a
cause celebre, although they do not ap-
pear to have been so esteemed by the
French compiler, who has given the
story in turn which excludes them en-
tirely. On knocking at the door of her
husband he looks out from the window,
and terrified at the sight of what he con-
ceives to be the ghost of his departed
wife, he hastily conjures it to depart in