"TIME'S REVENGES" is also a confession made in the form of a soliloquy.
The speaker has a friend whose devotion is equal to any test, and whose
love he barely repays with liking; and he has a lady-love by whom this
friend is avenged; for he has given up to his passion for her his body
and his soul, his peace and his renown, every laudable ambition, every
rational aim; and he knows she would let him roast by a slow fire if
this would procure her an invitation to a certain ball.


"THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND" is the supposed adventure of a leading Italian
patriot, told by himself in later years. He tells how he was hiding from
the Austrians, who had put a price upon his head, and were scouring the
country in pursuit of him; how, impelled by hunger, he disclosed his
place of concealment to a peasant girl--the last of a troop of villagers
who were passing by; and how she saved his life at the risk of her own,
and when she would have been paid in gold for betraying him. He relates
also that his first thought was to guard himself against betrayal by not
telling her who he was; but that her loyal eyes, her dignified form and
carriage (perhaps too, the consummate tact with which she had responded
to his signal) in another moment had put the thought to flight, and he
fearlessly placed his own, and his country's destiny in her hands. He is
an exile in England now. Friends and brothers have made terms with the
oppressor, and his home is no longer theirs. But among the wishes which
still draw him to his native land, is one, less acknowledged than the
rest and which perhaps lies deeper, that he may see that noble woman
once more; talk to her of the husband who was then her lover, of her
children, and her home; and, once more, as he did in parting from her,
kiss her hand in gratitude, and lay his own in blessing on her
head.[102]