Meanwhile Antonio, having gained the forest, rapidly threaded its tangled paths for nearly an hour. He then stopped in one of its deepest recesses, and, having keenly reconnoitred every avenue of approach, threw himself weary at the foot of a tree, and opening the handkerchief in which he had wrapped his father's skull, gave vent to a flood of tears.
“Oh, my father!” he said, “my father! why could I not take vengeance on the authors of your death? why could I not avenge myself on the descendants of the base Frenchman who insulted my mother? why could I not wash out, in their blood, the shame that has fallen on our family, and embittered our existence?”
At the thought of vengeance the eyes of the young islander flashed fire, his tears dried up, and that heart, just now so open to tender emotions, would have prompted him to plunge his dagger in the bosom of those who were the cause of his misery.
Again, the fit changed; for, in the midst of this storm of passion, a name quivered on his lips, like the star seen in the drifting clouds when the tempest is raging.
“Madaléna!” he cried, “all is now finished between us;—Antonio is a bandit.”
Then, exercising a strong power over himself, he passed his hand over his forehead, as if to drive evil thoughts from his brain, and, unsheathing his strong dagger, dug a hole at the foot of the oak, in which he deposited his precious burthen. A cross, carved by his dagger on the trunk of the tree, served for a memorial of his father's fate:—ah! what thoughts, what sorrows, did that cross recall to his mind!—and, after a short prayer, he hastened from the spot which had witnessed his last act of filial duty.
Wretched Antonio! a solitary outcast, abandoned by all, what refuge was left for you but the forest and the _máquis_?—what protector, but your good rifle—what hope, but in the grave! Nay, another passion, another image, was deeply graven on his heart! Love—that divine passion, which ennobles a man, which gives him courage, which fills him with heroism—afforded him strength to survive so many calamities.
Some days after these occurrences, a young maiden crept stealthily at early dawn from among the houses in the village of Allari, fifteen leagues distant from Bastia, and gained unseen the _purlieus_ of the neighbouring wood before any of the villagers were abroad. The maiden's age was about eighteen years; her step was light, her form slender and graceful; health sparkled in her dark eyes; her enterprise lent a ruddier hue to her olive skin, and a profusion of raven-black tresses floated on her shoulders, as she brushed through the evergreen shrubbery on the verge of the wood, where, concealed in the hollow of an aged chestnut tree, a young man had been waiting her arrival for upwards of an hour. This young man was Antonio, the maiden Madaléna.