The luminosity of love

Prelude

There are stories worth knowing. Those are the stories of life and death, of trust and betrayal, of love and suffering. They are worth retelling and reflecting upon. Here is one of them.

He was fifty, she was twenty-one. He was a poet, beloved among his people. She was a daughter of the wealthiest man in the entire province. He was a doctor of law, a cosmopolitan well-traveled and fluent in eight languages. Educated in the boarding scholls of Vienna and Budapest, she enjoyed theater, piano, and horse riding; she was a woman whose social status, beauty, and character attracted a steady river of suitors …