CAVOUR’S LOVE STORY.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 479, 11 June 1890, Page 3

CAVOUR’S LOVE STORY.

A Melancholy Romance. Miss Godkin contributes to ‘ Macmillan an account of ‘ the Young Cavour,’ from which we extract the following passages It is not to be credited that so warm a heart, however well guarded from all assaults, could have passed the critical period from twenty to thirty quite scatheless. Carrillo was too clever and too keen to be taken in by the wily arts of the coquette; but he was not insensible to the attractions of a sweet and lovely woman, whose grace, refinement, and cultivated mind won his admiration almost at the first meeting. Intense sympathy drew them together, and before they were aware of it they had become deeply attached to each other. They separated with the sad feeling that they should never meet again, for unhappily there was an insurmountable obstacle to their union : the young lady’s hand had already been disposed of by her father, after the manner of Italian marriages of that day. They seemed made for each other, but they met too late. Cavour was only twenty and the girl probably about the same age. He heard nothing of her for three years, except that she lived in Milan and was a constant sufferer from bad health. Once he wrote to express his sympathy and received a brief reply to thank him, but that was all. He preserved a tender remembrance of her, and a feeling oi regret that fate had divided them ; but his love had subsided into friendship, nor did he dream that the unhappy girl’s health had been ruined by her devoted attachment bo him. Bub it was so. After three years’ absence she returned to Turin, and it only needed the sight of her sad, beautiful face, with its traces of suffering, to rekindle Camillo’s almost extinct love. After two or three painful interviews they parted once more ; the fair unknown going to the baths with her parents, who probably wished to remove their daughter from the dangerous vicinity of the young Count. ‘ L’lnconnue.’ Then began the correspondence which lasted for years. They sometimes wrote twice a day to each other ; her letters were preserved and numbered by Cavour ; but her name, even her Christian name, carefully erased. He calls his lady ‘ L’lnconnue ’ in his diary, where he relates the whole story of his unhappy love in the most passionate and touching language. Cavour’s letters are lost, bub from those of the unknown we can gather an idea of their contents. Hers are very beautifully written, and express the intense, allabsorbing, hopeless love which had prostrated her strength for years and was slowly sapping her life. It is impossible to convey in a few words the painful impression left on the reader’s mind by the perusal of these heart-broken letters. At one time her parents thought her mind was giving way, and threatened to put her under some restraint. Cavour, who hated and cursed himself for being the cause of so much misery to this ‘ heavenly woman,’ moved as much by pity for her position in her family as by his own feelings, was tempted to ask her to fly with him to a foreign country. Happily he put away the mad thought before communicating it to her. A Broken Heart. When she felt her end at hand, she wrote a pathetic farewell to the man whom she had so loved, who seemed to her a * celestial intelligence,’ and for whom her life was sacrificed; for she died literally of a broken heart. In that last sad letter she told Camillo that he had never fully comprehended her love; how could he, when no human language could explain it? ‘ When you read these lines an insurmountable barrier will have been raised between us. I shall have been initiated in the grand secrets oi the bomb ; and perhaps—l tremble at the thought—l may then have forgotten you.’