Free The Heir of Mondolfo by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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    The Heir of Mondolfo
    Mary Shelley
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    In the beautiful and wild country near Sorrento, in the Kingdom
of Naples, at the time it was governed by monarchs of the house of
Anjou, there lived a territorial noble, whose wealth and power
overbalanced that of the neighboring nobles. His castle, itself a
stronghold, was built on a rocky eminence, toppling over the blue
and lovely Mediterranean. The hills around were covered with
ilex-forests, or subdued to the culture of the olive and vine.
Under the sun no spot could be found more favored by nature.
    If at eventide you had passed on the placid wave beneath the
castellated rock that bore the name of Mondolfo, you would have
imagined that all happiness and bliss must reside within its walls,
which, thus nestled in beauty, overlooked a scene of such
surpassing loveliness; yet if by chance you saw its lord issue from
the portal, you shrunk from his frowning brow, you wondered what
could impress on his worn cheek the combat of passions. More
piteous sight was it to behold his gentle lady, who, the slave of
his unbridled temper, the patient sufferer of many wrongs, seemed
on the point of entering upon that only repose "where the
wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest."1 The
Prince Mondolfo had been united early in life to a princess of the
regal family of Sicily. She died in giving birth to a son. Many
years subsequently, after a journey to the northern Italian states,
he returned to his castle, married. The speech of his bride
declared her to be a Florentine. The current tale was that he
married her for love, and then hated her as the hindrance of his
ambitious views. She bore all for the sake of her only child--a
child born to its father's hate; a boy of gallant spirit, brave
even to wildness. As he grew up, he saw with anger the treatment
his mother received from the haughty Prince. He dared come forward
as her defender; he dared oppose his boyish courage to his
father's rage: the result was natural--he became the object of
his father's dislike. Indignity was heaped on him; the vassals
were taught to disobey him, the menials to scorn him, his very
brother to despise him as of inferior blood and birth. Yet the
blood of Mondolfo was his; and, though tempered by the gentle
Isabel's more kindly tide, it boiled at the injustice to which
he was a victim. A thousand times he poured forth the overflowings
of his injured spirit in eloquent complaints to his mother. As her
health decayed, he nurtured the project, in case of her death, of
flying his paternal castle, and becoming a wanderer, a soldier of
fortune. He was now thirteen. The Lady Isabel soon, with a
mother's penetration, discovered his secret, and on her
death-bed made him swear not to quit his father's protection
until he should have attained the age of twenty. Her heart bled for
the wretchedness that she foresaw would be his lot; but she looked
forward with still greater horror to the picture her active fancy
drew of her son at an early age wandering forth in despair, alone
and helpless, suffering all the extremities of famine and
wretchedness; or, almost worse, yielding to the temptations that in
such a situation would be held out to him. She extracted this vow,
and died satisfied that he would keep it. Of all the world, she
alone knew the worth of her Ludovico--had penetrated beneath the
rough surface, and become acquainted with the rich store of virtue
and affectionate feeling that lay like unsunned ore in his
sensitive heart.
    Fernando hated his son. From his earliest boyhood he had felt
the sentiment of aversion, which, far from endeavoring to quell, he
allowed to take deep root, until Ludovico's most innocent
action became a crime, and a system of denial and resistance was
introduced that called forth all of sinister that there was in the
youth's character, and engendered an active spirit of
detestation in his father's mind. Thus Ludovico grew, hated and
hating. Brought together through their common