Lady Eleanore S Mantle

"It was not love, although her rich beauty was a madness to him; nor horror, even while he fancied her spirit to be imbued with the same baneful essence that seemed to pervade her physical frame; but a wild offspring of both love and horror that had each parent in it, and burned like one and shivered like the other. Giovanni knew not what to dread; still less did be know what to hope; yet hope and dread kept a continual warfare in his breast, alternately vanquishing one another and starting up afresh to renew the content. Blessed are ail simple emotions, be they dark or bright! It is the lurid intermixture of the two that produces the illuminating blaze of the infernal regions." These four spellbinding stories are variations on the struggle between good and evil; prefigurations, one might say, of The Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in the historically rich and guilt-ridden city of Salem; one of his ancestors did indeed persecute the Salem witches. After a first novel in 1828, be devoted himself to increasingly successful short stories. In 1850, The Scarlet Letter brought him fame at last.

"Lady Eleanore's Mantle" is the third legend in the four-part short story "Legends of the Province-House" by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. This short story first appeared in The United States Democratic Review (Dec. 1838, Vol 2. Issue 12), and was later collected in an updated edition of Twice-Told Tales.The ship in which she came passenger had arrived at Newport, whence Lady Eleanore was conveyed to Boston in the Governor's coach, attended by a small escort of gentlemen on horseback. The ponderous equipage, with its four black horses, attracted much notice as it rumbled through Cornhill, surrounded by the prancing steeds of half a dozen cavaliers, with swords dangling to their stirrups and pistols at their holsters