And the next day the gondolier came with a train of other gondoliers,
all decked in their holiday garb, and on his gondola sat Angela, happy,
and blushing at her happiness. Then he and she entered the house in
which I dwelt, and came into my room (and it was strange indeed, after
so many years of inversion, to see her with her head above her feet!),
and then she wished me happiness and a speedy restoration to good health
(which could never be); and I in broken words and with tears in my eyes,
gave her the little silver crucifix that had stood by my bed or my table
for so many years. And Angela took it reverently, and crossed herself,
and kissed it, and so departed with her delighted husband.
And as I heard the song of the gondoliers as they went their way--the
song dying away in the distance as the shadows of the sundown closed
around me--I felt that they were singing the requiem of the only love
that had ever entered my heart.
THE PARSON'S DAUGHTER OF OXNEY COLNE
By Anthony Trollope
(_London Review_, 2 March 1861)
The prettiest scenery in all England--and if I am contradicted in that
assertion, I will say in all Europe--is in Devonshire, on the southern
and southeastern skirts of Dartmoor, where the rivers Dart and Avon and
Teign form themselves, and where the broken moor is half cultivated, and
the wild-looking uplands fields are half moor.
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