But though the
fair visage was like one of the great Venetian master's portraits, her
voice was purely English, low, distinct, full, and soft,--and in this
enchanting voice she used to tell me the story of the one large picture
which adorned the room.
Over and over again, at my importunate beseeching, she told
it,--sometimes standing before it, while I held her hand and listened
with upturned face, and eyes rounding with big tears of wonder and pity,
to a tale which shook my small soul with a sadness and strangeness
far surpassing the interest of my beloved tragedy, "The Babes in the
Wood,"--though at this period of my existence it has happened to me to
interrupt with frantic cries of distress, and utterly refuse to hear,
the end of that lamentable ballad.
But the picture.--In the midst of a stormy sea, on which night seemed
fast settling down, a helmless, mastless, sailless bark lay weltering
giddily, and in it sat a man in the full flower of vigorous manhood.
His attitude was one of miserable dejection, and, oh, how I did long to
remove the hand with which his eyes were covered, to see what manner of
look in them answered to the bitter sorrow which the speechless lips
expressed! His other hand rested on the fair curls of a girl-baby of
three years old, who clung to his knee, and, with wide, wondering blue
eyes and laughing lips, looked up into the half-hidden face of her
father.--"And that," said the sweet voice at my side, "was the good Duke
of Milan, Prospero,--and that was his little child, Miranda.
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