ROBERTO CORSINI.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH FOR THE DEMOCRATIC REVIEW.

EVERY Monday, according to immemorial usage, the tables were set out in the principal apartment of the palace; and, by the light of crystal Venetian girandoles, in the midst of profound attention, the play went on.

Politics was excluded from the noble assembly. Of religion they spoke no more than if such a thing had been unknown to them. Play absorbed every thing.

It was Monday night. For two hours nothing had been heard but the rattling of the cards, when Signor Roberto Corsini rose quickly and strode up to a table, which was covered with piles of gold and bank-notes.

"My lord," said he, to one of the players, "put up two hundred pistoles for me. I'm not in luck, and it is my last stake."

The two hundred pistoles rolled out upon the table. In two turns of the cards, the money of Corsini, and of the player on whom he betted, was in their adversary's hands. The player who had lost rose, and politely offered to yield Corsini his place. He accepted, and his first bet was two thousand. sequins. "My lord Doria," said he, "let us see if chance. always favors you. The proverb says, 'You are happier at play than in love.""

My Lord Corsini, it is scarcely generous in you to remind me, that, in a few days, you are about to marry my cousin Aglaura. You have pleased her. It is well. She has preferred you to me. That is marvellous-but-clubs-"

"I did not mean to wound you. I have no clubs." "Then the stake is mine."

"Two thousand sequins-they are yours. I go you twenty thousand, now. That is nearly the value of the ear-rings I mean to buy for Aglaura."

"Aglaura again. The king-you have lost again, Signor Corsini. Do you wish to stop?"

"I am not in the habit of stopping when I lose. Recoil before such a trifling check? Pooh! Fifty thousand."

"Fifty thousand. Be it so."

The enunciation of this sum, made in a loud voice, attracted the attention of the other players, and they arose, both men and women, and placed themselves in a circle silently around Roberto Corsini and Doria. "You are wrong, Signor Doria, to hesitate an instant, when I offer to bet fifty thousand sequins. Do you not know, my palace is worth as much as yours?-my villa of Camaldoli, as much as your vineyards of Carrara?-and my credit equal to what we play for ?"

"Signor Corsini. Your ill-humor puts a wrong construction upon my words, as well as upon my silence. Be it so. Let us play. Your fifty thousand sequins are mine."

"Yes; but my villa of Camaldoli may represent two hundred thousand. Here are the title-deeds of it."

"Go on; let us play for the Villa of Camaldoli. We will stop, when I have played two hundred thousand sequins against it."

'Yes; a thousand times, yes. Go on." "The Villa of Camaldoli is mine."

"The cards are infamous; the devil made them; the fire of hell colored them. But will you leave your victory half finished? You have the villa; but I still possess my palace, that of my ancestors. It is second only to the Pitti, as you know. Marbles and pictures worth nearly a million! I offer you the chance for it."

"And I accept."

"Very well, then. Double or quits. What you have won against the palace?"

The cards were distributed, and, in three turns, the luck which ran so violently against Corsini, finished as it had begun. Without a change of color or a complaint, he laid upon the green table, the golden key of his palace, and opened for himself a passage through a crowd, terrified by the blow which left him landless and penniless. No one dared to stop

him.

Again, however, he returned, and, leaning down, whispered, with evident emotion, to Doria. The latter made a sign of acquiescence, and the cards were resumed.

"Are you the devil that you always win ?"

"I have proved the contrary, Signor Corsini, since the devil has no fancy for women, and I have just won from you your mistress, your betrothed-she whom you were to marry so

soon !"

"You are a coward to say it."

"And you are a hundred times a coward to have staked her."

"Aglaura! his betrothed, the only daughter of Cavalcati, bet her away. Holy Virgin!" cried all the ladies present, in accents of anger.

"Silence! and hear me," cried the gamester. "I, Roberto Corsini, descended from the most illustrious ancestry of Italy; I, who have had among them a Governor of Trieste; a conqueror at the Battle of Lepanto; two consecrated Doges of Venice, in the fifteenth century; who still proudly count Podestas and Gonfalioneers of Florence, Roberto Corsini, lord of Camaldoli, I repeat, I stake my name."

"His name!" cried the cavaliers, with a burst of laughter. "His name!"

"It is well worth, I think," he continued, smiling bitterly, "some thousand acres of vines, in Carrara; and the glory which accompanies it, my lord Doria, is not worth less than the sum it pleases you to fix. I stake my name. If I lose, my lord, I consent never to be named again whilst I live. It is a fine treasure, that name of mine. It is inscribed in the book of life; it is traced in letters of gold, upon the register of Venice; it is written in every glorious memory of Etruria. If I lose, I agree that it shall be erased from all. By our name, in the day of judgment, the archangel calls us from the tomb. It is the key of heaven and hell. Do you understand, now, what I risk? For the last time, at what will you value it. Quick?"

"I value it too highly to fix a value. If I gain, it will belong to me. If I lose, you shall fix it yourself."

"Place yourself there, then."

And the two players made the sign of the cross. Whilst they shuffled the cards, the company, by a common impulse of terror, abandoned the hall and left them alone with each other. Midnight struck.

A cry rose upon the night-"I am damned." And a man went out by the gate of St. Paolo.

He sat down at the foot of a dry tree, and leaned his head upon his hands and wept.

"O my Villa of Camaldoli, where the fruits were so beautiful; my palace; my Aglaura; my name-lost-lost-all lost. Could I but force it, sword in hand, from Doria; trace it upon the sand; read it when 'twas writ, or even halloo it to this solitude. But no. I have gambled it away. I have stripped myself of the right or power to resume it. The law of play

has taken it from me, and debts of honor are sacred. The world is ashamed of me. It denies the apostate who has denied himself. I am viler in its eyes than the vilest pagan. O helplessness! O misery! The very demons refuse me; for even they have a name in the creation. Satan, Satan! İ call on thee."

The blush of day tinged the horizon. A band of young girls passed him.

"Will you buy a rose, of Marta; a sprig of jessamine, from Gloria; or

"Despair! They have each a name." He left the young girls, and ran, like a madman across the fields, crying: "Marta, Luigina, Gloria! all have a name, but I have none. He knocked at the door of a convent. A monk appeared. Brother," he said; "I wish to be baptized." "You come early."

"My safety demands it."

"Are you a Jew ?"-"No!"

Manichean? a Protestant ?"

"A Turk?"-"No!" "A

"No, no! I was born in the bosom of the Holy Catholic

Apostolic and Roman Church."

"What, then, is it you ask?"

"To be a second time baptized."

"The Council of Trebizonde has forbidden it."

"But I have lost my name."

"Find it again. The angelus sounds. God help you."

The door of the convent was closed.

Baptism is refused me. I am no longer a Christian. Divine pity! For me no Christmas, no Easter, no Pentecost, no candle of the Virgin of Carmel, when I am sick; no word of priest to console me on my deserted couch!"

He entered a village, which was upon the domain of his sister the Dutchess of Paglia.

The curé said to him: "Good morning, Signor Roberto Corsini." His nurse called from the window: "Good morning, Corsini." The villagers cried out: "Long live Signor Corsini." He answered neither curé, nor nurse, nor villagers. "I have no name," he muttered, and rushed away like an evil spirit which some priest has exorcised.

Vasssal and mendicant and robber scorned the man without a name. He attempted to join a band of brigands.

"Who are you?" said the chief.

"The enemy

of men."

แ "You are our friend. What do you desire ?"

To carry misery and desolation into families; to live upon the highway; to follow you to pillage or the gibbet; to win my bread with my dagger."

"Your name?"

"I have none.'

"You can not be of our band. You would bring misfortune upon brave men, and the saints would abandon us, if we received you. Depart!"

A little while after this, he learnt that Doria, who, changing his name for that of Corsini, had continued to bear the latter, was overwhelmed with debt, and drawn, as it were, upon the hurdle of an infamous renown-in a word, disho nored. He was a fraudulent bankrupt. He learned, that Doria had been a prisoner in the Galleys of Cattaro, for cheating at cards, and had escaped.

Corsini had been cheated of his palace, his mistress, and his name. Whatever he was, what would he not give to see

him?

Six months he wandered about, night and day, hopeless. Still, he clung to life; he durst not kill himself.

At last, he resolved to return to Florence. He reached the city. He stood before the palace. The street was deserted; but the palace gleamed with lights. Beautiful women passed and repassed before them.

"They are there," he cried. "It is he. It is Doria. It is Aglaura! Take back your gold; but give me back my name. Restore me my bride. My life is bound up with hers. Doria, for love of grace, give me back my name."

His cries fell unheeded. Despairingly, he turned towards the bank of the Arno. Half-dead with fatigue, he stretched himself upon the bank. Directly, he beheld approaching, gondolas, filled with musicians. Valets, bearing flambeaux, lined the banks. The wedding-festival was continued upon the river. He fancied himself in a dream. He saw Aglaura, more beautiful than ever. Her arms were bare; the dia monds glittered in her hair; her embroidered robe swept down in folds of marvellous richness.

When the different groups had descended into the little barks which awaited them; when all had passed, and swept away into the darkness, he heard a strange and terrible cry. Hastening to the place from which they had started, he saw two men hastily retiring, and crying, as they did so: "The infamous wretch is dead!"

A man had been assassinated.