Selected Works of Eliza Haywood

IDALIA:OR, THE Unfortunate Mistress. Part 1

If there were a possibility that the warmth and vigour of youth could be tempered with a due consideration, and the power of judging rightly, how easy were it to avoid the ills which most of us endure? How few would be unhappy? With what serenity might the noon of life glide on, could we account with reason for our morning actions! We hear, indeed, daily complaints of the cruelty of fate; but if we examine the source, we shall find almost all the woes we languish under are self-caused; and that either to pursue the gratification of some unruly passion, or shun the performance of an incumbent duty, those misfortunes which so fill the world derive their being and would more justly merit condemnation than compassion, were not the fault too universal.

Don Bernardo de Bellsache, a nobleman of Venice, had a daughter whom he esteemed the blessing of his age; and had her conduct been such as might have been expected from the elegance of her genius, and the improvements of education, which his fondness had indulged her in, she had indeed been the wonder of her sex. Imagination cannot form a face more exquisitely lovely; such majesty, such sweetness, such a regularity in all her features, accompanied with an air at once so soft, so striking, that while she commanded she allured, and forced what she entreated. Nor was her shape and mien less worthy admiration; it was impossible for anything to be more exactly proportioned than the former; and for the latter, it had a grace peculiar to itself: the least and most careless motion of her head or hand, was sufficient to captivate a heart. In fine, her charms were so infinitely above description, that it was necessary to see her, to have any just notion of her. But, alas! To what end served all this beauty, these uncommon qualifications, but to make her more remarkably unhappy? She had a wit, which gained her no fewer adorers than her other perfections; yet not enough to defend her from the assaults of almost every passion human nature is liable to fall into. The greatness of her spirit (which from her childhood had been untameable, or was rendered so through the too-great indulgence of her doting parents) made her unable to endure control, disdainful of advice, obstinate, and peremptory in following her own will to what extremes soever it led her: the consequence of such a disposition could not be expected to be very fortunate, but it brought on her such dreadful inconveniencies, as all who find in themselves the least propensity to be of such a humour, ought to tremble at the repetition of, and exert their utmost reason to extirpate.

Idalia (for that was the name of this lovely inconsiderate) had no sooner arrived at her fourteenth year, than she attracted the eyes of all the young noblemen of Venice; scarce a heart but sighed for her: the shrine of Our Blessed Lady of Loreto was never thronged with greater numbers of religious devotees than Don Bernardo 's house was by those of the young and gay; and happy did they think themselves, whose birth or fortune gave them any just cause to hope the pretensions they brought would be an offering worth acceptance. There were some too, (as no climate is barren of fops) who had the vanity, without either of these advantages, to promise themselves success; of this last number was Florez, one, who, if he had not been possessed with more assurance than is ordinarily to be found even among the most tenacious, would not have presumed, though his passion had been really as violent as he endeavoured to make it appear, to have declared it. He was descended from a family, in which there never had been one whose actions had entitled him to bear arms; the height of his parent's ambition had been to prefer him, when a child, to be page to Don Ferdinand, nephew to the Doge. With this young nobleman he had travelled; and all the education he was master of was owing to this advantage, as was the post he possessed in the army, to his favour: for being naturally of a designing sordid disposition, by falling in with all his humours, promoting his pleasures, and flattering his vices, he had wound himself so much into the good will of his lord, that he refused him nothing. The intimacy with which he was treated by so great a man, and the sudden elevation of his fortune, joined to some fulsome praises of his beauty, and fine wit, which those women, who are paid for their favours, generally lavish on the person who makes choice of them, gave him so good an opinion of his own merit, that he thought it an impossibility for any woman to be insensible of it; and looked on the attainment of Idalia, notwithstanding the multitude of her admirers, and the vast possessions she was likely to be mistress of, as a thing not at all difficult.