The Valley of Decision

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Title: The Valley of Decision
Author: Edith Wharton
Posting Date: August 1, 2009 [EBook #4327]
Release Date: August, 2003
First Posted: January 7, 2002
Language: English
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THE VALLEY OF DECISION
BY
EDITH WHARTON
Author of "A Gift from the Grave," "Crucial Instances," etc.
"Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision."
TO
MY FRIENDS
PAUL AND MINNIE BOURGET
IN REMEMBRANCE OF
ITALIAN DAYS TOGETHER.
CONTENTS.
BOOK I. THE OLD ORDER.
BOOK II. THE NEW LIGHT.
BOOK III. THE CHOICE.
BOOK IV. THE REWARD.
BOOK I.
THE OLD ORDER.
Prima che incontro alla festosa fronte
I lugubri suoi lampi il ver baleni.
1.1.
It was very still in the small neglected chapel. The noises of the farm
came faintly through closed doors--voices shouting at the oxen in the
lower fields, the querulous bark of the old house-dog, and Filomena's
angry calls to the little white-faced foundling in the kitchen.
The February day was closing, and a ray of sunshine, slanting through a
slit in the chapel wall, brought out the vision of a pale haloed head
floating against the dusky background of the chancel like a water-lily
on its leaf. The face was that of the saint of Assisi--a sunken ravaged
countenance, lit with an ecstasy of suffering that seemed not so much to
reflect the anguish of the Christ at whose feet the saint knelt, as the
mute pain of all poor down-trodden folk on earth.
When the small Odo Valsecca--the only frequenter of the chapel--had been
taunted by the farmer's wife for being a beggar's brat, or when his ears
were tingling from the heavy hand of the farmer's son, he found a
melancholy kinship in that suffering face; but since he had fighting
blood in him too, coming on the mother's side of the rude Piedmontese
stock of the Marquesses di Donnaz, there were other moods when he turned
instead to the stout Saint George in gold armour, just discernible
through the grime and dust of the opposite wall.
The chapel of Pontesordo was indeed as wonderful a storybook as fate
ever unrolled before the eyes of a neglected and solitary child. For a
hundred years or more Pontesordo, a fortified manor of the Dukes of
Pianura, had been used as a farmhouse; and the chapel was never opened
save when, on Easter Sunday, a priest came from the town to say mass. At
other times it stood abandoned, cobwebs curtaining the narrow windows,
farm tools leaning against the walls, and the dust deep on the sea-gods
and acanthus volutes of the altar. The manor of Pontesordo was very old.
The country people said that the great warlock Virgil, whose
dwelling-place was at Mantua, had once shut himself up for a year in the
topmost chamber of the keep, engaged in unholy researches; and another
legend related that Alda, wife of an early lord of Pianura, had thrown
herself from its battlements to escape the pursuit of the terrible
Ezzelino. The chapel adjoined this keep, and Filomena, the farmer's
wife, told Odo that it was even older than the tower and that the walls
had been painted by early martyrs who had concealed themselves there
from the persecutions of the pagan emperors.
On such questions a child of Odo's age could obviously have no
pronounced opinion, the less so as Filomena's facts varied according to
the seasons or her mood, so that on a day of east wind or when the worms
were not hatching well, she had been known to affirm that the pagans had
painted the chapel under Virgil's instruction, to commemorate the
Christians they had tortured. In spite of the distance to which these
conflicting statements seemed to relegate them, Odo somehow felt as
though these pale strange people--youths with ardent faces under their
small round caps, damsels with wheat-coloured hair and boys no bigger
than himself, holding spotted dogs in leash--were younger and nearer to
him than the dwellers on the farm: Jacopone the farmer, the shrill
Filomena, who was Odo's foster-mother, the hulking bully their son and
the abate who once a week came out from Pianura to give Odo religious
instruction and who dismissed his questions with the invariable
exhortation not to pry into matters that were beyond his years. Odo had
loved the pictures in the chapel all the better since the abate, with a
shrug, had told him they were nothing but old rubbish, the work of the
barbarians.
Life at Pontesordo was in truth not very pleasant for an ardent and
sensitive little boy of nine, whose remote connection with the reigning
line of Pianura did not preserve him from wearing torn clothes and
eating black bread and beans out of an earthen bowl on the kitchen
doorstep.
"Go ask your mother for new clothes!" Filomena would snap at him, when
his toes came through his shoes and the rents in his jacket-sleeves had
spread beyond darning. "These you are wearing are my Giannozzo's, as you
well know, and every rag on your back is mine, if there were any law for
poor folk, for not a copper of pay for your keep or a stitch of clothing
for your body have we had these two years come Assumption--. What's
that? You can't ask your mother, you say, because she never comes here?
True enough--fine ladies let their brats live in cow-dung, but they must
have Indian carpets under their own feet. Well, ask the abate, then--he
has lace ruffles to his coat and a naked woman painted on his snuff
box--What? He only holds his hands up when you ask? Well, then, go ask
your friends on the chapel-walls--maybe they'll give you a pair of
shoes--though Saint Francis, for that matter, was the father of the
discalced, and would doubtless tell you to go without!" And she would
add with a coarse laugh: "Don't you know that the discalced are shod
with gold?"
It was after such a scene that the beggar-noble, as they called him at
Pontesordo, would steal away to the chapel and, seating himself on an
upturned basket or a heap of pumpkins, gaze long into the face of the
mournful saint.
There was nothing unusual in Odo's lot. It was that of many children in
the eighteenth century, especially those whose parents were cadets of
noble houses, with an appanage barely sufficient to keep their wives and
themselves in court finery, much less to pay their debts and clothe and
educate their children. All over Italy at that moment, had Odo Valsecca
but known it, were lads whose ancestors, like his own, had been dukes
and crusaders, but who, none the less, were faring, as he fared, on
black bread and hard blows, and the half-comprehended taunts of unpaid
foster-parents. Many, doubtless, there were who cared little enough, as
long as they might play morro with the farmer's lads and ride the colt
bare-back through the pasture and go bird-netting and frog-hunting with
the village children; but some perhaps, like Odo, suffered in a dumb
animal way, without understanding why life was so hard on little boys.
Odo, for his part, had small taste for the sports in which Gianozzo and
the village lads took pleasure. He shrank from any amusement associated
with the frightening or hurting of animals, and his bosom swelled with
the fine gentleman's scorn of the clowns who got their fun in so coarse
a way. Now and then he found a moment's glee in a sharp tussle with one
of the younger children who had been tormenting a frog or a beetle; but
he was still too young for real fighting, and could only hang on the
outskirts when the bigger boys closed, and think how some day he would
be at them and break their lubberly heads. There were thus many hours
when he turned to the silent consolations of the chapel. So familiar had
he grown with the images on its walls that he had a name for every one:
the King, the Knight, the Lady, the children with guinea-pigs, basilisks
and leopards, and lastly the Friend, as he called Saint Francis. An
almond-faced lady on a white palfrey with gold trappings represented his
mother, whom he had seen too seldom for any distinct image to interfere
with the illusion; a knight in damascened armour and scarlet cloak was
the valiant captain, his father, who held a commission in the ducal
army; and a proud young man in diadem and ermine, attended by a retinue
of pages, stood for his cousin, the reigning Duke of Pianura.
A mist, as usual at that hour, was rising from the marshes between
Pontesordo and Pianura, and the light soon ebbed from the saint's face,
leaving the chapel in obscurity. Odo had crept there that afternoon with
a keener sense than usual of the fact that life was hard on little boys;
and though he was cold and hungry and half afraid, the solitude in which
he cowered seemed more endurable than the noisy kitchen where, at that
hour, the farm hands were gathering for their polenta, and Filomena was
screaming at the frightened orphan who carried the dishes to the table.
He knew, of course, that life at Pontesordo would not last for
ever--that in time he would grow up and be mysteriously transformed into
a young gentleman with a sword and laced coat, who would go to court and
perhaps be an officer in the Duke's army or in that of some neighbouring
prince; but, viewed from the lowliness of his nine years, that dazzling
prospect was too remote to yield much solace for the cuffs and sneers,
the ragged shoes and sour bread of the present. The fog outside had
thickened, and the face of Odo's friend was now discernible only as a
spot of pallor in the surrounding dimness. Even he seemed farther away
than usual, withdrawn into the fog as into that mist of indifference
which lay all about Odo's hot and eager spirit. The child sat down among
the gourds and medlars on the muddy floor and hid his face against his
knees.
He had sat there a long time when the noise of wheels and the crack of a
postillion's whip roused the dogs chained in the stable. Odo's heart
began to beat. What could the sounds mean? It was as though the
flood-tide of the unknown were rising about him and bursting open the
chapel door to pour in on his loneliness. It was, in fact, Filomena who
opened the door, crying out to him in an odd Easter Sunday voice, the
voice she used when she had on her silk neckerchief and gold chain or
when she was talking to the bailiff.
Odo sprang up and hid his face in her lap. She seemed, of a sudden,
nearer to him than any one else--a last barrier between himself and the
mystery that awaited him outside.
"Come, you poor sparrow," she said, dragging him across the threshold of
the chapel, "the abate is here asking for you;" and she crossed herself,
as though she had named a saint.
Odo pulled away from her with a last wistful glance at Saint Francis,
who looked back at him in an ecstasy of commiseration.
"Come, come," Filomena repeated, dropping to her ordinary key as she
felt the resistance of the little boy's hand. "Have you no heart, you
wicked child? But, to be sure, the poor innocent doesn't know! Come
cavaliere, your illustrious mother waits."
"My mother?" The blood rushed to his face; and she had called him
"cavaliere"!
"Not here, my poor lamb! The abate is here; don't you see the lights of
the carriage? There, there, go to him. I haven't told him, your
reverence; it's my silly tender-heartedness that won't let me. He's
always been like one of my own creatures to me--" and she confounded Odo
by bursting into tears.
The abate stood on the doorstep. He was a tall stout man with a hooked
nose and lace ruffles. His nostrils were stained with snuff and he took
a pinch from a tortoise-shell box set with the miniature of a lady; then
he looked down at Odo and shrugged his shoulders.
Odo was growing sick with apprehension. It was two days before the
appointed time for his weekly instruction and he had not prepared his
catechism. He had not even thought of it--and the abate could use the
cane. Odo stood silent and envied girls, who are not disgraced by
crying. The tears were in his throat, but he had fixed principles about
crying. It was his opinion that a little boy who was a cavaliere might
weep when he was angry or sorry, but never when he was afraid; so he
held his head high and put his hand to his side, as though to rest it on
his sword.
The abate sneezed and tapped his snuff-box.
"Come, come, cavaliere, you must be brave--you must be a man; you have
duties, you have responsibilities. It's your duty to console your
mother--the poor lady is plunged in despair. Eh? What's that? You
haven't told him? Cavaliere, your illustrious father is no more."
Odo stared a moment without understanding; then his grief burst from him
in a great sob, and he hid himself against Filomena's apron, weeping for
the father in damascened armour and scarlet cloak.
"Come, come," said the abate impatiently. "Is supper laid? for we must
be gone as soon as the mist rises." He took the little boy by the hand.
"Would it not distract your mind to recite the catechism?" he inquired.
"No, no!" cried Odo with redoubled sobs.
"Well, then, as you will. What a madman!" he exclaimed to Filomena. "I
warrant it hasn't seen its father three times in its life. Come in,
cavaliere; come to supper."
Filomena had laid a table in the stone chamber known as the bailiff's
parlour, and thither the abate dragged his charge and set him down
before the coarse tablecloth covered with earthen platters. A tallow dip
threw its flare on the abate's big aquiline face as he sat opposite Odo,
gulping the hastily prepared frittura and the thick purple wine in its
wicker flask. Odo could eat nothing. The tears still ran down his cheeks
and his whole soul was possessed by the longing to steal back and see
whether the figure of the knight in the scarlet cloak had vanished from
the chapel wall. The abate sat in silence, gobbling his food like the
old black pig in the yard. When he had finished he stood up, exclaiming:
"Death comes to us all, as the hawk said to the chicken. You must be a
man, cavaliere." Then he stepped into the kitchen, and called out for
the horses to be put to.
The farm hands had slunk away to one of the outhouses, and Filomena and
Jacopone stood bowing and curtseying as the carriage drew up at the
kitchen door. In a corner of the big vaulted room the little foundling
was washing the dishes, heaping the scraps in a bowl for herself and the
fowls. Odo ran back and touched her arm. She gave a start and looked at
him with frightened eyes. He had nothing to give her, but he said:
"Good-bye, Momola"; and he thought to himself that when he was grown up
and had a sword he would surely come back and bring her a pair of shoes
and a panettone. The abate was calling him, and the next moment he found
himself lifted into the carriage, amid the blessings and lamentations of
his foster-parents; and with a great baying of dogs and clacking of
whipcord the horses clattered out of the farmyard, and turned their
heads toward Pianura.
The mist had rolled back and fields and vineyards lay bare to the winter
moon. The way was lonely, for it skirted the marsh, where no one lived;
and only here and there the tall black shadow of a crucifix ate into the
whiteness of the road. Shreds of vapour still hung about the hollows,
but beyond these fold on fold of translucent hills melted into a sky
dewy with stars. Odo cowered in his corner, staring out awestruck at the
unrolling of the strange white landscape. He had seldom been out at
night, and never in a carriage; and there was something terrifying to
him in this flight through the silent moon-washed fields, where no oxen
moved in the furrows, no peasants pruned the mulberries, and not a
goat's bell tinkled among the oaks. He felt himself alone in a ghostly
world from which even the animals had vanished, and at last he averted
his eyes from the dreadful scene and sat watching the abate, who had
fixed a reading-lamp at his back, and whose hooked-nosed shadow, as the
springs jolted him up and down, danced overhead like the huge Pulcinella
at the fair of Pontesordo.
1.2.
The gleam of a lantern woke Odo. The horses had stopped at the gates of
Pianura, and the abate giving the pass-word, the carriage rolled under
the gatehouse and continued its way over the loud cobble-stones of the
ducal streets. These streets were so dark, being lit but by some lantern
projecting here and there from the angle of a wall, or by the flare of
an oil-lamp under a shrine, that Odo, leaning eagerly out, could only
now and then catch a sculptured palace-window, the grinning mask on the
keystone of an archway, or the gleaming yellowish facade of a church
inlaid with marbles. Once or twice an uncurtained window showed a group
of men drinking about a wineshop table, or an artisan bending over his
work by the light of a tallow dip; but for the most part doors and
windows were barred and the streets disturbed only by the watchman's cry
or by a flash of light and noise as a sedan chair passed with its escort
of linkmen and servants. All this was amazing enough to the sleepy eyes
of the little boy so unexpectedly translated from the solitude of
Pontesordo; but when the carriage turned under another arch and drew up
before the doorway of a great building ablaze with lights, the pressure
of accumulated emotions made him fling his arms about his preceptor's
neck.
"Courage, cavaliere, courage! You have duties, you have
responsibilities," the abate admonished him; and Odo, choking back his
fright, suffered himself to be lifted out by one of the lacqueys grouped
about the door. The abate, who carried a much lower crest than at
Pontesordo, and seemed far more anxious to please the servants than they
to oblige him, led the way up a shining marble staircase where beggars
whined on the landings and powdered footmen in the ducal livery were
running to and fro with trays of refreshments. Odo, who knew that his
mother lived in the Duke's palace, had vaguely imagined that his
father's death must have plunged its huge precincts into silence and
mourning; but as he followed the abate up successive flights of stairs
and down long corridors full of shadow he heard a sound of dance music
below and caught the flash of girandoles through the antechamber doors.
The thought that his father's death had made no difference to any one in
the palace was to the child so much more astonishing than any of the
other impressions crowding his brain, that these were scarcely felt, and
he passed as in a dream through rooms where servants were quarrelling
over cards and waiting-women rummaged in wardrobes full of perfumed
finery, to a bedchamber in which a lady dressed in weeds sat
disconsolately at supper.
"Mamma! Mamma!" he cried, springing forward in a passion of tears.
The lady, who was young, pale and handsome, pushed back her chair with a
warning hand.
"Child," she exclaimed, "your shoes are covered with mud; and, good
heavens, how you smell of the stable! Abate, is it thus you teach your
pupil to approach me?"
"Madam, I am abashed by the cavaliere's temerity. But in truth I believe
excessive grief has clouded his wits--'tis inconceivable how he mourns
his father!"
Donna Laura's eyebrows rose in a faint smile. "May he never have worse
to grieve for!" said she in French; then, extending her scented hand to
the little boy, she added solemnly: "My son, we have suffered an
irreparable loss."
Odo, abashed by her rebuke and the abate's apology, had drawn his heels
together in a rustic version of the low bow with which the children of
that day were taught to approach their parents.
"Holy Virgin!" said his mother with a laugh, "I perceive they have no
dancing-master at Pontesordo. Cavaliere, you may kiss my hand.
So--that's better; we shall make a gentleman of you yet. But what makes
your face so wet? Ah, crying, to be sure. Mother of God! as for crying,
there's enough to cry about." She put the child aside and turned to the
preceptor. "The Duke refuses to pay," she said with a shrug of despair.
"Good heavens!" lamented the abate, raising his hands. "And Don Lelio?"
he faltered.
She shrugged again, impatiently. "As great a gambler as my husband.
They're all alike, abate: six times since last Easter has the bill been
sent to me for that trifle of a turquoise buckle he made such a to-do
about giving me." She rose and began to pace the room in disorder. "I'm
a ruined woman," she cried, "and it's a disgrace for the Duke to refuse
me."
The abate raised an admonishing finger. "Excellency...excellency..."
She glanced over her shoulder.
"Eh? You're right. Everything is heard here. But who's to pay for my
mourning the saints alone know! I sent an express this morning to my
father, but you know my brothers bleed him like leeches. I could have
got this easily enough from the Duke a year ago--it's his marriage has
made him so stiff. That little white-faced fool--she hates me because
Lelio won't look at her, and she thinks it's my fault. As if I cared
whom he looks at! Sometimes I think he has money put away...all I want
is two hundred ducats...a woman of my rank!" She turned suddenly on Odo,
who stood, very small and frightened, in the corner to which she had
pushed him. "What are you staring at, child? Eh! the monkey is dropping
with sleep. Look at his eyes, abate! Here, Vanna, Tonina, to bed with
him; he may sleep with you in my dressing-closet, Tonina. Go with her,
child, go; but for God's sake wake him if he snores. I'm too ill to have
my rest disturbed." And she lifted a pomander to her nostrils.
The next few days dwelt in Odo's memory as a blur of strange sights and
sounds. The super-acute state of his perceptions was succeeded after a
night's sleep by the natural passivity with which children accept the
improbable, so that he passed from one novel impression to another as
easily and with the same exhilaration as if he had been listening to a
fairy tale. Solitude and neglect had no surprises for him, and it seemed
natural enough that his mother and her maids should be too busy to
remember his presence.
For the first day or two he sat unnoticed on his little stool in a
corner of his mother's room, while packing-chests were dragged in,
wardrobes emptied, mantua-makers and milliners consulted, and
troublesome creditors dismissed with abuse, or even blows, by the
servants lounging in the ante-chamber. Donna Laura continued to show the
liveliest symptoms of concern, but the child perceived her distress to
be but indirectly connected with the loss she had suffered, and he had
seen enough of poverty at the farm to guess that the need of money was
somehow at the bottom of her troubles. How any one could be in want, who
slept between damask curtains and lived on sweet cakes and chocolate, it
exceeded his fancy to conceive; yet there were times when his mother's
voice had the same frightened angry sound as Filomena's on the days when
the bailiff went over the accounts at Pontesordo.
Her excellency's rooms, during these days, were always crowded, for
besides the dressmakers and other merchants there was the hairdresser,
or French Monsu--a loud, important figure, with a bag full of cosmetics
and curling-irons--the abate, always running in and out with messages
and letters, and taking no more notice of Odo than if he had never seen
him, and a succession of ladies brimming with condolences, and each
followed by a servant who swelled the noisy crowd of card-playing
lacqueys in the ante-chamber.
Through all these figures came and went another, to Odo the most
noticeable,--that of a handsome young man with a high manner, dressed
always in black, but with an excess of lace ruffles and jewels, a
clouded amber head to his cane, and red heels to his shoes. This young
gentleman, whose age could not have been more than twenty, and who had
the coldest insolent air, was treated with profound respect by all but
Donna Laura, who was for ever quarrelling with him when he was present,
yet could not support his absence without lamentations and alarm. The
abate appeared to act as messenger between the two, and when he came to
say that the Count rode with the court, or was engaged to sup with the
Prime Minister, or had business on his father's estate in the country,
the lady would openly yield to her distress, crying out that she knew
well enough what his excuses meant: that she was the most cruelly
outraged of women, and that he treated her no better than a husband.
For two days Odo languished in his corner, whisked by the women's
skirts, smothered under the hoops and falbalas which the dressmakers
unpacked from their cases, fed at irregular hours, and faring on the
whole no better than at Pontesordo. The third morning, Vanna, who seemed
the most good-natured of the women, cried out on his pale looks when she
brought him his cup of chocolate. "I declare," she exclaimed, "the child
has had no air since he came in from the farm. What does your excellency
say? Shall the hunchback take him for a walk in the gardens?"
To this her excellency, who sat at her toilet under the hair-dresser's
hands, irritably replied that she had not slept all night and was in no
state to be tormented about such trifles, but that the child might go
where he pleased.
Odo, who was very weary of his corner, sprang up readily enough when
Vanna, at this, beckoned him to the inner ante-chamber. Here, where
persons of a certain condition waited (the outer being given over to
servants and tradesmen), they found a lean humpbacked boy, shabbily
dressed in darned stockings and a faded coat, but with an extraordinary
keen pale face that at once attracted and frightened the child.
"There, go with him; he won't eat you," said Vanna, giving him a push as
she hurried away; and Odo, trembling a little, laid his hand in the
boy's. "Where do you come from?" he faltered, looking up into his
companion's face.
The boy laughed and the blood rose to his high cheekbones. "I?--From the
Innocenti, if your Excellency knows where that is," said he.
Odo's face lit up. "Of course I do," he cried, reassured. "I know a girl
who comes from there--the Momola at Pontesordo."
"Ah, indeed?" said the boy with a queer look. "Well, she's my sister,
then. Give her my compliments when you see her, cavaliere. Oh, we're a
large family, we are!"
Odo's perplexity was returning. "Are you really Momola's brother?" he
asked.
"Eh, in a way--we're children of the same house."
"But you live in the palace, don't you?" Odo persisted, his curiosity
surmounting his fear. "Are you a servant of my mother's?"
"I'm the servant of your illustrious mother's servants; the abatino of
the waiting-women. I write their love-letters, do you see, cavaliere, I
carry their rubbish to the pawnbroker's when their sweethearts have bled
them of their savings; I clean the birdcages and feed the monkeys, and
do the steward's accounts when he's drunk, and sleep on a bench in the
portico and steal my food from the pantry...and my father very likely
goes in velvet and carries a sword at his side."
The boy's voice had grown shrill, and his eyes blazed like an owl's in
the dark. Odo would have given the world to be back in his corner, but
he was ashamed to betray his lack of heart; and to give himself courage
he asked haughtily: "And what is your name, boy?"
The hunchback gave him a gleaming look. "Call me Brutus," he cried, "for
Brutus killed a tyrant." He gave Odo's hand a pull. "Come along," said
he, "and I'll show you his statue in the garden--Brutus's statue in a
prince's garden, mind you!" And as the little boy trotted at his side
down the long corridors he kept repeating under his breath in a kind of
angry sing-song, "For Brutus killed a tyrant."
The sense of strangeness inspired by his odd companion soon gave way in
Odo's mind to emotions of delight and wonder. He was, even at that age,
unusually sensitive to external impressions, and when the hunchback,
after descending many stairs and winding through endless back-passages,
at length led him out on a terrace above the gardens, the beauty of the
sight swelled his little heart to bursting.
A Duke of Pianura had, some hundred years earlier, caused a great wing
to be added to his palace by the eminent architect Carlo Borromini, and
this accomplished designer had at the same time replanted and enlarged
the ducal gardens. To Odo, who had never seen plantations more artful
than the vineyards and mulberry orchards about Pontesordo, these
perspectives of clipped beech and yew, these knots of box filled in with
multi-coloured sand, appeared, with the fountains, colonnades and
trellised arbours surmounted by globes of glass, to represent the very
pattern and Paradise of gardens. It seemed indeed too beautiful to be
real, and he trembled, as he sometimes did at the music of the Easter
mass, when the hunchback, laughing at his amazement, led him down the
terrace steps.
It was Odo's lot in after years to walk the alleys of many a splendid
garden, and to pace, often wearily enough, the paths along which he was
now led; but never after did he renew the first enchanted impression of
mystery and brightness that remained with him as the most vivid emotion
of his childhood.
Though it was February the season was so soft that the orange and lemon
trees had been put out in their earthen vases before the lemon-house,
and the beds in the parterres were full of violets, daffodils and
auriculas; but the scent of the orange-blossoms and the bright colours
of the flowers moved Odo less than the noble ordonnance of the pleached
alleys, each terminated by a statue or a marble seat; and when he came
to the grotto where, amid rearing sea-horses and Tritons, a cascade
poured from the grove above, his wonder passed into such delicious awe
as hung him speechless on the hunchback's hand.
"Eh," said the latter with a sneer, "it's a finer garden than we have at
our family palace. Do you know what's planted there?" he asked, turning
suddenly on the little boy. "Dead bodies, cavaliere! Rows and rows of
them; the bodies of my brothers and sisters, the Innocents who die like
flies every year of the cholera and the measles and the putrid fever."
He saw the terror in Odo's face and added in a gentler tone: "Eh, don't
cry, cavaliere; they sleep better in those beds than in any others
they're like to lie on. Come, come, and I'll show your excellency the
aviaries."
From the aviaries they passed to the Chinese pavilion, where the Duke
supped on summer evenings, and thence to the bowling-alley, the
fish-stew and the fruit-garden. At every step some fresh surprise
arrested Odo; but the terrible vision of that other garden planted with
the dead bodies of the Innocents robbed the spectacle of its brightness,
dulled the plumage of the birds behind their gilt wires and cast a
deeper shade over the beech-grove, where figures of goat-faced men
lurked balefully in the twilight. Odo was glad when they left the
blackness of this grove for the open walks, where gardeners were working
and he had the reassurance of the sky. The hunchback, who seemed sorry
that he had frightened him, told him many curious stories about the
marble images that adorned the walks; and pausing suddenly before one of
a naked man with a knife in his hand, cried out in a frenzy: "This is my
namesake, Brutus!" But when Odo would have asked if the naked man was a
kinsman, the boy hurried him on, saying only: "You'll read of him some
day in Plutarch."
1.3.
Odo, next morning, under the hunchback's guidance, continued his
exploration of the palace. His mother seemed glad to be rid of him, and
Vanna packing him off early, with the warning that he was not to fall
into the fishponds or get himself trampled by the horses, he guessed,
with a thrill, that he had leave to visit the stables. Here in fact the
two boys were soon making their way among the crowd of grooms and
strappers in the yard, seeing the Duke's carriage-horses groomed, and
the Duchess's cream-coloured hackney saddled for her ride in the chase;
and at length, after much lingering and gazing, going on to the
harness-rooms and coach-house. The state-carriages, with their carved
and gilt wheels, their panels gay with flushed divinities and their
stupendous velvet hammer-cloths edged with bullion, held Odo spellbound.
He had a born taste for splendour, and the thought that he might one day
sit in one of these glittering vehicles puffed his breast with pride and
made him address the hunchback with sudden condescension. "When I'm a
man I shall ride in these carriages," he said; whereat the other laughed
and returned good-humouredly: "Eh, that's not so much to boast of,
cavaliere; I shall ride in a carriage one of these days myself." Odo
stared, not over-pleased, and the boy added: "When I'm carried to the
churchyard, I mean," with a chuckle of relish at the joke.
From the stables they passed to the riding-school, with its open
galleries supported on twisted columns, where the duke's gentlemen
managed their horses and took their exercise in bad weather. Several
rode there that morning; and among them, on a fine Arab, Odo recognised
the young man in black velvet who was so often in Donna Laura's
apartments.
"Who's that?" he whispered, pulling the hunchback's sleeve, as the
gentleman, just below them, made his horse execute a brilliant balotade.
"That? Bless the innocent! Why, the Count Lelio Trescorre, your
illustrious mother's cavaliere servente."
Odo was puzzled, but some instinct of reserve withheld him from further
questions. The hunchback, however, had no such scruples. "They do say,
though," he went on, "that her Highness has her eye on him, and in that
case I'll wager your illustrious mamma has no more chance than a sparrow
against a hawk."
The boy's words were incomprehensible, but the vague sense that some
danger might be threatening his mother's friend made Odo whisper: "What
would her Highness do to him?"
"Make him a prime-minister, cavaliere," the hunchback laughed.
Odo's guide, it appeared, was not privileged to conduct him through the
state apartments of the palace, and the little boy had now been four
days under the ducal roof without catching so much as a glimpse of his
sovereign and cousin. The very next morning, however, Vanna swept him
from his trundle-bed with the announcement that he was to be received by
the Duke that day, and that the tailor was now waiting to try on his
court dress. He found his mother propped against her pillows, drinking
chocolate, feeding her pet monkey and giving agitated directions to the
maidservants on their knees before the open carriage-trunks. Her
excellency informed Odo that she had that moment received an express
from his grandfather, the old Marquess di Donnaz; that they were to
start next morning for the castle of Donnaz, and that he was to be
presented to the Duke as soon as his Highness had risen from dinner. A
plump purse lay on the coverlet, and her countenance wore an air of
kindness and animation which, together with the prospect of wearing a
court dress and travelling to his grandfather's castle in the mountains,
so worked on Odo's spirits that, forgetting the abate's instructions, he
sprang to her with an eager caress.
"Child, child," was her only rebuke; and she added, with a tap on his
cheek: "It is lucky I shall have a sword to protect me."
Long before the hour Odo was buttoned into his embroidered coat and
waistcoat. He would have on the sword at once, and when they sat down to
dinner, though his mother pressed him to eat with more concern than she
had before shown, it went hard with him to put his weapon aside, and he
cast longing eyes at the corner where it lay. At length a chamberlain
summoned them and they set out down the corridors, attended by two
servants. Odo held his head high, with one hand leading Donna Laura (for
he would not appear to be led by her) while the other fingered his
sword. The deformed beggars who always lurked about the great staircase
fawned on them as they passed, and on a landing they crossed the
humpbacked boy, who grinned mockingly at Odo; but the latter, with his
chin up, would not so much as glance at him.
A master of ceremonies in short black cloak and gold chain received them
in the antechamber of the Duchess's apartments, where the court played
lansquenet after dinner; the doors of her Highness's closet were thrown
open, and Odo, now glad enough to cling to his mother's hand, found
himself in a tall room, with gods and goddesses in the clouds overhead
and personages as supra-terrestrial seated in gilt armchairs about a
smoking brazier. Before one of these, to whom Donna Laura swept
successive curtsies in advancing, the frightened cavaliere found himself
dragged with his sword between his legs. He ducked his head like the old
drake diving for worms in the puddle at the farm, and when at last he
dared look up, it was to see an odd sallow face, half-smothered in an
immense wig, bowing back at him with infinite ceremony--and Odo's heart
sank to think that this was his sovereign.
The Duke was in fact a sickly narrow-faced young man with thick
obstinate lips and a slight lameness that made his walk ungainly; but
though no way resembling the ermine-cloaked king of the chapel at
Pontesordo, he yet knew how to put on a certain majesty with his state
wig and his orders. As for the newly married Duchess, who sat at the
other end of the cabinet caressing a toy spaniel, she was scant fourteen
and looked a mere child in her great hoop and jewelled stomacher. Her
wonderful fair hair, drawn over a cushion and lightly powdered, was
twisted with pearls and roses, and her cheeks excessively rouged, in the
French fashion; so that as she arose on the approach of the visitors she
looked to Odo for all the world like the wooden Virgin hung with votive
offerings in the parish church at Pontesordo. Though they were but three
months married the Duke, it was rumoured, was never with her, preferring
the company of the young Marquess of Cerveno, his cousin and
heir-presumptive, a pale boy scented with musk and painted like a
comedian, whom his Highness would never suffer away from him and who now
leaned with an impertinent air against the back of the ducal armchair.
On the other side of the brazier sat the dowager Duchess, the Duke's
grandmother, an old lady so high and forbidding of aspect that Odo cast
but one look at her face, which was yellow and wrinkled as a medlar, and
surmounted, in the Spanish style, with black veils and a high coif. What
these alarming personages said and did, the child could never recall;
nor were his own actions clear to him, except for a furtive caress that
he remembered giving the spaniel as he kissed the Duchess's hand;
whereupon her Highness snatched up the pampered animal and walked away
with a pout of anger. Odo noticed that her angry look followed him as he
and Donna Laura withdrew; but the next moment he heard the Duke's voice
and saw his Highness limping after them.
"You must have a furred cloak for your journey, cousin," said he
awkwardly, pressing something in the hand of Odo's mother, who broke
into fresh compliments and curtsies, while the Duke, with a finger on
his thick lip, withdrew hastily into the closet.
The next morning early they set out on their journey. There had been
frost in the night and a cold sun sparkled on the palace windows and on
the marble church-fronts as their carriage lumbered through the streets,
now full of noise and animation. It was Odo's first glimpse of the town
by daylight, and he clapped his hands with delight at sight of the
people picking their way across the reeking gutters, the asses laden
with milk and vegetables, the servant-girls bargaining at the
provision-stalls, the shop-keepers' wives going to mass in pattens and
hoods, with scaldini in their muffs, the dark recessed openings in the
palace basements, where fruit sellers, wine-merchants and coppersmiths
displayed their wares, the pedlars hawking books and toys, and here and
there a gentleman in a sedan chair returning flushed and disordered from
a night at bassett or faro. The travelling-carriage was escorted by
half-a-dozen of the Duke's troopers and Don Lelio rode at the door
followed by two grooms. He wore a furred coat and boots, and never, to
Odo, had he appeared more proud and splendid; but Donna Laura had hardly
a word for him, and he rode with the set air of a man who acquits
himself of a troublesome duty.
Outside the gates the spectacle seemed tame in comparison; for the road
bent toward Pontesordo, and Odo was familiar enough with the look of the
bare fields, set here and there with oak-copses to which the leaves
still clung. As the carriage skirted the marsh his mother raised the
windows, exclaiming that they must not expose themselves to the
pestilent air; and though Odo was not yet addicted to general
reflections, he could not but wonder that she should display such dread
of an atmosphere she had let him breathe since his birth. He knew of
course that the sunset vapours on the marsh were unhealthy: everybody on
the farm had a touch of the ague, and it was a saying in the village
that no one lived at Pontesordo who could buy an ass to carry him away;
but that Donna Laura, in skirting the place on a clear morning of frost,
should show such fear of infection, gave a sinister emphasis to the
ill-repute of the region.
The thought, he knew not why, turned his mind to Momola, who often on
damp evenings sat shaking and burning in the kitchen corner. He
reflected with a pang that he might never see her again, and leaning
forward he strained his eyes for a glimpse of Pontesordo. They were
passing through a patch of oaks; but where these ended the country
opened, and beyond a belt of osiers and the mottled faded stretches of
the marsh the keep stood up like a beckoning finger. Odo cried out as
though in answer to its call; but that moment the road turned a knoll
and bent across rising ground toward an unfamiliar region.
"Thank God!" cried his mother, lowering the window, "we're rid of that
poison and can breath the air."
As the keep vanished Odo reproached himself for not having begged a pair
of shoes for Momola. He had felt very sorry for her since the hunchback
had spoken so strangely of life at the foundling hospital; and he had a
sudden vision of her bare feet, pinched with cold and cut with the
pebbles of the yard, perpetually running across the damp stone floors,
with Filomena crying after her: "Hasten then, child of iniquity! You
are slower than a day without bread!" He had almost resolved to speak of
the foundling to his mother, who still seemed in a condescending humour;
but his attention was unexpectedly distracted by a troop of Egyptians,
who came along the road leading a dancing bear; and hardly had these
passed when the chariot of an itinerant dentist engaged him. The whole
way, indeed, was alive with such surprises; and at Valsecca, where they
dined, they found the yard of the inn crowded with the sumpter-mules and
servants of a cardinal travelling to Rome, who was to lie there that
night and whose bedstead and saucepans had preceded him.
Here, after dinner, Don Lelio took leave of Odo's mother, with small
show of regret on either side; the lady high and sarcastic, the
gentleman sullen and polite; and both, as it seemed, easier when the
business was despatched and the Count's foot in the stirrup. He had so
far taken little notice of Odo, but he now bent from the saddle and
tapped the boy's cheek, saying in his cold way: "In a few years I shall
see you at court;" and with that rode away toward Pianura.
1.4.
Lying that night at Pavia, the travellers set forward next morning for
the city of Vercelli. The road, though it ran for the most part through
flat mulberry orchards and rice-fields reflecting the pale blue sky in
their sodden channels, would yet have appeared diverting enough to Odo,
had his mother been in the mood to reply to his questions; for whether
their carriage overtook a party of strolling jugglers, travelling in a
roofed-in waggon, with the younger children of the company running
alongside in threadbare tights and trunkhose decked with tinsel; or
whether they drove through a village market-place, where yellow earthen
crocks and gaudy Indian cottons, brass pails and braziers and platters
of bluish pewter, filled the stalls with a medley of colour--at every
turn was something that excited the boy's wonder; but Donna Laura, who
had fallen into a depression of spirits, lamenting the cold, her
misfortunes and the discomfort of the journey, was at no more pains than
the abate to satisfy the promptings of his curiosity.
Odo had indeed met but one person who cared to listen to him, and that
was the strange hunchback who had called himself Brutus. Remembering how
entertainingly this odd guide had explained all the wonders of the ducal
grounds, Odo began to regret that he had not asked his mother to let him
have Brutus for a body-servant. Meanwhile no one attended to his
questions and the hours were beginning to seem long when, on the third
day, they set out from Vercelli toward the hills. The cold increased as
they rose; and Odo, though he had often wished to see the mountains, was
yet dismayed at the gloomy and menacing aspect of the region on which
they were entering. Leafless woods, prodigious boulders and white
torrents foaming and roaring seemed a poor exchange for the
pleasantly-ordered gardens of Pianura. Here were no violets and cowslips
in bloom; hardly a green blade pierced the sodden roadside, and
snowdrifts lingered in the shaded hollows.
Donna Laura's loudly expressed fear of robbers seemed to increase the
loneliness of the way, which now traversed tracts of naked moorland, now
plunged again into forest, with no sign of habitation but here and there
a cowherd's hut under the trees or a chapel standing apart on some
grassy eminence. When night fell the waters grew louder, a stinging wind
swept the woods, and the carriage, staggering from rut to rut, seemed
every moment about to land them in some invisible ravine. Fear and cold
at last benumbed the little boy, and when he woke he was being lifted
from his seat and torches were flashing on a high escutcheoned doorway
set in battlemented walls. He was carried into a hall lit with smoky
oil-lamps and hung with armour and torn banners.
Here, among a group of rough-looking servants, a tall old man in a
nightcap and furred gown was giving orders in a loud passionate voice.
This personage, who was of a choleric complexion, with a face like
mottled red marble, seized Odo by the wrist and led him up a flight of
stairs so worn and slippery that he tripped at every step; thence down a
corridor and into a gloomy apartment where three ladies shivered about a
table set with candles. Bidden by the old gentleman to salute his
grandmother and great-aunts, Odo bowed over three wrinkled hands, one
fat and soft as a toad's stomach, the others yellow and dry as
lemon-skins. His mother embraced the ladies in the same humble manner,
and the Marquess, first furiously calling for supper, thrust Odo down on
a stool in the ingle.
From this point of observation the child, now vividly awake, noted the
hangings of faded tapestry that heaved in the draught, the ceiling of
beams and the stone floor strewn with rushes. The candle-light
flickering on the faces of his aged relatives showed his grandmother to
be a pale heavy-cheeked person with little watchful black eyes which she
dropped at her husband's approach; while the two great-aunts, seated
side by side in high-backed chairs with their feet on braziers, reminded
Odo of the narrow elongated saints squeezed into the niches of a
church-door. The old Marchioness wore the high coif and veil of the
previous century; the aunts, who, as Odo afterwards learned, were
canonesses of a noble order, were habited in a semi-conventual dress,
with crosses hanging on their bosoms; and none spoke but when the
Marquess addressed them.
Their timidity appeared to infect Odo's mother, who, from her habitual
volubility of temper, sank to a mood of like submissiveness. A supper of
venison and goat's cheese was not designed to restore her spirits, and
when at length she and Odo had withdrawn to their cavernous bedchamber,
she flung herself weeping on the bed and declared she must die if she
remained long in this prison.
Falling asleep under such influences, it was the more wonderful to Odo
to wake with the sun on his counterpane, a sweet noise of streams
through the casement and the joyous barking of hounds in the castle
court. From the window-seat he looked out on a scene extraordinarily
novel to his lowland eyes. The chamber commanded the wooded steep below
the castle, with a stream looping its base; beyond, the pastures sloped
pleasantly under walnut trees, with here and there a clearing ploughed
for the spring crops and a sunny ledge or two planted with vines. Above
this pastoral landscape, bare crags upheld a snowpeak; and, as if to
lend a human interest to the scene, the old Marquess, his flintlock on
his shoulder, his dogs and beaters at his heels, now rode across the
valley.
Wonder succeeded to wonder that first morning; for there was the castle
to be seen, with the kennels and stables roughly kept, but full of dogs
and horses; and Odo, in the Marquess's absence, was left free to visit
every nook of his new home. Pontesordo, though perhaps as ancient as
Donnaz, was but a fortified manor in the plain; but here was the
turreted border castle, bristling at the head of the gorge like the
fangs in a boar's throat: its walls overhung by machicolations, its
portcullis still dropped at nightfall, and the loud stream forming a
natural moat at its base. Through the desert spaces of this great
structure Odo wandered at will, losing himself in its network of bare
chambers, some now put to domestic uses, with smoked meats hanging from
the rafters, cheeses ranged on shelves and farmer's implements stacked
on the floor; others abandoned to bats and spiders, with slit-like
openings choked by a growth of wild cherries, and little animals
scurrying into their holes as Odo opened the unused doors. At the next
turn he mounted by a winding stair to the platform behind the
battlements, whence he could look down on the inner court, where horses
were being groomed, dogs fed, harnesses mended, and platters of smoking
food carried from the kitchen to the pantry; or, leaning another way,
discovered, between the cliff and the rampart a tiny walled garden with
fruit-trees and a sundial.
The ladies kept to themselves in a corner of the castle, where the rooms
were hung with tapestry and a few straight-backed chairs stood about the
hearth; but even here no fires were suffered till nightfall, nor was
there so much as a carpet in the castle. Odo's grandmother, the old
Marchioness, a heavy woman who would doubtless have enjoyed her ease in
a cushioned seat, was afoot all day attending to her household; for
besides the dairy and the bakehouse and the stillroom where fruits were
stewed and pastes prepared, there was the great spinning-room full of
distaffs and looms, where the women spun and wove all the linen used in
the castle and the coarse stuffs worn by its inmates; with workshops for
the cobbler and tailor who clothed and shod the Marquess and his
household. All these the Marchioness must visit, and attend to her
devotions between; the ladies being governed by a dark-faced priest,
their chaplain and director, who kept them perpetually running along the
cold stone corridors to the chapel in a distant wing, where they knelt
without so much as a brazier to warm them or a cushion to their knees.
As to the chapel, though larger and loftier than that of Pontesordo,
with a fine carved and painted tabernacle and many silver candlesticks,
it seemed to Odo, by reason of its bare walls, much less beautiful than
that deserted oratory; nor did he, amid all the novelty of his
surroundings, cease to regret the companionship of his familiar images.
His delight was the greater, therefore, when, exploring a part of the
castle now quite abandoned, he came one day on a vaulted chamber used as
a kind of granary, where, under layers of dirt and cobwebs, lovely
countenances flowered from the walls. The scenes depicted differed
indeed from those of Pontesordo, being less animated and homely and more
difficult for a child to interpret; for here were naked laurel-crowned
knights on prancing horses, nimble goat-faced creatures grouped in
adoration round a smoking altar and youths piping to saffron-haired
damsels on grass-banks set with poplars. The very strangeness of the
fable set forth perhaps engaged the child's fancy; or the benignant
mildness of the countenances, so unlike the eager individual faces of
the earlier artist; for he returned again and again to gaze unweariedly
on the inhabitants of that tranquil grassy world, studying every inch of
the walls and with much awe and fruitless speculation deciphering on the
hem of a floating drapery the inscription: Bernardinus Lovinus pinxit.
His impatience to know more of the history of these paintings led him to
question an old man, half house-servant, half huntsman, now too infirm
for service and often to be found sunning himself in the court with an
old hound's chin on his knee. The old man, whose name was Bruno, told
him the room in question had been painted for the Marquess Gualberto di
Donnaz, who had fought under the Duke of Milan hundreds of years before:
a splendid and hospitable noble, patron of learning and the arts, who
had brought the great Milanese painter to Donnaz and kept him there a
whole summer adorning the banqueting-room. "But I advise you, little
master," Bruno added, "not to talk too loudly of your discovery; for we
live in changed days, do you see, and it seems those are pagan sorcerers
and witches painted on the wall, and because of that, and their
nakedness, the chaplain has forbidden all the young boys and wenches
about the place to set foot there; and the Marchioness herself, I'm
told, doesn't enter without leave."
This was the more puzzling to Odo that he had seen so many naked pagans,
in colours and marble, at his cousin's palace of Pianura, where they
were praised as the chief ornament of that sumptuous fabric; but he kept
Bruno's warning in mind and so timed his visits that they escaped the
chaplain's observation. Whether this touch of mystery added charm to the
paintings; or whether there was already forming in him what afterward
became an instinctive resistance to many of the dictates of his age;
certain it is that, even after he had been privileged to admire the
stupendous works of the Caracci at Parma and of the immortal Giulio
Romano at Mantua, Odo's fancy always turned with peculiar fondness to
the clear-limbed youths moving in that world of untroubled beauty.
Odo, the day after his arrival at Donnaz, learned that the chaplain was
to be his governor; and he was not long in discovering that the system
of that ecclesiastic bore no resemblance to the desultory methods of his
former pedagogue. It was not that Don Gervaso was a man of superior
acquirements: in writing, ciphering and the rudiments of Latin he seemed
little likely to carry Odo farther than the other; but in religious
instruction he suffered no negligence or inattention. His piety was of a
stamp so different from the abate's that it vivified the theological
abstractions over which Odo had formerly languished, infusing a
passionate meaning into the formulas of the textbooks. His discourse
breathed the same spirit, and had his religion been warmed by
imagination or tempered by charity the child had been a ductile
substance in his hands; but the shadow of the Council of Trent still
hung over the Church in Savoy, making its approach almost as sombre and
forbidding as that of the Calvinist heresy. As it was, the fascination
that drew Odo to the divine teachings was counteracted by a depressing
awe: he trembled in God's presence almost as much as in his
grandfather's, and with the same despair of discovering what course of
action was most likely to call down the impending wrath. The beauty of
the Church's offices, now for the first time revealed to him in the
well-ordered services of the chapel, was doubly moving in contrast with
the rude life at Donnaz; but his confessions tortured him and the
penances which the chaplain inflicted abased without reforming his
spirit.
Next to the mass, the books Don Gervaso lent him were his chief
pleasure: the Lives of the Saints, Cardinal Bellarmine's Fables and The
Mirror of true Penitence. The Lives of the Saints fed at once his
imagination and his heart, and over the story of Saint Francis, now
first made known to him, he trembled with delicious sympathy. The
longing to found a hermitage like the Portiuncula among the savage rocks
of Donnaz, and live there in gentle communion with plants and animals,
alternated in him with the martial ambition to ride forth against the
Church's enemies, as his ancestors had ridden against the bloody and
pestilent Waldenses; but whether his piety took the passive or the
aggressive form, it always shrank from the subtleties of doctrine. To
live like the saints, rather than to reason like the fathers, was his
ideal of Christian conduct; if indeed a vague pity for suffering
creatures and animals was not the source of his monastic yearnings, and
a desire to see strange countries the secret of his zeal against the
infidel.
The chaplain, though reproving his lukewarmness in matters of dogma,
could not but commend his devotion to the saints; and one day his
grandmother, to reward him for some act of piety, informed him with
tears of joy that he was destined for holy orders, and that she had good
hopes of living to see him a bishop. This news had hardly the intended
effect; for Odo's dream was of the saint's halo rather than the bishop's
mitre; and throwing himself on his knees before the old Marquess, who
was present, he besought that he might be allowed to join the Franciscan
order. The Marquess at this flew into so furious a rage, cursing the
meddlesomeness of women and the chaplain's bigotry, that the ladies
burst into tears and Odo's swelling zeal turned small. There was indeed
but one person in the castle who seemed not to regard its master's
violences, and that was the dark-faced chaplain, who, when the Marquess
had paused out of breath, tranquilly returned that nothing could make
him repent of having brought a soul to Christ, and that, as to the
cavaliere Odo, if his maker designed him for a religious, the Pope
himself could not cross his vocation.
"Ay, ay! vocation," snarled the Marquess. "You and the women here shut
the child up between you and stuff his ears full of monkish stories and
miracles and the Lord knows what, and then talk of the simpleton's
vocation. His vocation, nom de Dieu, is to be an abbot first, and then a
monsignore, and then a bishop, if he can--and to the devil with your
cowls and cloisters!" And he gave orders that Odo should hunt with him
next morning.
The chaplain smiled. "Hubert was a huntsman," said he, "and yet he died
a saint."
From that time forth the old Marquess kept Odo oftener at his side,
making his grandson ride with him about his estates and on such
hunting-parties as were not beyond the boy's strength. The domain of
Donnaz included many a mile of vine and forest, over which, till the
fifteenth century, its lords had ruled as sovereign Marquesses. They
still retained a part of their feudal privileges, and Odo's grandfather,
tenacious of these dwindling rights, was for ever engaged in vain
contests with his peasantry. To see these poor creatures cursed and
brow-beaten, their least offences punished, their few claims disputed,
must have turned Odo's fear of his grandfather to hatred, had he not
observed that the old man gave with one hand what he took with the
other, so that, in his dealings with his people, he resembled one of
those torrents which now devastate and now enrich their banks. The
Marquess, in fact, while he held obstinately to his fishing rights,
prosecuted poachers, enforced the corvee and took toll at every ford,
yet laboured to improve his lands, exterminated the wild beasts that
preyed on them, helped his peasants in sickness, nourished them in old
age and governed them with a paternal tyranny doubtless less
insufferable than the negligence of the great land-owners who lived at
court.
To Odo, however, these rides among the tenantry were less agreeable than
the hunting-expeditions which carried them up the mountain in the
solitude of morning. Here the wild freshness of the scene and the
exhilaration of pursuit roused the fighting strain in the boy's blood,
and so stirred his memory with tales of prowess that sometimes, as they
climbed the stony defiles in the clear shadow before sunrise, he fancied
himself riding forth to exterminate the Waldenses who, according to the
chaplain, still lurked like basilisks and dragons in the recesses of the
mountains. Certain it is that his rides with the old Marquess, if they
inflamed his zeal against heresy, cooled the ardour of his monastic
vocation; and if he pondered on his future, it was to reflect that
doubtless he would some day be a bishop, and that bishops were
territorial lords, we might hunt the wolf and boar in their own domains.
1.5.
Reluctantly, every year about the Epiphany, the old Marquess rode down
from Donnaz to spend two months in Turin. It was a service exacted by
King Charles Emanuel, who viewed with a jealous eye those of his nobles
inclined to absent themselves from court and rewarded their presence
with privileges and preferments. At the same time the two canonesses
descended to their abbey in the plain, and thus with the closing in of
winter the old Marchioness, Odo and his mother were left alone in the
castle.
To the Marchioness this was an agreeable period of spiritual compunction
and bodily repose; but to Donna Laura a season of despair. The poor
lady, who had been early removed from the rough life at Donnaz to the
luxurious court of Pianura, and was yet in the fulness of youth and
vivacity, could not resign herself to an existence no better, as she
declared, than that of any herdsman's wife upon the mountains. Here was
neither music nor cards, scandal nor love-making; no news of the
fashions, no visits from silk-mercers or jewellers, no Monsu to curl her
hair and tempt her with new lotions, or so much as a strolling
soothsayer or juggler to lighten the dullness of the long afternoons.
The only visitors to the castle were the mendicant friars drawn thither
by the Marchioness's pious repute; and though Donna Laura disdained not
to call these to her chamber and question them for news, yet their
country-side scandals were no more to her fancy than the two-penny wares
of the chapmen who unpacked their baubles on the kitchen hearth.
She pined for some word of Pianura; but when a young abate, who had
touched there on his way from Tuscany, called for a night at the castle
to pay his duty to Don Gervaso, the word he brought with him of the
birth of an heir to the duchy was so little to Donna Laura's humour that
she sprang up from the supper-table, and crying out to the astonished
Odo, "Ah, now you are for the Church indeed," withdrew in disorder to
her chamber. The abate, who ascribed her commotion to a sudden seizure,
continued to retail the news of Pianura, and Odo, listening with his
elders, learned that Count Lelio Trescorre had been appointed Master of
the Horse, to the indignation of the Bishop, who desired the place for
his nephew, Don Serafino; that the Duke and Duchess were never together;
that the Duchess was suspected of being in secret correspondence with
the Austrians, and that the young Marquess of Cerveno was gone to the
baths of Lucca to recover from an attack of tertian fever contracted the
previous autumn at the Duke's hunting-lodge near Pontesordo. Odo
listened for some mention of his humpbacked friend, or of Momola the
foundling; but the abate's talk kept a higher level and no one less than
a cavaliere figured on his lips. He was the only visitor of quality who
came that winter to Donnaz, and after his departure a fixed gloom
settled on Donna Laura's spirits. Dusk at that season fell early in the
gorge, fierce winds blew off the glaciers, and Donna Laura sat shivering
and lamenting on one side of the hearth, while the old Marchioness, on
the other, strained her eyes over an embroidery in which the pattern
repeated itself like the invocations of a litany, and Don Gervaso, near
the smoking oil-lamp, read aloud from the Glories of Mary or the Way of
Perfection of Saint Theresa.
On such evenings Odo, stealing from the tapestry parlour, would seek out
Bruno, who sat by the kitchen hearth with the old hound's nose at his
feet. The kitchen, indeed, on winter nights, was the pleasantest place
in the castle. The fire-light from its great stone chimney shone on the
strings of maize and bunches of dried vegetables that hung from the roof
and on the copper kettles and saucepans ranged along the wall. The wind
raged against the shutters of the unglazed windows, and the
maid-servants, distaff in hand, crowded closer to the blaze, listening
to the songs of some wandering fiddler or to the stories of a
ruddy-nosed Capuchin monk who was being regaled, by the steward's
orders, on a supper of tripe and mulled wine. The Capuchin's tales, told
in the Piedmontese jargon, and seasoned with strange allusions and
boisterous laughter, were of little interest to Odo, who would creep
into the ingle beside Bruno and beg for some story of his ancestors. The
old man was never weary of rehearsing the feats and gestures of the
lords of Donnaz, and Odo heard again and again how they had fought the
savage Switzers north of the Alps and the Dauphin's men in the west; how
they had marched with Savoy against Montferrat and with France against
the Republic of Genoa. Better still he liked to hear of the Marquess
Gualberto, who had been the Duke of Milan's ally and had brought home
the great Milanese painter to adorn his banqueting-room at Donnaz. The
lords of Donnaz had never been noted for learning, and Odo's grandfather
was fond of declaring that a nobleman need not be a scholar; but the
great Marquess Gualberto, if himself unlettered, had been the patron of
poets and painters and had kept learned clerks to write down the annals
of his house on parchment painted by the monks. These annals were locked
in the archives, under Don Gervaso's care; but Odo learned from the old
servant that some of the great Marquess's books had lain for years on an
upper shelf in the vestry off the chapel; and here one day, with Bruno's
aid, the little boy dislodged from a corner behind the missals and
altar-books certain sheepskin volumes clasped in blackened silver. The
comeliest of these, which bore on their title-page a dolphin curled
about an anchor, were printed in unknown characters; but on opening the
smaller volumes Odo felt the same joyous catching of the breath as when
he had stepped out on the garden-terrace at Pianura. For here indeed
were gates leading to a land of delectation: the country of the giant
Morgante, the enchanted island of Avillion, the court of the Soldan and
the King's palace at Camelot.
In this region Odo spent many blissful hours. His fancy ranged in the
wake of heroes and adventurers who, for all he knew, might still be
feasting and fighting north of the Alps, or might any day with a blast
of their magic horns summon the porter to the gates of Donnaz. Foremost
among them, a figure towering above even Rinaldo, Arthur and the Emperor
Frederic, was that Conrad, father of Conradin, whose sayings are set
down in the old story-book of the Cento Novelle, "the flower of gentle
speech." There was one tale of King Conrad that the boy never forgot:
how the King, in his youth, had always about him a company of twelve
lads of his own age; how when Conrad did wrong, his governors, instead
of punishing him, beat his twelve companions; and how, on the young
King's asking what the lads were being punished for, the pedagogues
replied:
"For your Majesty's offences."
"And why do you punish my companions instead of me?"
"Because you are our lord and master," he was told.
At this the King fell to thinking, and thereafter, it is said, in pity
for those who must suffer in his stead he set close watch on himself,
lest his sinning should work harm to others. This was the story of King
Conrad; and much as Odo loved the clash of arms and joyous feats of
paladins rescuing fair maids in battle, yet Conrad's seemed to him, even
then, a braver deed than these.
In March of the second year the old Marquess, returning from Turin, was
accompanied, to the surprise of all, by the fantastical figure of an
elderly gentleman in the richest travelling dress, with one of the new
French toupets, a thin wrinkled painted face, and emitting with every
movement a prodigious odour of millefleurs. This visitor, who was
attended by his French barber and two or three liveried servants, the
Marquess introduced as the lord of Valdu, a neighbouring seigneurie of
no great account. Though his lands marched with the Marquess's, it was
years since the Count had visited Donnaz, being one of the King's
chamberlains and always in attendance on his Majesty; and it was amazing
to see with what smirks and grimaces, and ejaculations in Piedmontese
French, he complimented the Marchioness on her appearance, and exclaimed
at the magnificence of the castle, which must doubtless have appeared to
him little better than a cattle-grange. His talk was unintelligible to
Odo, but there was no mistaking the nature of the glances he fixed on
Donna Laura, who, having fled to her room on his approach, presently
descended in a ravishing new sacque, with an air of extreme surprise,
and her hair curled (as Odo afterward learned) by the Count's own
barber.
Odo had never seen his mother look handsomer. She sparkled at the
Count's compliments, embraced her father, playfully readjusted her
mother's coif, and in the prettiest way made their excuses to the Count
for the cold draughts and bare floors of the castle. "For having lived
at court myself," said she, "I know to what your excellency is
accustomed, and can the better value your condescension in exposing
yourself, at this rigorous season, to the hardships of our
mountain-top."
The Marquess at this began to look black, but seeing the Count's
pleasure in the compliment, contented himself with calling out for
dinner, which, said he, with all respect to their visitor, would stay
his stomach better than the French kick-shaws at his Majesty's table.
Whether the Count was of the same mind, it was impossible to say, though
Odo could not help observing that the stewed venison and spiced boar's
flesh seemed to present certain obstacles either to his jaws or his
palate, and that his appetite lingered on the fried chicken-livers and
tunny-fish in oil; but he cast such looks at Donna Laura as seemed to
declare that for her sake he would willingly have risked his teeth on
the very cobblestones of the court. Knowing how she pined for company,
Odo was not surprised at his mother's complaisance; yet wondered to see
the smile with which she presently received the Count's half-bantering
disparagement of Pianura. For the duchy, by his showing, was a place of
small consequence, an asylum of superannuated fashions; whereas no
Frenchman of quality ever visited Turin without exclaiming on its
resemblance to Paris, and vowing that none who had the entree of
Stupinigi need cross the Alps to see Versailles. As to the Marquess's
depriving the court of Donna Laura's presence, their guest protested
against it as an act of overt disloyalty to the sovereign; and what most
surprised Odo, who had often heard his grandfather declaim against the
Count as a cheap jackanapes that hung about the court for what he could
make at play, was the indulgence with which the Marquess received his
visitor's sallies. Father and daughter in fact vied in amenities to the
Count. The fire was kept alight all day in his rooms, his Monsu waited
on with singular civility by the steward, and Donna Laura's own woman
sent down by her mistress to prepare his morning chocolate.
Next day it was agreed the gentlemen should ride to Valdu; but its lord
being as stiff-jointed as a marionette, Donna Laura, with charming tact,
begged to be of the party, and thus enabled him to attend her in her
litter. The Marquess thereupon called on Odo to ride with him; and
setting forth across the mountain they descended by a long defile to the
half-ruined village of Valdu. Here, for the first time, Odo saw the
spectacle of a neglected estate, its last penny wrung from it for the
absent master's pleasure by a bailiff who was expected to extract his
pay from the sale of clandestine concessions to the tenants. Riding
beside the Marquess, who swore under his breath at the ravages of the
undyked stream and the sight of good arable land run wild and choked
with underbrush, the little boy obtained a precocious insight into the
evils of a system which had long outlived its purpose, and the idea of
feudalism was ever afterward embodied for him in his glimpse of the
peasants of Valdu looking up sullenly from their work as their suzerain
and protector thrust an unfamiliar painted smile between the curtains of
his litter.
What his grandfather thought of Valdu (to which the Count on the way
home referred with smirking apologies as the mountain-lair of his
barbarous ancestors) was patent enough even to Odo's undeveloped
perceptions; but it would have required a more experienced understanding
to detect the motive that led the Marquess, scarce two days after their
visit, to accord his daughter's hand to the Count. Odo felt a shock of
dismay on learning that his beautiful mother was to become the property
of an old gentleman whom he guessed to be of his grandfather's age, and
whose enamoured grimaces recalled the antics of her favourite monkey,
and the boy's face reflected the blush of embarrassment with which Donna
Laura imparted the news; but the children of that day were trained to a
passive acquiescence, and had she informed him that she was to be
chained in the keep on bread and water, Odo would have accepted the fact
with equal philosophy. Three weeks afterward his mother and the old
Count were married in the chapel of Donnaz, and Donna Laura, with many
tears and embraces, set out for Turin, taking her monkey but leaving her
son behind. It was not till later that Odo learned of the social usage
which compelled young widows to choose between remarriage and the
cloister; and his subsequent views were unconsciously tinged by the
remembrance of his mother's melancholy bridal.
Her departure left no traces but were speedily repaired by the coming of
spring. The sun growing warmer, and the close season putting an end to
the Marquess's hunting, it was now Odo's chief pleasure to carry his
books to the walled garden between the castle and the southern face of
the cliff. This small enclosure, probably a survival of medieval
horticulture, had along the upper ledge of its wall a grass walk
commanding the flow of the stream, and an angle turret that turned one
slit to the valley, the other to the garden lying below like a tranquil
well of scent and brightness: its box trees clipped to the shape of
peacocks and lions, its clove pinks and simples set in a border of
thrift, and a pear tree basking on its sunny wall. These pleasant
spaces, which Odo had to himself save when the canonesses walked there
to recite their rosary, he peopled with the knights and ladies of the
novelle, and the fantastic beings of Pulci's epic: there walked the Fay
Morgana, Regulus the loyal knight, the giant Morgante, Trajan the just
Emperor and the proud figure of King Conrad; so that, escaping thither
from the after-dinner dullness of the tapestry parlour, the boy seemed
to pass from the most oppressive solitude to a world of warmth and
fellowship.
1.6.
Odo, who, like all neglected children, was quick to note in the
demeanour of his elders any hint of a change in his own condition, had
been keenly conscious of the effect produced at Donnaz by the news of
the Duchess of Pianura's deliverance. Guided perhaps by his mother's
exclamation, he noticed an added zeal in Don Gervaso's teachings and an
unction in the manner of his aunts and grandmother, who embraced him as
though they were handling a relic; while the old Marquess, though he
took his grandson seldomer on his rides, would sit staring at him with a
frowning tenderness that once found vent in the growl--"Morbleu, but
he's too good for the tonsure!" All this made it clear to Odo that he
was indeed meant for the Church, and he learned without surprise that
the following spring he was to be sent to the seminary at Asti.
With a view to prepare him for this change, the canonesses suggested his
attending them that year on their annual pilgrimage to the sanctuary of
Oropa. Thither, for every feast of the Assumption, these pious ladies
travelled in their litter; and Odo had heard from them many tales of the
miraculous Black Virgin who drew thousands to her shrine among the
mountains. They set forth in August, two days before the feast,
ascending through chestnut groves to the region of bare rocks; thence
downward across torrents hung with white acacia and along park-like
grassy levels deep in shade. The lively air, the murmur of verdure, the
perfume of mown grass in the meadows and the sweet call of the cuckoos
from every thicket made an enchantment of the way; but Odo's pleasure
redoubled when, gaining the high-road to Oropa, they mingled with the
long train of devotees ascending from the plain. Here were pilgrims of
every condition, from the noble lady of Turin or Asti (for it was the
favourite pilgrimage of the Sardinian court), attended by her physician
and her cicisbeo, to the half-naked goatherd of Val Sesia or Salluzzo;
the cheerful farmers of the Milanese, with their wives, in silver
necklaces and hairpins, riding pillion on plump white asses; sick
persons travelling in closed litters or carried on hand-stretchers;
crippled beggars obtruding their deformities; confraternities of hooded
penitents, Franciscans, Capuchins and Poor Clares in dusty companies;
jugglers, pedlars, Egyptians and sellers of drugs and amulets. From
among these, as the canonesses' litter jogged along, an odd figure
advanced toward Odo, who had obtained leave to do the last mile of the
journey on foot. This was a plump abate in tattered ecclesiastical
dress, his shoes white as a miller's and the perspiration streaking his
face as he laboured along in the dust. He accosted Odo in a soft shrill
voice, begging leave to walk beside the young cavaliere, whom he had
more than once had the honour of seeing at Pianura; and, in reply to the
boy's surprised glance, added, with a swelling of the chest and an
absurd gesture of self-introduction, "But perhaps the cavaliere is not
too young to have heard of the illustrious Cantapresto, late primo
soprano of the ducal theatre of Pianura?"
Odo being obliged to avow his ignorance, the fat creature mopped his
brow and continued with a gasp--"Ah, your excellency, what is fame? From
glory to obscurity is no farther than from one milestone to another! Not
eight years ago, cavaliere, I was followed through the streets of
Pianura by a greater crowd than the Duke ever drew after him! But what
then? The voice goes--it lasts no longer than the bloom of a flower--and
with it goes everything: fortune, credit, consideration, friends and
parasites! Not eight years ago, sir--would you believe me?--I was
supping nightly in private with the Bishop, who had nearly quarrelled
with his late Highness for carrying me off by force one evening to his
casino; I was heaped with dignities and favours; all the poets in the
town composed sonnets in my honour; the Marquess of Trescorre fought a
duel about me with the Bishop's nephew, Don Serafino; I attended his
lordship to Rome; I spent the villeggiatura at his villa, where I sat at
play with the highest nobles in the land; yet when my voice went,
cavaliere, it was on my knees I had to beg of my heartless patron the
paltry favour of the minor orders!" Tears were running down the abate's
cheeks, and he paused to wipe them with a corner of tattered bands.
Though Odo had been bred in an abhorrence of the theatre, the strange
creature's aspect so pricked his compassion that he asked him what he
was now engaged in; at which Cantapresto piteously cried, "Alas, what am
I not engaged in, if the occasion offers? For whatever a man's habit, he
will not wear it long if it cover an empty belly; and he that respects
his calling must find food enough to continue in it. But as for me, sir,
I have put a hand to every trade, from composing scenarios for the ducal
company of Pianura, to writing satirical sonnets for noblemen that
desire to pass for wits. I've a pretty taste, too, in compiling
almanacks, and when nothing else served I have played the public
scrivener at the street corner; nay, sir, necessity has even driven me
to hold the candle in one or two transactions I would not more actively
have mixed in; and it was to efface the remembrance of one of these--for
my conscience is still over-nice for my condition--that I set out on
this laborious pilgrimage."
Much of this was unintelligible to Odo; but he was moved by any mention
of Pianura, and in the abate's first pause he risked the question--"Do
you know the hump-backed boy Brutus?"
His companion stared and pursed his soft lips.
"Brutus?" says he. "Brutus? Is he about the Duke's person?"
"He lives in the palace," said Odo doubtfully.
The fat ecclesiastic clapped a hand to his thigh.
"Can it be your excellency has in mind the foundling boy Carlo Gamba?
Does the jackanapes call himself Brutus now? He was always full of his
classical allusions! Why, sir, I think I know him very well; he is even
rumoured to be a brother of Don Lelio Trescorre's, and I believe the
Duke has lately given him to the Marquess of Cerveno, for I saw him not
long since in the Marquess's livery at Pontesordo."
"Pontesordo?" cried Odo. "It was there I lived."
"Did you indeed, cavaliere? But I think you will have been at the Duke's
manor of that name; and it was the hunting-lodge on the edge of the
chase that I had in mind. The Marquess uses it, I believe, as a kind of
casino; though not without risk of a distemper. Indeed, there is much
wonder at his frequenting it, and 'tis said he does so against the
Duke's wishes."
The name of Pontesordo had set Odo's memories humming like a hive of
bees, and without heeding his companion's allusions he asked--"And did
you see the Momola?"
The other looked his perplexity.
"She's an Innocent too," Odo hastened to explain. "She is Filomena's
servant at the farm."
The abate at this, standing still in the road, screwed up his eyelids
and protruded a relishing lip. "Eh, eh," said he, "the girl from the
farm, you say?" And he gave a chuckle. "You've an eye, cavaliere, you've
an eye," he cried, his soft body shaking with enjoyment; but before Odo
could make a guess at his meaning their conversation was interrupted by
a sharp call from the litter. The abate at once disappeared in the
crowd, and a moment later the litter had debouched on the grassy
quadrangle before the outer gates of the monastery. This space was set
in beech-woods, amid which gleamed the white-pillared chapels of the Way
of the Cross; and the devouter pilgrims, dispersed beneath the trees,
were ascending from one chapel to another, preparatory to entering the
church.
The quadrangle itself was crowded with people, and the sellers of votive
offerings, in their booths roofed with acacia-boughs, were driving a
noisy trade in scapulars and Agnus Deis, images of the Black Virgin of
Oropa, silver hearts and crosses, and phials of Jordan water warranted
to effect the immediate conversion of Jews and heretics. In one corner a
Carmelite missionary had set up his portable pulpit, and, crucifix in
hand, was exhorting the crowd; in another, an improvisatore intoned
canticles to the miraculous Virgin; a barefoot friar sat selling
indulgences at the monastery gate, and pedlars with trays of rosaries
and religious prints pushed their way among the pilgrims. Young women of
less pious aspect solicited the attention of the better-dressed
travellers, and jugglers, mountebanks and quacks of every description
hung on the outskirts of the square. The sight speedily turned Odo's
thought from his late companion, and the litter coming to a halt he was
leaning forward to observe the antics of a tumbler who had spread his
carpet beneath the trees, when the abate's face suddenly rose to the
surface of the throng and his hand thrust a crumpled paper between the
curtains of the litter. Odo was quick-witted enough to capture this
missive without attracting the notice of his grand-aunts, and stealing a
glance at it, he read--"Cavaliere, I starve. When the illustrious ladies
descend, for Christ's sake beg a scudo of them for the unhappy
Cantapresto."
By this the litter had disengaged itself and was moving toward the outer
gates. Odo, aware of the disfavour with which the theatre was viewed at
Donnaz, and unable to guess how far the soprano's present habit would be
held to palliate the scandal of his former connection, was perplexed how
to communicate his petition to the canonesses. A moment later, however,
the question solved itself; for as the aunts descended at the door of
the rector's lodging, the porter, running to meet them, stumbled on a
black mass under the arcade, and raised the cry that here was a man
dropped dead. A crowd gathering, some one called out that it was an
ecclesiastic had fallen; whereat the great-aunts were hurrying forward
when Odo whispered the eldest, Donna Livia, that the sick man was indeed
an abate from Pianura. Donna Livia immediately bid her servants lift him
into the porter's lodge, where, with the administering of spirits, the
poor soprano presently revived and cast a drowning glance about the
chamber.
"Eight years ago, illustrious ladies," he gurgled, "I had nearly died
one night of a surfeit of ortolans; and now it is of a surfeit of
emptiness that I am perishing."
The ladies at this, with exclamations of pity, called on the
lay-brothers for broth and cordials, and bidding the porter enquire more
particularly into the history of the unhappy ecclesiastic, hastened away
with Odo to the rector's parlour.
Next morning betimes all were afoot for the procession, which the
canonesses were to witness from the monastery windows. The apothecary
had brought word that the abate, whose seizure was indeed the result of
hunger, was still too weak to rise; and Donna Livia, eager to open her
devotions with an act of pity, pressed a sequin in the man's hand, and
bid him spare no care for the sufferer's comfort.
This sent Odo in a cheerful mood to the red-hung windows, whence,
peering between the folds of his aunts' gala habits, he admired the
great court enclosed in nobly-ordered cloisters and strewn with fresh
herbs and flowers. Thence one of the rector's chaplains conducted them
to the church, placing them, in company with the monastery's other noble
guests, in a tribune constructed above the choir. It was Odo's first
sight of a great religious ceremony, and as he looked down on the church
glimmering with votive offerings and gold-fringed draperies, and seen
through rolling incense in which the altar-candles swam like stars
reflected in a river, he felt an almost sensual thrill of pleasure at
the thought that his life was to be passed amid scenes of such mystic
beauty. The sweet singing of the choir raised his spirit to a higher
view of the scene; and the sight of the huddled misery on the floor of
the church revived in him the old longing for the Franciscan cowl.
From these raptures he was speedily diverted by the sight awaiting him
at the conclusion of the mass. Hardly had the spectators returned to the
rector's windows when, the doors of the church swinging open, a
procession headed by the rector himself descended the steps and began to
make the circuit of the court. Odo's eyes swam with the splendour of
this burst of banners, images and jewelled reliquaries, surmounting the
long train of tonsured heads and bathed in a light almost blinding after
the mild penumbra of the church. As the monks advanced, the pilgrims,
pouring after them, filled the court with a dark undulating mass through
which the procession wound like a ray of sunlight down the brown bosom
of a torrent. Branches of oleander swung in the air, devout cries hailed
the approach of the Black Madonna's canopy, and hoarse voices swelled to
a roar the measured litanies of the friars.
The ceremonies over, Odo, with the canonesses, set out to visit the
chapels studding the beech-knoll above the monastic buildings. Passing
out of Juvara's great portico they stood a moment above the grassy
common, which presented a scene in curious contrast to that they had
just quitted. Here refreshment-booths had been set up, musicians were
fiddling, jugglers unrolling their carpets, dentists shouting out the
merits of their panaceas, and light women drinking with the liveried
servants of the nobility. The very cripples who had groaned the loudest
in church now rollicked with the mountebanks and dancers; and no trace
remained of the celebration just concluded but the medals and relics
strung about the necks of those engaged in these gross diversions.
It was strange to pass from this scene to the solitude of the grove,
where, in a twilight rustling with streams, the chapels lifted their
white porches. Peering through the grated door of each little edifice,
Odo beheld within a group of terra-cotta figures representing some scene
of the Passion--here a Last Supper, with a tigerish Judas and a Saint
John resting his yellow curls on his Master's bosom, there an Entombment
or a group of stricken Maries. These figures, though rudely modelled and
daubed with bright colours, yet, by a vivacity of attitude and gesture
which the mystery of their setting enhanced, conveyed a thrilling
impression of the sacred scenes set forth; and Odo was yet at an age
when the distinction between flesh-and-blood and its plastic
counterfeits is not clearly defined, or when at least the sculptured
image is still a mysterious half-sentient thing, denizen of some strange
borderland between art and life. It seemed to him, as he gazed through
the chapel gratings, that those long-distant episodes of the divine
tragedy had been here preserved in some miraculous state of suspended
animation, and as he climbed from one shrine to another he had the sense
of treading the actual stones of Gethsemane and Calvary.
As was usual with him, the impressions of the moment had effaced those
preceding it, and it was almost with surprise that, at the rector's
door, he beheld the primo soprano of Pianura totter forth to the litter
and offer his knee as a step for the canonesses. The charitable ladies
cried out on him for this imprudence, and his pallor still giving
evidence of distress, he was bidden to wait on them after supper with
his story. He presented himself promptly in the parlour, and being
questioned as to his condition at once rashly proclaimed his former
connection with the ducal theatre of Pianura. No avowal could have been
more disastrous to his cause. The canonesses crossed themselves with
horror, and the abate, seeing his mistake, hastened to repair it by
exclaiming--"What, ladies, would you punish me for following a vocation
to which my frivolous parents condemned me when I was too young to
resist their purpose? And have not my subsequent sufferings, my penances
and pilgrimages, and the state to which they have reduced me,
sufficiently effaced the record of an involuntary error?"
Seeing the effect of this appeal the abate made haste to follow up his
advantage. "Ah, illustrious ladies," he cried, "am I not a living
example of the fate of those who leave all to follow righteousness? For
while I remained on the stage, among the most dissolute surroundings,
fortune showered me with every benefit she heaps on her favourites. I
had my seat at every table in Pianura; the Duke's chair to carry me to
the theatre; and more money than I could devise how to spend; while now
that I have resigned my calling to embrace the religious life, you see
me reduced to begging a crust from the very mendicants I formerly
nourished. For," said he, moved to tears by his own recital, "my
superfluity was always spent in buying the prayers of the unfortunate,
and to judge how I was esteemed by those acquainted with my private
behaviour you need only learn that, on my renouncing the stage, 'twas
the Bishop of Pianura who himself accorded me the tonsure."
This discourse, which Odo admired for its adroitness, visibly excited
the commiseration of the ladies; but at mention of the Bishop, Donna
Livia exchanged a glance with her sister, who enquired, with a quaint
air of astuteness, "But how comes it, abate, that with so powerful a
protector you have been exposed to such incredible reverses?"
Cantapresto rolled a meaning eye.
"Alas, madam, it was through my protector that misfortune attacked me;
for his lordship having appointed me secretary to his favourite nephew,
Don Serafino, that imprudent nobleman required of me services so
incompatible with my cloth that disobedience became a duty; whereupon,
not satisfied with dismissing me in disgrace, he punished me by
blackening my character to his uncle. To defend myself was to traduce
Don Serafino; and rather than reveal his courses to the Bishop I sank to
the state in which you see me; a state," he added with emotion, "that I
have travelled this long way to commend to the adorable pity of Her
whose Son had not where to lay His head."
This stroke visibly touched the canonesses, still soft from the
macerations of the morning; and Donna Livia compassionately asked how he
had subsisted since his rupture with the Bishop.
"Madam, by the sale of my talents in any service not at odds with my
calling: as the compiling of pious almanacks, the inditing of rhymed
litanies and canticles, and even the construction of theatrical
pieces"--the ladies lifted hands of reprobation--"of theatrical pieces,"
Cantapresto impressively repeated, "for the use of the Carmelite nuns of
Pianura. But," said he with a deprecating smile, "the wages of virtue
are less liberal than those of sin, and spite of a versatility I think I
may honestly claim, I have often had to subsist on the gifts of the
pious, and sometimes, madam, to starve on their compassion."
This ready discourse, and the soprano's evident distress, so worked on
the canonesses that, having little money at their disposal, it was
fixed, after some private consultation, that he should attend them to
Donnaz, where Don Gervaso, in consideration of his edifying conduct in
renouncing the stage, might be interested in helping him to a situation;
and when the little party set forth from Oropa, the abate Cantapresto
closed the procession on one of the baggage-mules, with Odo riding
pillion at his back. Good fortune loosened the poor soprano's tongue,
and as soon as the canonesses' litter was a safe distance ahead he began
to beguile the way with fragments of reminiscence and adventure. Though
few of his allusions were clear to Odo, the glimpse they gave of the
motley theatrical life of the north Italian cities--the quarrels between
Goldoni and the supporters of the expiring commedia dell' arte--the
rivalries of the prime donne and the arrogance of the popular
comedians--all these peeps into a tinsel world of mirth, cabal and
folly, enlivened by the recurring names of the Four Masks, those
lingering gods of the older dispensation, so lured the boy's fancy and
set free his vagrant wonder, that he was almost sorry to see the keep of
Donnaz reddening in the second evening's sunset.
Such regrets, however, their arrival at the castle soon effaced; for in
the doorway stood the old Marquess, a letter in hand, who springing
forward caught his grandson by the shoulders, and cried with his great
boar-hunting shout, "Cavaliere, you are heir-presumptive of Pianura!"
1.7.
The Marquess of Cerveno had succumbed to the tertian ague contracted at
the hunting-lodge of Pontesordo; and this unforeseen calamity left but
one life, that of the sickly ducal infant, between Odo and the
succession to the throne of Pianura. Such was the news conveyed
post-haste from Turin by Donna Laura; who added the Duke's express wish
that his young kinsman should be fitted for the secular career, and the
information that Count Valdu had already entered his stepson's name at
the Royal Academy of Turin.
The Duke of Pianura being young and in good health, and his wife having
already given him an heir, the most sanguine imagination could hardly
view Odo as being brought much nearer the succession; yet the change in
his condition was striking enough to excuse the fancy of those about him
for shaping the future to their liking. The priestling was to turn
courtier and perhaps soldier; Asti was to be exchanged for Turin, the
seminary for the academy; and even the old chief of Donnaz betrayed in
his grumbling counsels to the boy a sense of the exalted future in which
they might some day serve him.
The preparations of departure and the wonder of his new state left Odo
little space wherein to store his thought with impressions of what he
was leaving; and it was only in after years, when the accretion of
superficial incident had dropped from his past, that those last days at
Donnaz gained their full distinctness. He saw them then, heavy with the
warmth of the long summer, from the topmost pine-belt to the bronzed
vineyards turning their metallic clusters to the sun; and in the midst
his small bewildered figure, netted in a web of association, and
seeming, as he broke away, to leave a shred of himself in every corner
of the castle.
Sharpest of all, there remained with him the vision of his last hour
with Don Gervaso. The news of Odo's changed condition had been received
in silence by the chaplain. He was not the man to waste words and he
knew the futility of asserting the Church's claim to the
heir-presumptive of a reigning house. Therefore if he showed no
enthusiasm he betrayed no resentment; but, the evening before the boy's
departure, led him, still in silence, to the chapel. Here the priest
knelt with Odo; then, raising him, sat on one of the benches facing the
high altar, and spoke a few grave words.
"You are setting out," said he, "on a way far different from that in
which it has been my care to guide you; yet the high road and the
mountain path may, by diverse windings, lead to the same point; and
whatever walk a man chooses, it will surely carry him to the end that
God has appointed. If you are called to serve Him in the world, the
journey on which you are now starting may lead you to the throne of
Pianura; but even so," he went on, "there is this I would have you
remember: that should this dignity come to you it may come as a calamity
rather than a joy; for when God confers earthly honours on a child of
His predilection, He sometimes deigns to render them as innocuous as
misfortune; and my chief prayer for you is that you should be raised to
this eminence, it may be at a moment when such advancement seems to
thrust you in the dust."
The words burned themselves into Odo's heart like some mystic writing on
the walls of memory, long afterward to start into fiery meaning. At the
time he felt only that the priest spoke with a power and dignity no
human authority could give; and for a moment all the stored influences
of his faith reached out to him from the dimly-gleaming altar.
The next sun rose on a new world. He was to set out at daylight, and
dawn found him at the casement, footing it in thought down the road as
yet undistinguishable in a dying glimmer of stars. Bruno was to attend
him to Turin; but one of the women presently brought word that the old
huntsman's rheumatism had caught him in the knee, and that the Marquess,
resolved not to delay his grandson's departure, had chosen Cantapresto
as the boy's companion. The courtyard, when Odo descended, fairly
bubbled with the voluble joy of the fat soprano, who was giving
directions to the servants, receiving commissions and instructions from
the aunts, assuring everybody of his undying devotion to the
heir-presumptive of Pianura, and citing impressive instances of the
responsibilities with which the great of the earth had formerly
entrusted him.
As a companion for Odo the abate was clearly not to Don Gervaso's taste;
but he stood silent, turning the comment of a cool eye on the soprano's
protestations, and saying only, as Cantapresto swept the company into
the circle of an obsequious farewell:--"Remember, signor abate, it is to
your cloth this business is entrusted." The abate's answer was a rush of
purple to the forehead; but Don Gervaso imperturbably added, "And you
lie but one night on the road."
Meanwhile the old Marquess, visibly moved, was charging Odo to respect
his elders and superiors, while in the same breath warning him not to
take up with the Frenchified notions of the court, but to remember that
for a lad of his condition the chief virtues were a tight seat in the
saddle, a quick hand on the sword and a slow tongue in counsel. "Mind
your own business," he concluded, "and see that others mind theirs."
The Marchioness thereupon, with many tears, hung a scapular about Odo's
neck, bidding him shun the theatre and be regular at confession; one of
the canonesses reminded him not to omit a visit to the chapel of the
Holy Winding-sheet, while the other begged him to burn a candle for her
at the Consolata; and the servants pressed forward to embrace and bless
their little master.
Day was high by this, and as the Marquess's travelling-chariot rumbled
down the valley the shadows seemed to fly before it. Odo at first lay
numb; but presently his senses woke to the call of the brightening
landscape. The scene was such as Salvator might have painted: wild
blocks of stone heaped under walnut-shade; here the white plunge of
water down a wall of granite, and there, in bluer depths, a charcoal
burner's hut sending up its spiral of smoke to the dark raftering of
branches. Though it was but a few hours since Odo had travelled from
Oropa, years seemed to have passed over him, and he saw the world with a
new eye. Each sound and scent plucked at him in passing: the roadside
started into detail like the foreground of some minute Dutch painter;
every pendent mass of fern, dark dripping rock, late tuft of harebell
called out to him: "Look well, for this is your last sight of us!" His
first sight too, it seemed: since he had lived through twelve Italian
summers without sense of the sun-steeped quality of atmosphere that,
even in shade, gives each object a golden salience. He was conscious of
it now only as it suggested fingering a missal stiff with gold-leaf and
edged with a swarming diversity of buds and insects. The carriage moved
so slowly that he was in no haste to turn the pages; and each spike of
yellow foxglove, each clouding of butterflies about a patch of
speedwell, each quiver of grass over a hidden thread of moisture, became
a marvel to be thumbed and treasured.
From this mood he was detached by the next bend of the road. The way,
hitherto winding through narrow glens, now swung to a ledge overhanging
the last escarpment of the mountains; and far below, the Piedmontese
plain unrolled to the southward its interminable blue-green distances
mottled with forest. A sight to lift the heart; for on those sunny
reaches Ivrea, Novara, Vercelli lay like sea-birds on a summer sea. It
was the future unfolding itself to the boy; dark forests, wide rivers,
strange cities and a new horizon: all the mystery of the coming years
figured to him in that great plain stretching away to the greater
mystery of heaven.
To all this Cantapresto turned a snoring countenance. The lively air of
the hills, the good fare of Donnaz, and the satisfaction, above all, of
rolling on cushions over a road he had thought to trudge on foot, had
lapped the abate in Capuan slumber. The midday halt aroused him. The
travellers rested at an inn on the edge of the hills, and here
Cantapresto proved to his charge that, as he phrased it, his belly had
as short a memory for food as his heart for injuries. A flask of Asti
put him in the talking mood, and as they drove on he regaled Odo with a
lively picture of the life on which he was about to enter.
"You are going," said he, "to one of the first cities of Europe; one
that has all the beauty and elegance of the French capital without its
follies and excesses. Turin is blessed with a court where good manners
and a fine tone are more highly prized than the extravagances of genius;
and I have heard it said of his Majesty that he was delighted to see his
courtiers wearing the French fashions outside their heads, provided they
didn't carry the French ideas within. You are too young, doubtless,
cavaliere, to have heard of the philosophers who are raising such a
pother north of the Alps: a set of madmen that, because their birth
doesn't give them the entree of Versailles, are preaching that men
should return to a state of nature, great ladies suckle their young like
animals, and the peasantry own their land like nobles. Luckily you'll
hear little of this infectious talk in Turin: the King stamps out the
philosophers like vermin or packs them off to splutter their heresies in
Milan or Venice. But to a nobleman mindful of the privileges of his
condition there is no more agreeable sojourn in Europe. The wines are
delicious, the women--er--accomplished--and though the sbirri may hug
one a trifle close now and then, why, with money and discretion, a
friend or two in the right quarters, and the wit to stand well with the
Church, there's no city in Europe where a man may have pleasanter sins
to confess."
The carriage, by this, was descending the last curves above the valley,
and before them, in a hollow of the hills, blinked the warm shimmer of
maize and vine, like some bright vintage brimming its cup. The soprano
waved a convivial hand.
"Look," he cried, "what Nature has done for this happy region! Where
herself has spread the table so bountifully, should her children hang
back from the feast? I vow, cavaliere, if the mountains were built for
hermits and ascetics, then the plain was made level for dancing,
banqueting and the pleasures of the villeggiatura. If God had meant us
to break our teeth on nuts and roots, why did He hang the vine with
fruit and draw three crops of wheat from this indulgent soil? I protest
when I look on such a scene as this, it is sufficient incentive to
lowliness to remember that the meek shall inherit the earth!"
This mood held Cantapresto till his after-dinner sleep overtook him; and
when he woke again the chariot was clattering across the bridge of
Chivasso. The Po rolled its sunset crimson between flats that seemed
dull and featureless after the broken scenery of the hills; but beyond
the bridge rose the towers and roofs of the town, with its
cathedral-front catching the last slant of light. In the streets dusk
had fallen and a lamp flared under the arch of the inn before which the
travellers halted. Odo's head was heavy, and he hardly noticed the
figures thronging the caffe into which they were led; but presently
there rose a shout of "Cantapresto!" and a ring of waving arms and
flashing teeth encircled his companion.
These appendages belonged to a troop of men and women, some masked and
in motley, others in discoloured travel-stained garments, who pressed
about the soprano with cries of joyous recognition. He was evidently an
old favourite of the band, for a duenna in tattered velvet fell on his
neck with genial unreserve, a pert soubrette caught him by the arm the
duenna left free, and a terrific Matamor with a nose like a scimitar
slapped him on the back with a tin sword.
Odo's glimpse of the square at Oropa told him that here was a band of
strolling players such as Cantapresto had talked of on the ride back to
Donnaz. Don Gervaso's instructions and the old Marchioness's warning
against the theatre were present enough in the boy's mind to add a touch
of awe to the curiosity with which he observed these strange objects of
the Church's reprobation. They struck him, it must be owned, as more
pitiable than alarming, for the duenna's toes were coming through her
shoes, and one or two of the children who hung on the outskirts of the
group looked as lean and hungry under their spangles as the
foundling-girl of Pontesordo. Spite of this they seemed a jolly crew,
and ready (at Cantapresto's expense) to celebrate their encounter with
the ex-soprano in unlimited libations of Asti and Val Pulicello. The
singer, however, hung back with protesting gestures.
"Gently, then, gently, dear friends--dear companions! When was it we
parted? In the spring of the year--and we meet now in the late summer.
As the seasons change so do our conditions: if the spring is a season of
folly, then is the harvest-time the period for reflection. When we last
met I was a strolling poet, glad to serve your gifted company within the
scope of my talents--now, ladies and gentlemen, now"--he drew himself up
with pride--"now you behold in me the governor and friend of the
heir-presumptive of Pianura."
Cries of incredulity and derision greeted this announcement, and one of
the girls called out laughingly, "Yet you have the same old cassock to
your back!"
"And the same old passage from your mouth to your belly," added an
elastic Harlequin, reaching an arm across the women's shoulders. "Come,
Cantapresto, we'll help you line it with good wine, to the health of his
most superlatively serene Highness, the heir-presumptive of Pianura; and
where is that fabulous personage, by the way?"
Odo at this retreated hastily behind the soprano; but a pretty girl
catching sight of him, he found himself dragged into the centre of the
company, who hailed him with fantastic obeisances. Supper meanwhile was
being laid on the greasy table down the middle of the room. The Matamor,
who seemed the director of the troupe, thundered out his orders for
maccaroni, fried eels and sausages; the inn-servants flanked the plates
with wine-flasks and lumps of black bread, and in a moment the hungry
comedians, thrusting Odo into a high seat at the head of the table, were
falling on the repast with a prodigious clatter of cutlery.
Of the subsequent incidents of the feast--the banter of the younger
women, the duenna's lachrymose confidences, the incessant interchange of
theatrical jargon and coarse pleasantry--there remained to Odo but a
confused image, obscured by the smoke of guttering candles, the fumes of
wine and the stifling air of the low-ceilinged tavern. Even the face of
the pretty girl who had dragged him from his concealment, and who now
sat at his side, plying him with sweets from her own plate, began to
fade into the general blur; and his last impression was of Cantapresto's
figure dilating to immense proportions at the other end of the table, as
the soprano rose with shaking wine-glass to favour the company with a
song. The chorus, bursting forth in response, surged over Odo's drowning
senses, and he was barely aware, in the tumult of noise and lights, of
an arm slipped about him, a softly-heaving pillow beneath his head, and
the gradual subsidence into dark delicious peace.
So, on the first night of his new life, the heir-presumptive of Pianura
fell asleep with his head in a dancing-girl's breast.
1.8.
The travellers were to journey by Vettura from Chivasso to Turin; and
when Odo woke next morning the carriage stood ready in the courtyard.
Cantapresto, mottled and shamefaced, with his bands awry and an air of
tottering dignity, was gathering their possessions together, and the
pretty girl who had pillowed Odo's slumbers now knelt by his bed and
laughingly drew on his stockings. She was a slim brown morsel, not much
above his age, with a glance that flitted like a bird, and round
shoulders slipping out of her kerchief. A wave of shyness bathed Odo to
the forehead as their eyes met: he hung his head stupidly and turned
away when she fetched the comb to dress his hair.
His toilet completed, she called out to the abate to go below and see
that the cavaliere's chocolate was ready; and as the door closed she
turned and kissed Odo on the lips.
"Oh, how red you are!" she cried laughing. "Is that the first kiss
you've ever had? Then you'll remember me when you're Duke of
Pianura--Mirandolina of Chioggia, the first girl you ever kissed!" She
was pulling his collar straight while she talked, so that he could not
get away from her. "You will remember me, won't you?" she persisted. "I
shall be a great actress by that time, and you'll appoint me prima
amorosa to the ducal theatre of Pianura, and throw me a diamond bracelet
from your Highness's box and make all the court ladies ready to poison
me for rage!" She released his collar and dropped away from him. "Ah,
no, I shall be a poor strolling player, and you a great prince," she
sighed, "and you'll never, never think of me again; but I shall always
remember that I was the first girl you ever kissed!"
She hung back in a dazzle of tears, looking so bright and tender that
Odo's bashfulness melted like a spring frost.
"I shall never be Duke," he cried, "and I shall never forget you!" And
with that he turned and kissed her boldly and then bolted down the
stairs like a hare. And all that day he scorched and froze with the
thought that perhaps she had been laughing at him.
Cantapresto was torpid after the feast, and Odo detected in him an air
of guilty constraint. The boy was glad enough to keep silence, and they
rolled on without speaking through the wide glowing landscape. Already
the nearness of a great city began to make itself felt. The bright
champaign was scattered over with farm-houses, their red-tiled
pigeon-cots and their granges latticed with openwork terra-cotta
pleasantly breaking the expanse of maize and mulberry; villages lay
along the banks of the canals intersecting the plain; and the hills
beyond the Po were planted with villas and monasteries.
All the afternoon they drove between umbrageous parks and under the
walls of terraced vineyards. It was a region of delectable shade, with
glimpses here and there of gardens flashing with fountains and villa
roofs decked with statues and vases; and at length, toward sunset, a
bend of the road brought them out on a fair-spreading city, so
flourishing in buildings, so beset with smiling hills, that Odo,
springing from his seat, cried out in sheer joy of the spectacle.
They had still the suburbs to traverse; and darkness was falling when
they entered the gates of Turin. This brought the fresh amazement of
wide lamplit streets, clean and bright as a ball-room, lined with
palaces and filled with well-dressed loungers: officers in the brilliant
Sardinian uniforms, fine gentlemen in French tie-wigs and narrow-sleeved
coats, merchants hurrying home from business, ecclesiastics in
high-swung carriages, and young bloods dashing by in their curricles.
The tables before the coffee-houses were thronged with idlers taking
their chocolate and reading the gazettes; and here and there the arched
doorway of a palace showed some gay party supping al fresco in a garden
hung with lamps.
The flashing of lights and the noise of the streets roused Cantapresto,
who sat up with a sudden assumption of dignity.
"Ah, cavaliere," said he, "you now see a great city, a famous city, a
city aptly called 'the Paris of Italy.' Nowhere else shall you find such
well-lit streets, such fair pavements, shops so full of Parisian wares,
promenades so crowded with fine carriages and horses. What a life a
young gentleman may lead here! The court is hospitable, society amiable,
the theatres are the best-appointed in Italy."
Here Cantapresto paused with a deprecating cough.
"Only one thing is necessary," he went on, "to complete enjoyment of the
fruits of this garden of Eden; and that is"--he coughed
again--"discretion. His Majesty, cavaliere, is a father to his subjects;
the Church is their zealous mother; and between two such parents, and
the innumerable delegates of their authority, why, you may fancy, sir,
that a man has to wear his eyes on all sides of his head. Discretion is
a virtue the Church herself commends; it is natural, then, that she
should afford her children full opportunity to practise it. And look
you, cavaliere, it is like gymnastics: the younger you acquire it, the
less effort it costs. Our Maker Himself has taught us the value of
silence by putting us speechless into the world: if we learn to talk
later we do it at our own risk! But for your own part, cavaliere--since
the habit cannot too early be exercised--I would humbly counsel you to
say nothing to your illustrious parents of our little diversion of last
evening."
The Countess Valdu lived on the upper floor of a rococo palace near the
Piazza San Carlo; and here Odo, led by Cantapresto, presently found
himself shown into an apartment where several ladies and gentlemen sat
at cards. His mother, detaching herself from the group, embraced him
with unusual warmth, and the old Count, more painted and perfumed than
ever, hurried up with an obsequious greeting. Odo for the first time
found himself of consequence in the world; and as he was passed from
guest to guest, questioned about his journey, praised for his good
colour and stout looks, complimented on his high prospects, and
laughingly entreated not to forget his old friends when fortune should
advance him to the duchy, he began to feel himself a reigning potentate
already.
His mother, as he soon learned, had sunk into a life almost as dull and
restricted as that she had left Donnaz to escape. Count Valdu's position
at court was more ornamental than remunerative, the income from his
estates was growing annually smaller, and he was involved in costly
litigation over the sale of some entailed property. Such conditions were
little to the Countess's humour, and the society to which her narrow
means confined her offered few distractions to her vanity. The
frequenters of the house were chiefly poor relations and hangers-on of
the Count's, the parasites who in those days were glad to subsist on the
crumbs of the slenderest larder. Half-a-dozen hungry Countesses, their
lean admirers, a superannuated abate or two, and a flock of threadbare
ecclesiastics, made up Donna Laura's circle; and even her cicisbeo,
selected in family council under the direction of her confessor, was an
austere gentleman of middle age, who collected ancient coins and was
engaged in composing an essay on the Martellian verse.
This company, which devoted hours to the new French diversion of the
parfilage, and spent the evenings in drinking lemonade and playing
basset for small stakes, found its chief topic of conversation in the
only two subjects safely discussed in Turin at that day--the doings of
the aristocracy and of the clergy. The fashion of the Queen's headdress
at the last circle, the marked manner in which his Majesty had lately
distinguished the brilliant young cavalry officer, Count Roberto di
Tournanches, the third marriage of the Countess Alfieri of Asti, the
incredibility of the rumour that the court ladies of Versailles had
taken to white muslin and Leghorn hats, the probable significance of the
Vicar-general's visit to Rome, the subject of the next sacred
representation to be given by the nuns of Santa Croce--such were the
questions that engaged the noble frequenters of Casa Valdu.
This was the only society that Donna Laura saw; for she was too poor to
dress to her taste and too proud to show herself in public without the
appointments becoming her station. Her sole distraction consisted in
visits to the various shrines--the Sudario, the Consolata, the Corpus
Domini--at which the feminine aristocracy offered up its devotions and
implored absolution for sins it had often no opportunity to commit: for
though fashion accorded cicisbei to the fine ladies of Turin, the Church
usually restricted their intercourse to the exchange of the most
harmless amenities.
Meanwhile the antechamber was as full of duns as the approach to Donna
Laura's apartment at Pianura; and Odo guessed that the warmth of the
maternal welcome sprang less from natural affection than from the hope
of using his expectations as a sop to her creditors. The pittance which
the ducal treasury allowed for his education was scarce large enough to
be worth diverting to other ends; but a potential prince is a shield to
the most vulnerable fortunes. In this character Odo for the first time
found himself flattered, indulged, and made the centre of the company.
The contrast to his life of subjection at Donnaz; the precocious
initiation into motives that tainted the very fount of filial piety; the
taste of this mingled draught of adulation and disillusionment, might
have perverted a nature more self-centred than his. From this
perversion, and from many subsequent perils he was saved by a kind of
imaginative sympathy, a wondering joy in the mere spectacle of life,
that tinged his most personal impressions with a streak of the
philosophic temper. If this trait did not save him from sorrow, it at
least lifted him above pettiness; if it could not solve the difficulties
of life it could arm him to endure them. It was the best gift of the
past from which he sprang; but it was blent with another quality, a deep
moral curiosity that ennobled his sensuous enjoyment of the outward show
of life; and these elements were already tending in him, as in countless
youths of his generation, to the formation of a new spirit, the spirit
that was to destroy one world without surviving to create another.
Of all this none could have been less conscious than the lad just
preparing to enter on his studies at the Royal Academy of Turin. That
institution, adjoining the royal palace, was a kind of nursery or
forcing-house for the budding nobility of Savoy. In one division of the
sumptuous building were housed his Majesty's pages, a corps of luxurious
indolent young fops; another wing accommodated the regular students of
the Academy, sons of noblemen and gentlemen destined for the secular
life, while a third was set aside for the "forestieri" or students from
foreign countries and from the other Italian states. To this quarter Odo
Valsecca was allotted; though it was understood that on leaving the
Academy he was to enter the Sardinian service.
It was customary for a young gentleman of Odo's rank to be attended at
the Academy not only by a body-servant but by a private governor or
pedant, whose business it was to overlook his studies, attend him
abroad, and have an eye to the society he frequented. The old Marquess
of Donnaz had sent his daughter, by Odo's hand, a letter recommending
her to select her son's governor with particular care, choosing rather a
person of grave behaviour and assured morality than one of your glib
ink-spatterers who may know the inside of all the folios in the King's
library without being the better qualified for the direction of a young
gentleman's conduct; and to this letter Don Gervaso appended the terse
postcript: "Your excellency is especially warned against according this
or any other position of trust to the merry-andrew who calls himself the
abate Cantapresto."
Donna Laura, with a shrug, handed the letter to her husband; Count
Valdu, adjusting his glasses, observed it was notorious that people
living in the depths of the country thought themselves qualified to
instruct their city relatives on all points connected with the social
usages; and the cicisbeo suggested that he could recommend an abate who
was proficient in the construction of the Martellian verse, and who
would made no extra charge for that accomplishment.
"Charges!" the Countess cried. "There's a matter my father doesn't deign
to consider. It's not enough, nowadays, to give the lads a governor, but
they must maintain their servants too, an idle gluttonous crew that prey
on their pockets and get a commission off every tradesman's bill."
Count Valdu lifted a deprecating hand.
"My dear, nothing could be more offensive to his Majesty than any
attempt to reduce the way of living of the pupils of the Academy."
"Of course," she shrugged--"But who's to pay? The Duke's beggarly
pittance hardly clothes him."
The cicisbeo suggested that the cavaliere Odo had expectations; at which
Donna Laura flushed and turned uneasy; while the Count, part of whose
marital duty it was to intervene discreetly between his lady and her
knight, now put forth the remark that the abate Cantapresto seemed a
shrewd serviceable fellow.
"Nor do I like to turn him adrift," cried the Countess instantly, "after
he has obliged us by attending my son on his journey."
"And I understand," added the Count, "that he would be glad to serve the
cavaliere in any capacity you might designate."
"Why not in all?" said the cicisbeo thoughtfully. "There would be
undoubted advantages to the cavaliere in possessing a servant who would
explain the globes while powdering his hair and not be above calling his
chair when he attended him to a lecture."
And the upshot of it was that when Odo, a few days later, entered on his
first term at the Academy, he was accompanied by the abate Cantapresto,
who had agreed, for a minimum of pay, to serve him faithfully in the
double capacity of pedagogue and lacquey.
The considerable liberty accorded the foreign students made Odo's first
year at the Academy at once pleasanter and less profitable than had he
been one of the regular pupils. The companions among whom he found
himself were a set of lively undisciplined young gentlemen, chiefly from
England, Russia and the German principalities; all in possession of more
or less pocket-money and attended by governors either pedantic and
self-engrossed or vulgarly subservient. These young sprigs, whose
ambition it was to ape the dress and manners of the royal pages, led a
life of dissipation barely interrupted by a few hours of attendance at
the academic classes. From the ill-effects of such surroundings Odo was
preserved by an intellectual curiosity that flung him ravening on his
studies. It was not that he was of a bookish habit, or that the drudgery
of the classes was less irksome to him than to the other pupils; but not
even the pedantic methods then prevailing, or the distractions of his
new life, could dull the flush of his first encounter with the past. His
imagination took fire over the dry pages of Cornelius Nepos, glowed with
the mild pastoral warmth of the Georgics and burst into flame at the
first hexameters of the Aeneid. He caught but a fragment of meaning here
and there, but the sumptuous imagery, the stirring names, the glimpses
into a past where Roman senators were mingled with the gods of a
gold-pillared Olympus, filled his mind with a misty pageant of
immortals. These moments of high emotion were interspersed with hours of
plodding over the Latin grammar and the textbooks of philosophy and
logic. Books were unknown ground to Cantapresto, and among masters and
pupils there was not one who could help Odo to the meaning of his task,
or who seemed aware that it might have a meaning. To most of the lads
about him the purpose of the Academy was to fit young gentlemen for the
army or the court; to give them the chance of sweating a shirt every
morning with the fencing-master and of learning to thread the
intricacies of the court minuet. They modelled themselves on the dress
and bearing of the pages, who were always ruffling it about the
quadrangle in court dress and sword, or booted and spurred for a day's
hunting at the King's chase of Stupinigi. To receive a nod or a word
from one of these young demigods on his way to the King's opera-box or
just back from a pleasure-party at her Majesty's villa above the Po--to
hear of their tremendous exploits and thrilling escapades--seemed to put
the whole school in touch with the fine gentleman's world of intrigue,
cards and duelling: the world in which ladies were subjugated, fortunes
lost, adversaries run through and tradesmen ruined with that
imperturbable grace which distinguished the man of quality from the
plebeian.
Among the privileges of the foreign pupils were frequent visits to the
royal theatre; and here was to Odo a source of unimagined joys. His
superstitious dread of the stage (a sentiment, he soon discovered, that
not even his mother's director shared) made his heart beat oppressively
as he first set foot in the theatre. It was a gala night, boxes and
stalls were thronged, and the audience-hall unfolded its glittering
curves like some poisonous flower enveloping him in rich malignant
fragrance. This impression was dispelled by the rising of the curtain on
a scene of such Claude-like loveliness as it would have been impossible
to associate with the bug-bear tales of Donnaz or with the coarse antics
of the comedians at Chivasso. A temple girt with mysterious shade,
lifting its colonnade above a sunlit harbour; and before the temple,
vine-wreathed nymphs waving their thyrsi through the turns of a
melodious dance--such was the vision that caught up Odo and swept him
leagues away from the rouged and starred assemblage gathered in the
boxes to gossip, flirt, eat ices and chocolates, and incidentally, in
the pauses of their talk, to listen for a moment to the ravishing airs
of Metastasio's Achilles in Scyros.
The distance between such performances--magic evocations of light and
colour and melody--and the gross buffoonery of the popular stage, still
tainted with the obscenities of the old commedia dell' arte, in a
measure explains the different points from which at that period the
stage was viewed in Italy: a period when in such cities as Milan,
Venice, Turin, actors and singers were praised to the skies and loaded
with wealth and favours, while the tatterdemalion players who set up
their boards in the small towns at market-time or on feast-days were
despised by the people and flung like carrion into unconsecrated graves.
The impression Odo had gathered from Don Gervaso's talk was of the
provincial stage in all its pothouse license; but here was a spectacle
as lofty and harmonious as some great religious pageant. As the action
developed and the beauty of the verse was borne to Odo on the light
hurrying ripples of Caldara's music he turned instinctively to share his
pleasure with those about him. Cantapresto, in a new black coat and
ruffles, was conspicuously taking snuff from the tortoiseshell box which
the Countess's cicisbeo had given him; but Odo saw that he took less
pleasure in the spectacle than in the fact of accompanying the
heir-presumptive of Pianura to a gala performance at the royal theatre;
and the lads about them were for the most part engaged either with their
own dress and appearance, or in exchanging greetings with the royal
pages and the older students. A few of these sat near Odo, disdainfully
superior in their fob-chains and queues; and as the boy glanced about
him he met the fixed stare of one of the number, a tall youth seated at
his elbow, and conspicuous, even in that modish company, for the
exaggerated elegance of his dress. This young man, whose awkward bearing
and long lava-hued face crowned with flamboyant hair contrasted oddly
with his finical apparel, returned Odo's look with a gaze of eager
comprehension. He too, it was clear, felt the thrill and wonder, or at
least re-lived them in the younger lad's emotion; and from that moment
Odo felt himself in mute communion with his neighbour.
The quick movement of the story--the succession of devices by which the
wily Ulysses lures Achilles to throw off his disguise, while Deidamia
strives to conceal his identity; the scenic beauties of the background,
shifting from sculpture-gallery to pleasance, from pleasance to
banquet-hall; the pomp and glitter of the royal train, the melting
graces of Deidamia and her maidens; seemed, in their multiple appeal, to
develop in Odo new faculties of perception. It was his first initiation
into Italian poetry, and the numbers, now broken, harsh and passionate,
now flowing into liquid sweetness, were so blent with sound and colour
that he scarce knew through which sense they reached him. Deidamia's
strophes thrilled him like the singing-girl's kiss, and at the young
hero's cry--
Ma lo so ch' io sono Achille,
E mi sento Achille in sen--
his fists tightened and the blood hummed in his ears.
In the scene of the banquet-hall, where the followers of Ulysses lay
before Lycomedes the offerings of the Greek chieftains, and, while the
King and Deidamia are marvelling at the jewels and the Tyrian robes,
Achilles, unmindful of his disguise, bursts out
Ah, chi vide finora armi piu belle?
--at this supreme point Odo again turned to his neighbour. They
exchanged another look, and at the close of the act the youth leaned
forward to ask with an air of condescension: "Is this your first
acquaintance with the divine Metastasio?"
"I have never been in a play-house before," said Odo reddening.
The other smiled. "You are fortunate in having so worthy an introduction
to the stage. Many of our operas are merely vulgar and ridiculous; but
Metastasio is a great poet." Odo nodded a breathless assent. "A great
poet," his new acquaintance resumed, "and handling a great theme. But do
you not suffer from the silly songs that perpetually interrupt the flow
of the verse? To me they are intolerable. Metastasio might have been a
great tragic dramatist if Italy would have let him. But Italy does not
want tragedies--she wishes to be sung to, danced to, made eyes at,
flattered and amused! Give her anything, anything that shall help her to
forget her own abasement. Panem et circenses! that is always her cry.
And who can wonder that her sovereigns and statesmen are willing to
humour her, when even her poets stoop to play the mountebank for her
diversion?" The speaker, ruffling his locks with a hand that scattered
the powder, turned on the brilliant audience his strange corrugated
frown. "Fools! simpletons!" he cried, "not to see that in applauding the
Achilles of Metastasio they are smiling at the allegory of their own
abasement! What are the Italians of today but men tricked out in women's
finery, when they should be waiting full-armed to rally at the first
signal of revolt? Oh, for the day when a poet shall arise who dares tell
them the truth, not disguised in sentimental frippery, not ending in a
maudlin reconciliation of love and glory--but the whole truth, naked,
cold and fatal as a patriot's blade; a poet who dares show these
bedizened courtiers they are no freer than the peasants they oppress,
and tell the peasants they are entitled to the same privileges as their
masters!" He paused and drew back with a supercilious smile. "But
doubtless, sir," said he, "I offend you in thus arraigning your sacred
caste; for unless I mistake you belong to the race of demi-gods--the
Titans whose downfall is at hand?" He swept the boxes with a
contemptuous eye.
Little of this tirade was clear to Odo; but something in the speaker's
tone moved him to answer, with a quick lifting of his head: "My name is
Odo Valsecca, of the Dukes of Pianura;" when, fearing he had seemed to
parade his birth before one evidently of inferior station, he at once
added with a touch of shyness: "And you, sir, are perhaps a poet, since
you speak so beautifully?"
At which, with a stare and a straightening of his long awkward body, the
other haughtily returned: "A poet, sir? I am the Count Vittorio Alfieri
of Asti."
1.9.
The singular being with whom chance had thus brought him acquainted was
to have a lasting influence on the formation of Odo's character.
Vittorio Alfieri, then just concluding, at the age of sixteen, his
desultory years of academic schooling, was probably the most
extraordinary youth in Charles Emmanuel's dominion. Of the future
student, of the tragic poet who was to prepare the liberation of Italy
by raising the political ideals of his generation, this moody boy with
his craze for dress and horses, his pride of birth and contempt for his
own class, his liberal theories and insolently aristocratic practice,
must have given small promise to the most discerning observer. It seems
indeed probable that none thought him worth observing and that he passed
among his townsmen merely as one of the most idle and extravagant young
noblemen in a society where idleness and extravagance were held to be
the natural attributes of the great. But in the growth of character the
light on the road to Damascus is apt to be preceded by faint premonitory
gleams; and even in his frivolous days at the Academy Alfieri carried a
Virgil in his pocket and wept and trembled over Ariosto's verse.
It was the instant response of Odo's imagination that drew the two
together. Odo, as one of the foreign pupils, was quartered in the same
wing of the Academy with the students of Alfieri's class, and enjoyed an
almost equal freedom. Thus, despite the difference of age, the lads
found themselves allied by taste and circumstances. Among the youth of
their class they were perhaps the only two who already felt, however
obscurely, the stirring of unborn ideals, the pressure of that tide of
renovation that was to sweep them, on widely-sundered currents, to the
same uncharted deep. Alfieri, at any rate, represented to the younger
lad the seer who held in his hands the keys of knowledge and beauty. Odo
could never forget the youth who first leant him Annibale Caro's Aeneid
and Metastasio's opera libretti, Voltaire's Zaire and the comedies of
Goldoni; while Alfieri perhaps found in his companion's sympathy with
his own half-dormant tastes the first incentive to a nobler activity.
Certain it is that, in the interchange of their daily comradeship, the
elder gave his friend much that he was himself unconscious of
possessing, and perhaps first saw reflected in Odo's more vivid
sensibility an outline of the formless ideals coiled in the depths of
his own sluggish nature.
The difference in age, and the possession of an independent fortune,
which the laws of Savoy had left Alfieri free to enjoy since his
fifteenth year, gave him an obvious superiority over Odo; but if
Alfieri's amusements separated him from his young friend, his tastes
were always drawing them together; and Odo was happily of those who are
more engaged in profiting by what comes their way than in pining for
what escapes them. Much as he admired Alfieri, it was somehow impossible
for the latter to condescend to him; and the equality of intercourse
between the two was perhaps its chief attraction to a youth surfeited
with adulation.
Of the opportunities his new friendship brought him, none became in
after years a pleasanter memory to Odo than his visits with Vittorio to
the latter's uncle, the illustrious architect Count Benedetto Alfieri.
This accomplished and amiable man, who had for many years devoted his
talents to the King's service, was lodged in a palace adjoining the
Academy; and thither, one holiday afternoon, Vittorio conducted his
young friend.
Ignorant as Odo was of all the arts, he felt on the very threshold the
new quality of his surroundings. These tall bare rooms, where busts and
sarcophagi were ranged as in the twilight of a temple, diffused an
influence that lowered the voice and hushed the step. In the
semi-Parisian capital where French architects designed the King's
pleasure-houses and the nobility imported their boudoir-panellings from
Paris and their damask hangings from Lyons, Benedetto Alfieri
represented the old classic tradition, the tradition of the "grand
manner," which had held its own through all later variations of taste,
running parallel with the barocchismo of the seventeenth century and the
effeminate caprices of the rococo period. He had lived much in Rome, in
the company of men like Winckelmann and Maffei, in that society where
the revival of classical research was being forwarded by the liberality
of Princes and Cardinals and by the indefatigable zeal of the scholars
in their pay. From this centre of aesthetic reaction Alfieri had
returned to the Gallicized Turin, with its preference for the graceful
and ingenious rather than for the large, the noble, the restrained;
bringing to bear on the taste of his native city the influence of a view
raised but perhaps narrowed by close study of the past: the view of a
generation of architects in whom archeological curiosity had stifled the
artistic instinct, and who, instead of assimilating the spirit of the
past like their great predecessors, were engrossed in a sterile
restoration of the letter. It may be said of this school of architects
that they were of more service to posterity than to their
contemporaries; for while they opened the way to modern antiquarian
research, their pedantry checked the natural development of a style
which, if left to itself, might in time have found new and more vigorous
forms of expression.
To Odo, happily, Count Benedetto's surroundings spoke more forcibly than
his theories. Every object in the calm severe rooms appealed to the boy
with the pure eloquence of form. Casts of the Vatican busts stood
against the walls and a niche at one end of the library contained a
marble copy of the Apollo Belvedere. The sarcophagi with their winged
genii, their garlands and bucranes, and porphyry tazzas, the fragments
of Roman mosaic and Pompeian fresco-painting, roused Odo's curiosity as
if they had been the scattered letters of a new alphabet; and he saw
with astonishment his friend Vittorio's indifference to these wonders.
Count Benedetto, it was clear, was resigned to his nephew's lack of
interest. The old man doubtless knew that he represented to the youth
only the rich uncle whose crotchets must be humoured for the sake of
what his pocket may procure; and such kindly tolerance made Odo regret
that Vittorio should not at least affect an interest in his uncle's
pursuits.
Odo's eagerness to see and learn filled Count Benedetto with a simple
joy. He brought forth all his treasures for the boy's instruction and
the two spent many an afternoon poring over Piranesi's Roman etchings,
Maffei's Verona Illustrata, and Count Benedetto's own elegant
pencil-drawings of classical remains. Like all students of his day he
had also his cabinet of antique gems and coins, from which Odo obtained
more intimate glimpses of that buried life so marvellously exhumed
before him: hints of traffic in far-off market-places and familiar
gestures of hands on which those very jewels might have sparkled. Nor
did the Count restrict the boy's enquiries to that distant past; and for
the first time Odo heard of the masters who had maintained the great
classical tradition on Latin soil: Sanmichele, Vignola, Sansovino, and
the divine Michael Angelo, whom the old architect never named without
baring his head. From the works of these architects Odo formed his first
conception of the earlier, more virile manner which the first contact
with Graeco-Roman antiquity had produced. The Count told him, too, of
the great painters whose popularity had been lessened, if their fame had
not been dimmed, by the more recent achievements of Correggio, Guido,
Guercino, and the Bolognese school. The splendour of the stanze of the
Vatican, the dreadful majesty of the Sistine ceiling, revealed to Odo
the beauty of that unmatched moment before grandeur broke into bombast.
His early association with the expressive homely art of the chapel at
Pontesordo and with the half-pagan beauty of Luini's compositions had
formed his taste on soberer lines than the fashion of the day affected;
and his imagination breathed freely on the heights of the Latin
Parnassus. Thus, while his friend Vittorio stormed up and down the quiet
rooms, chattering about his horses, boasting of his escapades, or
ranting against the tyranny of the Sardinian government, Odo, at the old
Count's side, was entering on the great inheritance of the past.
Such an initiation was the more precious to him from the indifference of
those about him to all forms of liberal culture. Among the greater
Italian cities, Turin was at that period the least open to new
influences, the most rigidly bound up in the formulas of the past. While
Milan, under the Austrian rule, was becoming a centre of philosophic
thought; while Naples was producing a group of economists such as
Galiani, Gravina and Filangieri; while ecclesiastical Rome was
dedicating herself to the investigation of ancient art and polity, and
even flighty Venice had her little set of "liberals," who read Voltaire
and Hume and wept over the rights of man, the old Piedmontese capital
lay in the grasp of a bigoted clergy and of a reigning house which was
already preparing to superimpose Prussian militarism on the old feudal
discipline of the border. Generations of hard fighting and rigorous
living had developed in the nobles the qualities which were preparing
them for the great part their country was to play; and contact with the
Waldensian and Calvinist heresies had stiffened Piedmontese piety into a
sombre hatred of schism and a minute observance of the mechanical rules
of the faith. Such qualities could be produced only at the expense of
intellectual freedom; and if Piedmont could show a few nobles like
Massimo d'Azeglio's father, who "made the education of his children his
first and gravest thought" and supplemented the deficiencies of his
wife's conventual training by "consecrating to her daily four hours of
reading, translating and other suitable exercises," the commoner view
was that of Alfieri's own parents, who frequently repeated in their
son's hearing "the old maxim of the Piedmontese nobility" that there is
no need for a gentleman to be a scholar. Such at any rate was the
opinion of the old Marquess of Donnaz, and of all the frequenters of
Casa Valdu. Odo's stepfather was engrossed in the fulfilment of his
duties about the court, and Donna Laura, under the influence of poverty
and ennui, had sunk into a state of rigid pietism; so that the lad, on
his visits to his mother, found himself in a world where art was
represented by the latest pastel-portrait of a court beauty, literature
by Liguori's Glories of Mary or the blessed Battista's Mental Sorrows of
Christ, and history by the conviction that Piedmont's efforts to stamp
out the enemies of the Church had distinguished her above every other
country of Europe. Donna Laura's cicisbeo was indeed a member of the
local Arcadia, and given to celebrating in verse every incident in the
noble household of Valdu, from its lady's name-day to the death of a pet
canary; but his own tastes inclined to the elegant Bettinelli, whose
Lettere Virgiliane had so conclusively shown Dante to be a writer of
barbarous doggerel; and among the dilettanti of the day one heard less
of Raphael than of Carlo Maratta, less of Ariosto and Petrarch than of
the Jesuit poet Padre Cevo, author of the sublime "heroico-comic" poem
on the infancy of Jesus.
It was in fact mainly to the Jesuits that Italy, in the early part of
the eighteenth century, owed her literature and her art, as well as the
direction of her religious life. Though the reaction against the order
was everywhere making itself felt, though one Italian sovereign after
another had been constrained to purchase popularity or even security by
banishing the Society from his dominions, the Jesuits maintained their
hold on the aristocracy, whose pretentions they flattered, whose tastes
they affected, and to whom they represented the spirit of religious and
political conservatism, against which invisible forces were already felt
to be moving. For the use of their noble supporters, the Jesuits had
devised a religion as elaborate and ceremonious as the social usages of
the aristocracy: a religion which decked its chapels in imitation of
great ladies' boudoirs and prescribed observances in keeping with the
vapid and gossiping existence of their inmates.
To Odo, fresh from the pure air of Donnaz, where the faith of his
kinsfolk expressed itself in charity, self-denial and a noble decency of
life, there was something stifling in the atmosphere of languishing
pietism in which his mother's friends veiled the emptiness of their
days. Under the instruction of the Countess's director the boy's
conscience was enervated by the casuistries of Liguorianism and his
devotion dulled by the imposition of interminable "pious practices." It
was in his nature to grudge no sacrifice to his ideals, and he might
have accomplished without question the monotonous observances his
confessor exacted, but for the changed aspect of the Deity in whose name
they were imposed.
As with most thoughtful natures, Odo's first disillusionment was to come
from discovering not what his God condemned, but what He condoned.
Between Cantapresto's coarse philosophy of pleasure and the refined
complaisances of his new confessor he felt the distinction to be one
rather of taste than of principle; and it seemed to him that the
religion of the aristocracy might not unfairly be summed up in the
ex-soprano's cynical aphorism: "As respectful children of our Heavenly
Father it behoves us not to speak till we are spoken to."
Even the religious ceremonies he witnessed did not console him for that
chill hour of dawn, when, in the chapel at Donnaz, he had served the
mass for Don Gervaso, with a heart trembling at its own unworthiness yet
uplifted by the sense of the Divine Presence. In the churches adorned
like aristocratic drawing-rooms, of which some Madonna, wreathed in
artificial flowers, seemed the amiable and indulgent hostess, and where
the florid passionate music of the mass was rendered by the King's opera
singers before a throng of chattering cavaliers and ladies, Odo prayed
in vain for a reawakening of the old emotion. The sense of sonship was
gone. He felt himself an alien in the temple of this affable divinity,
and his heart echoed no more than the cry which had once lifted him on
wings of praise to the very threshold of the hidden glory--
Domine, dilexi decorem domus tuae et locum habitationis gloriae tuae!
It was in the first reaction from this dimly felt loss that he lit one
day on a volume which Alfieri had smuggled into the Academy--the Lettres
Philosophiques of Francois Arouet de Voltaire.
BOOK II.
THE NEW LIGHT.
Zu neuen Ufern lockt ein neuer Tag.
2.1.
One afternoon of April in the year 1774, Odo Valsecca, riding down the
hillside below the church of the Superga, had reined in his horse at a
point where a group of Spanish chestnuts overhung the way. The air was
light and pure, the shady turf invited him, and dismounting he bid his
servant lead the horses to the wayside inn half way down the slope.
The spot he had chosen, though secluded as some nook above the gorge of
Donnaz, commanded a view of the Po rolling at his feet like a flood of
yellowish metal, and beyond, outspread in clear spring sunshine, the
great city in the bosom of the plain. The spectacle was fair enough to
touch any fancy: brown domes and facades set in new-leaved gardens and
surrounded by vineyards extending to the nearest acclivities;
country-houses glancing through the fresh green of planes and willows;
monastery-walls cresting the higher ridges; and westward the Po winding
in sunlit curves toward the Alps.
Odo had lost none of his sensitiveness to such impressions; but the sway
of another mood turned his eye from the outstretched beauty of the city
to the vernal solitude about him. It was the season when old memories of
Donnaz worked in his blood; when the banks and hedges of the fresh
hill-country about Turin cheated him with a breath of budding
beech-groves and the fragrance of crushed fern in the glens of the high
Pennine valleys. It was a mere waft, perhaps, from some clod of loosened
earth, or the touch of cool elastic moss as he flung himself face
downward under the trees; but the savour, the contact filled his
nostrils with mountain air and his eyes with dim-branched distances. At
Donnaz the slow motions of the northern spring had endeared to him all
those sweet incipiencies preceding the full choral burst of leaf and
flower: the mauve mist over bare woodlands, the wet black gleams in
frost-bound hollows, the thrust of fronds through withered bracken, the
primrose-patches spreading like pale sunshine along wintry lanes. He had
always felt a sympathy for these delicate unnoted changes; but the
feeling which had formerly been like the blind stir of sap in a plant
was now a conscious sensation that groped for speech and understanding.
He had grown up among people to whom such emotions were unknown. The old
Marquess's passion for his fields and woods was the love of the
agriculturist and the hunter, not that of the naturalist or the poet;
and the aristocracy of the cities regarded the country merely as so much
soil from which to draw their maintenance. The gentlefolk never absented
themselves from town but for a few weeks of autumn, when they went to
their villas for the vintage, transporting thither all the diversions of
city life and venturing no farther afield than the pleasure-grounds that
were but so many open-air card-rooms, concert-halls and theatres. Odo's
tenderness for every sylvan function of renewal and decay, every
shifting of light and colour on the flying surface of the year, would
have been met with the same stare with which a certain enchanting
Countess had received the handful of wind-flowers that, fresh from a
sunrise on the hills, he had laid one morning among her toilet-boxes.
The Countess Clarice had stared and laughed, and every one of his
acquaintance, Alfieri even, would have echoed her laugh; but one man at
least had felt the divine commotion of nature's touch, had felt and
interpreted it, in words as fresh as spring verdure, in the pages of a
volume that Odo now drew from his pocket.
"I longed to dream, but some unexpected spectacle continually distracted
me from my musings. Here immense rocks hung their ruinous masses above
my head; there the thick mist of roaring waterfalls enveloped me; or
some unceasing torrent tore open at my very feet an abyss into which the
gaze feared to plunge. Sometimes I was lost in the twilight of a thick
wood; sometimes, on emerging from a dark ravine, my eyes were charmed by
the sight of an open meadow...Nature seemed to revel in unwonted
contrasts; such varieties of aspect had she united in one spot. Here was
an eastern prospect bright with spring flowers, while autumn fruits
ripened to the south and the northern face of the scene was still locked
in wintry frosts...Add to this the different angles at which the peaks
took the light, the chiaroscuro of sun and shade, and the variations of
light resulting from it at morning and evening...sum up the impressions
I have tried to describe and you will be able to form an idea of the
enchanting situation in which I found myself...The scene has indeed a
magical, a supernatural quality, which so ravishes the spirit and senses
that one seems to lose all exact notion of one's surroundings and
identity."
This was a new language to eighteenth-century readers. Already it had
swept through the length and breadth of France, like a spring storm-wind
bursting open doors and windows, and filling close candle-lit rooms with
wet gusts and the scent of beaten blossoms; but south of the Alps the
new ideas travelled slowly, and the Piedmontese were as yet scarce aware
of the man who had written thus of their own mountains. It was true
that, some thirty years earlier, in one of the very monasteries on which
Odo now looked down, a Swiss vagrant called Rousseau had embraced the
true faith with the most moving signs of edification; but the rescue of
Helvetian heretics was a favourite occupation of the Turinese nobility
and it is doubtful if any recalled the name of the strange proselyte who
had hastened to signalise his conversion by robbing his employers and
slandering an innocent maid-servant. Odo in fact owed his first
acquaintance with the French writers to Alfieri, who, in the intervals
of his wandering over Europe, now and then reappeared in Turin laden
with the latest novelties in Transalpine literature and haberdashery.
What his eccentric friend failed to provide, Odo had little difficulty
in obtaining for himself; for though most of the new writers were on the
Index, and the Sardinian censorship was notoriously severe, there was
never yet a barrier that could keep out books, and Cantapresto was a
skilled purveyor of contraband dainties. Odo had thus acquainted himself
with the lighter literature of England and France; and though he had
read but few philosophical treatises, was yet dimly aware of the new
standpoint from which, north of the Alps, men were beginning to test the
accepted forms of thought. The first disturbance of his childish faith,
and the coincident reading of the Lettres Philosophiques, had been
followed by a period of moral perturbation, during which he suffered
from that sense of bewilderment, of inability to classify the phenomena
of life, that is one of the keenest trials of inexperience. Youth and
nature had their way with him, however, and a wholesome reaction of
indifference set in. The invisible world of thought and conduct had been
the frequent subject of his musings; but the other, tangible world was
close to him too, spreading like a rich populous plain between himself
and the distant heights of speculation. The old doubts, the old
dissatisfactions, hung on the edge of consciousness; but he was too
profoundly Italian not to linger awhile in that atmosphere of careless
acquiescence that is so pleasant a medium for the unhampered enjoyment
of life. Some day, no doubt, the intellectual curiosity and the moral
disquietude would revive; but what he wanted now were books which
appealed not to his reason but to his emotions, which reflected as in a
mirror the rich and varied life of the senses: books that were warm to
the touch, like the little volume in his hand.
For it was not only of nature that the book spoke. Amid scenes of such
rustic freshness were set human passions as fresh and natural: a great
romantic love, subdued to duty, yet breaking forth again and again as
young shoots spring from the root of a felled tree. To
eighteenth-century readers such a picture of life was as new as its
setting. Duty, in that day, to people of quality, meant the observance
of certain fixed conventions: the correct stepping of a moral minuet; as
an inner obligation, as a voluntary tribute to Diderot's "divinity on
earth," it had hardly yet drawn breath. To depict a personal relation so
much purer and more profound than any form of sentiment then in fashion,
and then to subordinate it, unflinchingly, to the ideal of those larger
relations that link the individual to the group--this was a stroke of
originality for which it would be hard to find a parallel in modern
fiction. Here at last was an answer to the blind impulses agrope in
Odo's breast--the loosening of those springs of emotion that gushed
forth in such fresh contrast to the stagnant rills of the sentimental
pleasure-garden. To renounce a Julie would be more thrilling than--
Odo, with a sigh, thrust the book in his pocket and rose to his feet. It
was the hour of the promenade at the Valentino and he had promised the
Countess Clarice to attend her. The old high-roofed palace of the French
princess lay below him, in its gardens along the river: he could figure,
as he looked down on it, the throng of carriages and chairs, the
modishly dressed riders, the pedestrians crowding the footpath to watch
the quality go by. The vision of all that noise and glitter deepened the
sweetness of the woodland hush. He sighed again. Suddenly voices sounded
in the road below--a man's speech flecked with girlish laughter. Odo
hung back listening: the girl's voice rang like a bird-call through his
rustling fancies. Presently she came in sight: a slender black-mantled
figure hung on the arm of an elderly man in the sober dress of one of
the learned professions--a physician or a lawyer, Odo guessed. Their
being afoot, and the style of the man's dress, showed that they were of
the middle class; their demeanour, that they were father and daughter.
The girl moved with a light forward flowing of her whole body that
seemed the pledge of grace in every limb: of her face Odo had but a
bright glimpse in the eclipse of her flapping hat-brim. She stood under
his tree unheeded; but as they rose abreast of him the girl paused and
dropped her companion's arm.
"Look! The cherry flowers!" she cried, and stretched her arms to a white
gush of blossoms above the wall across the road. The movement tilted
back her hat, and Odo caught her small fine profile, wide-browed as the
head on some Sicilian coin, with a little harp-shaped ear bedded in dark
ripples.
"Oh," she wailed, straining on tiptoe, "I can't reach them!"
Her father smiled. "May temptation," said he philosophically, "always
hang as far out of your reach."
"Temptation?" she echoed.
"Is it not theft you're bent on?"
"Theft? This is a monk's orchard, not a peasant's plot."
"Confiscation, then," he humorously conceded.
"Since they pay no taxes on their cherries they might at least," she
argued, "spare a few to us poor taxpayers."
"Ah," said her father, "I want to tax their cherries, not to gather
them." He slipped a hand through her arm. "Come, child," said he, "does
not the philosopher tell us that he who enjoys a thing possesses it? The
flowers are yours already!"
"Oh, are they?" she retorted. "Then why doesn't the loaf in the baker's
window feed the beggar that looks in at it?"
"Casuist!" he cried and drew her up the bend of the road.
Odo stood gazing after them. Their words, their aspect, seemed an echo
of his reading. The father in his plain broadcloth and square-buckled
shoes, the daughter with her unpowdered hair and spreading hat, might
have stepped from the pages of the romance. What a breath of freshness
they brought with them! The girl's cheek was clear as the
cherry-blossoms, and with what lovely freedom did she move! Thus Julie
might have led Saint Preux through her "Elysium." Odo crossed the road
and, breaking one of the blossoming twigs, thrust it in the breast of
his uniform. Then he walked down the hill to the inn where the horses
waited. Half an hour later he rode up to the house where he lodged in
the Piazza San Carlo.
In the archway Cantapresto, heavy with a nine years' accretion of fat,
laid an admonishing hand on his bridle.
"Cavaliere, the Countess's black boy--"
"Well?"
"Three several times has battered the door down with a missive."
"Well?"
"The last time, I shook him off with the message that you would be there
before him."
"Be where?"
"At the Valentino; but that was an hour ago!"
Odo slipped from the saddle.
"I must dress first. Call a chair; or no--write a letter for me first.
Let Antonio carry it."
The ex-soprano, wheezing under the double burden of flesh and
consequence, had painfully laboured after Odo up the high stone flights
to that young gentleman's modest lodgings, and they stood together in a
study lined with books and hung with prints and casts from the antique.
Odo threw off his dusty coat and called the servant to remove his boots.
"Will you read the lady's letters, cavaliere?" Cantapresto asked,
obsequiously offering them on a lacquered tray.
"No--no: write first. Begin 'My angelic lady'--"
"You began the last letter in those terms, cavaliere," his scribe
reminded him with suspended pen.
"The devil! Well, then--wait. 'Throned goddess'--"
"You ended the last letter with 'throned goddess.'"
"Curse the last letter! Why did you send it?" Odo sprang up and slipped
his arms into the dress-tunic his servant had brought him. "Write
anything. Say that I am suddenly summoned by--"
"By the Count Alfieri?" Cantapresto suggested.
"Count Alfieri? Is he here? He has returned?"
"He arrived an hour ago, cavaliere. He sent you this Moorish scimitar
with his compliments. I understand he comes recently from Spain."
"Imbecile, not to have told me before! Quick, Antonio--my gloves, my
sword." Odo, flushed and animated, buckled his sword-belt with impatient
hands. "Write anything--anything to free my evening. Tomorrow
morning--tomorrow morning I shall wait on the lady. Let Antonio carry
her a nosegay with my compliments. Did you see him Cantapresto? Was he
in good health? Does he sup at home? He left no message? Quick, Antonio,
a chair!" he cried with his hand on the door.
Odo had acquired, at twenty-two, a nobility of carriage not incompatible
with the boyish candour of his gaze, and becomingly set off by the
brilliant dress-uniform of a lieutenant in one of the provincial
regiments. He was tall and fair, and a certain languor of complexion,
inherited from his father's house, was corrected in him by the vivacity
of the Donnaz blood. This now sparkled in his grey eye, and gave a glow
to his cheek, as he stepped across the threshold, treading on a sprig of
cherry-blossom that had dropped unnoticed to the floor.
Cantapresto, looking after him, caught sight of the flowers and kicked
them aside with a contemptuous toe. "I sometimes think he botanises," he
murmured with a shrug. "The Lord knows what queer notions he gets out of
all these books!"
2.2.
As an infusion of fresh blood to Odo were Alfieri's meteoric returns to
Turin. Life moved languidly in the strait-laced city, even to a young
gentleman a-tiptoe for adventure and framed to elicit it as the
hazel-wand draws water. Not that vulgar distractions were lacking. The
town, as Cantapresto had long since advised him, had its secret
leniencies, its posterns opening on clandestine pleasure; but there was
that in Odo which early turned him from such cheap counterfeits of
living. He accepted the diversions of his age, but with a clear sense of
their worth; and the youth who calls his pleasures by their true name
has learned the secret of resisting them.
Alfieri's coming set deeper springs in motion. His follies and
extravagances were on a less provincial scale than those of Odo's daily
associates. The breath of a freer life clung to him and his allusions
were so many glimpses into a larger world. His political theories were
but the enlargement of his private grievances, but the mere play of
criticism on accepted institutions was an exercise more novel and
exhilirating than the wildest ride on one of his half-tamed
thorough-breds. Still chiefly a man of pleasure, and the slave, as
always, of some rash infatuation, Alfieri was already shaking off the
intellectual torpor of his youth; and the first stirrings of his
curiosity roused an answering passion in Odo. Their tastes were indeed
divergent, for to that external beauty which was to Odo the very bloom
of life, Alfieri remained insensible; while of its imaginative
counterpart, its prolongation in the realm of thought and emotion, he
had but the most limited conception. But his love of ringing deeds woke
the chivalrous strain in Odo, and his vague celebration of Liberty, that
unknown goddess to whom altars were everywhere building, chimed with the
other's scorn of oppression and injustice. So far, it is true, their
companionship had been mainly one of pleasure; but the temper of both
gave their follies that provisional character which saves them from
vulgarity.
Odo, who had slept late on the morning after his friend's return, was
waked by the pompous mouthing of certain lines just then on every lip in
Italy:--
Meet was it that, its ancient seats forsaking,
An Empire should set forth with dauntless sail,
And braving tempests and the deep's betrayal,
Break down the barriers of inviolate worlds--
That Cortez and Pizarro should esteem
The blood of man a trivial sacrifice
When, flinging down from their ancestral thrones
Incas and Mexicans of royal line,
They wrecked two kingdoms to refresh thy palate--
They were the verses in which the abate Parini, in his satire of The
Morning, apostrophizes the cup of chocolate which the lacquey presents
to his master. Cantapresto had in fact just entered with a cup of this
beverage, and Alfieri, who stood at his friend's bedside with unpowdered
locks and a fashionable undress of Parisian cut, snatching the tray from
the soprano's hands presented it to Odo in an attitude of mock
servility.
The young man sprang up laughing. It was the fashion to applaud Parini's
verse in the circles at which his satire was aimed, and none recited his
mock heroics with greater zest than the young gentlemen whose fopperies
he ridiculed. Odo's toilet was indeed a rite almost as elaborate as that
of Parini's hero; and this accomplished, he was on his way to fulfil the
very duty the poet most unsparingly derides: the morning visit of the
cicisbeo to his lady; but meanwhile he liked to show himself above the
follies of his class by joining in the laugh against them. When he
issued from the powder-room in his gold-laced uniform, with scented
gloves and carefully-adjusted queue, he presented the image of a young
gentleman so clearly equal to the most flattering emergencies that
Alfieri broke into a smile of half-ironical approval. "I see, my dear
cavaliere, that it were idle to invite you to try one of the new Arabs I
have brought with me from Spain, since it is plain other duties engage
you; but I come to lay claim to your evening."
Odo hesitated. "The Queen holds a circle this evening," he said.
"And her lady-in-waiting is in attendance?" returned Alfieri. "And the
lady-in-waiting's gentleman-in-waiting also?"
Odo made an impatient movement. "What inducements do you offer?" said he
carelessly.
Alfieri stepped close and tapped him on the sleeve. "Meet me at ten
o'clock at the turn of the lane behind the Corpus Domini. Wear a cloak
and a mask, and leave this gentleman at home with a flask of Asti." He
glanced at Cantapresto.
Odo hesitated a moment. He knew well enough where such midnight turnings
led, and across the vision evoked by his friend's words a girl's face
flitted suddenly.
"Is that all?" he said with a shrug. "You find me, I fear, in no humour
for such exploits."
Alfieri smiled. "And if I say that I have promised to bring you?"
"Promised--?"
"To one as chary of exacting such pledges as I of giving them. If I say
that you stake your life on the adventure, and that the stake is not too
great for the reward--?"
His sallow face had reddened with excitement, and Odo's forehead
reflected the flush. Was it possible--? But the thought set him tingling
with disgust.
"Why, you say little," he cried lightly, "at the rate at which I value
my life."
Alfieri turned on him. "If your life is worthless; make it worth
something!" he exclaimed. "I offer you the opportunity tonight."
"What opportunity?"
"The sight of a face that men have laid down their lives to see."
Odo laughed and buckled on his sword. "If you answer for the risk, I
agree to take it," said he. "At ten o'clock then, behind the Corpus
Domini."
If the ladies whom gallant gentlemen delight to serve could guess what
secret touchstones of worth these same gentlemen sometimes carry into
the adored presence, many a handsome head would be carried with less
assurance, and many a fond exaction less confidently imposed. If, for
instance, the Countess Clarice di Tournanches, whose high-coloured image
reflected itself so complacently in her Venetian toilet-glass, could
have known that the Cavaliere Odo Valsecca's devoted glance saw her
through the medium of a countenance compared to which her own revealed
the most unexpected shortcomings, she might have received him with less
airy petulance of manner. But how could so accomplished a mistress doubt
the permanence of her rule? The Countess Clarice, in singling out young
Odo Valsecca (to the despair of a score of more experienced cavaliers)
had done him an honour that she could no more imagine his resigning than
an adventurer a throne to which he is unexpectedly raised. She was a
finished example of the pretty woman who views the universe as planned
for her convenience. What could go wrong in a world where noble ladies
lived in palaces hung with tapestry and damask, with powdered lacqueys
to wait on them, a turbaned blackamoor to tend their parrots and
monkeys, a coronet-coach at the door to carry them to mass or the
ridotto, and a handsome cicisbeo to display on the promenade? Everything
had combined to strengthen the Countess Clarice's faith in the existing
order of things. Her husband, Count Roberto di Tournanches, was one of
the King's equerries and distinguished for his brilliant career as an
officer of the Piedmontese army--a man marked for the highest favours in
a society where military influences were paramount. Passing at sixteen
from an aristocratic convent to the dreary magnificence of the Palazzo
Tournanches, Clarice had found herself a lady-in-waiting at the dullest
court in Europe and the wife of an army officer engrossed in his
profession, and pledged by etiquette to the service of another lady. Odo
Valsecca represented her escape from this bondage--the dash of romance
and folly in a life of elegant formalities; and the Countess, who would
not have sacrificed to him one of her rights as a court-lady or a nobil
donna of the Golden Book, regarded him as the reward which Providence
accords to a well-regulated conduct.
Her room, when Odo entered it on taking leave of Alfieri, was crowded,
as usual at that hour, with the hangers-on of the noble lady's lever:
the abatino in lace ruffles, handing about his latest rhymed acrostic,
the jeweller displaying a set of enamelled buckles newly imported from
Paris, and the black-breeched doctor with white bands who concocted
remedies for the Countess's vapours and megrims. These personages,
grouped about the toilet-table where the Countess sat under the hands of
a Parisian hairdresser, were picturesquely relieved against the stucco
panelling and narrow mirrors of the apartment, with its windows looking
on a garden set with mossy statues. To Odo, however, the scene suggested
the most tedious part of his day's routine. The compliments to be
exchanged, the silly verses to be praised, the gewgaws from Paris to be
admired, were all contrasted in his mind with the vision of that other
life which had come to him on the hillside of the Superga. On this mood
the Countess Clarice's sarcasms fell without effect. To be pouted at
because he had failed to attend the promenade of the Valentino was to
Odo but a convenient pretext for excusing himself from the Queen's
circle that evening. He had engaged with little ardour to join Alfieri
in what he guessed to be a sufficiently commonplace adventure; but as he
listened to the Countess's chatter about the last minuet-step, and the
relative merits of sanspareil water and oil-of-lilies, of gloves from
Blois and Vendome, his impatience hailed any alternative as a release.
Meanwhile, however, long hours of servitude intervened. The lady's
toilet completed, to the adjusting of the last patch, he must attend her
to dinner, where, placed at her side, he was awarded the honour of
carving the roast; must sit through two hours of biribi in company with
the abatino, the doctor, and half-a-dozen parasites of the noble table;
and for two hours more must ride in her gilt coach up and down the
promenade of the Valentino.
Escaping from this ceremonial, with the consciousness that it must be
repeated on the morrow, Odo was seized with that longing for freedom
that makes the first street-corner an invitation to flight. How he
envied Alfieri, whose travelling-carriage stood at the beck of such
moods! Odo's scant means forbade evasion, even had his military duties
not kept him in Turin. He felt himself no more than a puppet dancing to
the tune of Parini's satire, a puny doll condemned, as the strings of
custom pulled, to feign the gestures of immortal passions.
2.3.
The night was moonless, with cold dashes of rain, and though the streets
of Turin were well-lit no lantern-ray reached the windings of the lane
behind the Corpus Domini.
As Odo, alone under the wall of the church, awaited his friend's
arrival, he wondered what risk had constrained the reckless Alfieri to
such unwonted caution. Italy was at that time a vast network of
espionage, and the Piedmontese capital passed for one of the
best-policed cities in Europe; but even on a moonless night the law
distinguished between the noble pleasure-seeker and the obscure
delinquent whose fate it was to pay the other's shot. Odo knew that he
would probably be followed and his movements reported to the
authorities; but he was almost equally certain that there would be no
active interference in his affairs. What chiefly puzzled him was
Alfieri's insistence that Cantapresto should not be privy to the
adventure. The soprano had long been the confidant of his pupil's
escapades, and his adroitness had often been of service in intrigues
such as that on which Odo now fancied himself engaged. The place, again,
perplexed him: a sober quarter of convents and private dwellings, in the
very eye of the royal palace, scarce seeming the theatre for a light
adventure. These incongruities revived his former wonder; nor was this
dispelled by Alfieri's approach.
The poet, masked and unattended, rejoined his friend without a word; and
Odo guessed in him an eye and ear alert for pursuit. Guided by the
pressure of his arm, Odo was hurried round the bend of the lane, up a
transverse alley and across a little square lost between high shuttered
buildings. Alfieri, at his first word, gripped his arm with a backward
glance; then urged him on under the denser blackness of an arched
passage-way, at the end of which an oil-light glimmered. Here a gate in
a wall confronted them. It opened at Alfieri's tap and Odo scented wet
box-borders and felt the gravel of a path under foot. The gate was at
once locked behind them and they entered the ground-floor of a house as
dark as the garden. Here a maid-servant of close aspect met them with a
lamp and preceded them upstairs to a bare landing hung with charts and
portulani. On Odo's flushed anticipations this antechamber, which seemed
the approach to some pedant's cabinet, had an effect undeniably
chilling; but Alfieri, heedless of his surprise, had cast off cloak and
mask, and now led the way into a long conventual-looking room lined with
book-shelves. A knot of middle-aged gentlemen of sober dress and manner,
gathered about a cabinet of fossils in the centre of this apartment,
looked up at the entrance of the two friends; then the group divided,
and Odo with a start recognised the girl he had seen on the road to the
Superga.
She bowed gravely to the young men. "My father," said she, in a clear
voice without trace of diffidence, "has gone to his study for a book,
but will be with you in a moment."
She wore a dress in keeping with her manner, its black stuff folds and
the lawn kerchief crossed on her bosom giving height and authority to
her slight figure. The dark unpowdered hair drawn back over a cushion
made a severer setting for her face than the fluctuating brim of her
shade-hat; and this perhaps added to the sense of estrangement with
which Odo gazed at her; but she met his look with a smile, and instantly
the rosy girl flashed through her grave exterior.
"Here is my father," said she; and her companion of the previous day
stepped into the room with several folios under his arm.
Alfieri turned to Odo. "This, my dear Odo," said he, "is my
distinguished friend, Professor Vivaldi, who has done us the honour of
inviting us to his house." He took the Professor's hand. "I have brought
you," he continued, "the friend you were kind enough to include in your
invitation--the Cavaliere Odo Valsecca."
Vivaldi bowed. "Count Alfieri's friends," said he, "are always welcome
to my house; though I fear there is here little to interest a young
gentleman of the Cavaliere Valsecca's years." And Odo detected a shade
of doubt in his glance.
"The Cavaliere Valsecca," Alfieri smilingly rejoined, "is above his
years in wit and learning, and I answer for his interest as I do for his
discretion."
The Professor bowed again. "Count Alfieri, sir," he said, "has doubtless
explained to you the necessity that obliges me to be so private in
receiving my friends; and now perhaps you will join these gentlemen in
examining some rare fossil fish newly sent me from the Monte Bolca."
Odo murmured a civil rejoinder; but the wonder into which the sight of
the young girl had thrown him was fast verging on stupefaction. What
mystery was here? What necessity compelled an elderly professor to
receive his scientific friends like a band of political conspirators?
How above all, in the light of the girl's presence, was Odo to interpret
Alfieri's extravagant allusions to the nature of their visit?
The company having returned to the cabinet of fossils, none seemed to
observe his disorder but the young lady who was its cause; and seeing
him stand apart she advanced with a smile, saying, "Perhaps you would
rather look at some of my father's other curiosities."
Simple as the words were, they failed to restore Odo's self-possession,
and for a moment he made no answer. Perhaps she partly guessed the cause
of his commotion; yet it was not so much her beauty that silenced him,
as the spirit that seemed to inhabit it. Nature, in general so chary of
her gifts, so prone to use one good feature as the palliation of a dozen
deficiencies, to wed the eloquent lip with the ineffectual eye, had
indeed compounded her of all fine meanings, making each grace the
complement of another and every outward charm expressive of some inward
quality. Here was as little of the convent-bred miss as of the flippant
and vapourish fine lady; and any suggestion of a less fair alternative
vanished before such candid graces. Odo's confusion had in truth sprung
from Alfieri's ambiguous hints; and these shrivelling to nought in the
gaze that encountered his, constraint gave way to a sense of wondering
pleasure.
"I should like to see whatever you will show me," said he, as simply as
one child speaking to another; and she answered in the same tone, "Then
we'll glance at my father's collections before the serious business of
the evening begins."
With these words she began to lead him about the room, pointing out and
explaining the curiosities it contained. It was clear that, like many
scholars of his day, Professor Vivaldi was something of an eclectic in
his studies, for while one table held a fine orrery, a cabinet of coins
stood near, and the book-shelves were surmounted by specimens of coral
and petrified wood. Of all these rarities his daughter had a word to
say, and though her explanations were brief and without affectation of
pedantry, they put her companion's ignorance to the blush. It must be
owned, however, that had his learning been a match for hers it would
have stood him in poor stead at the moment; his faculties being lost in
the wonder of hearing such discourse from such lips. To his compliments
on her erudition she returned with a smile that what learning she had
was no merit, since she had been bred in a library; to which she
suddenly added:--"You are not unknown to me, Cavaliere; but I never
thought to see you here."
The words renewed her hearer's surprise; but giving him no time to
reply, she went on in a lower tone:--"You are young and the world is
fair before you. Have you considered that before risking yourself among
us?"
She coloured under Odo's wondering gaze, and at his random rejoinder
that it was a risk any man would gladly take without considering, she
turned from him with a gesture in which he fancied a shade of
disappointment.
By this they had reached the cabinet of fossils, about which the
interest of the other guests still seemed to centre. Alfieri, indeed,
paced the farther end of the room with the air of awaiting the despatch
of some tedious business; but the others were engaged in an animated
discussion necessitating frequent reference to the folios Vivaldi had
brought from his study.
The latter turned to Odo as though to include him in the group. "I do
not know, sir," said he, "whether you have found leisure to study these
enigmas of that mysterious Sphinx, the earth; for though Count Alfieri
has spoken to me of your unusual acquirements, I understand your tastes
have hitherto lain rather in the direction of philosophy and letters;"
and on Odo's prompt admission of ignorance, he courteously continued:
"The physical sciences seem, indeed, less likely to appeal to the
imaginative and poetical faculty in man, and, on the other hand,
religion has appeared to prohibit their too close investigation; yet I
question if any thoughtful mind can enter on the study of these curious
phenomena without feeling, as it were, an affinity between such
investigations and the most abstract forms of thought. For whether we
regard these figured stones as of terriginous origin, either mere lusus
naturae, or mineral formations produced by a plastic virtue latent in
the earth, or whether as in fact organic substances lapidified by the
action of water; in either case, what speculations must their origin
excite, leading us back into that dark and unexplored period of time
when the breath of Creation was yet moving on the face of the waters!"
Odo had listened but confusedly to the first words of this discourse;
but his intellectual curiosity was too great not to respond to such an
appeal, and all his perplexities slipped from him in the pursuit of the
Professor's thought.
One of the other guests seemed struck by his look of attention. "My dear
Vivaldi," said this gentleman, laying down a fossil, and fixing his gaze
on Odo while he addressed the Professor, "why use such superannuated
formulas in introducing a neophyte to a study designed to subvert the
very foundations of the Mosaic cosmogony? I take it the Cavaliere is one
of us, since he is here this evening: why, then, permit him to stray
even for a moment in the labyrinth of theological error?"
The Professor's deprecating murmur was cut short by an outburst from
another of the learned group, a red-faced spectacled personage in a
doctor's gown.
"Pardon me for suggesting," he exclaimed, "that the conditional terms in
which our host was careful to present his hypotheses are better suited
to the instruction of the neophyte than our learned friend's positive
assertions. But if the Vulcanists are to claim the Cavaliere Valsecca,
may not the Diluvials also have a hearing? How often must it be repeated
that theology as well as physical science is satisfied by the Diluvial
explanation of the origin of petrified organisms, whereas inexorable
logic compels the Vulcanists to own that their thesis is subversive of
all dogmatic belief?"
The first speaker answered with a gesture of disdain. "My dear doctor,
you occupy a chair in our venerated University. From that exalted
cathedra the Mosaic theory of Creation must still be expounded; but in
the security of these surroundings--the catacombs of the new faith--why
keep up the forms of an obsolete creed? As long ago as Pythagoras, man
was taught that all things were in a state of flux, without end as
without beginning, and must we still, after more than two thousand
years, pretend to regard the universe as some gigantic toy manufactured
in six days by a Superhuman Artisan, who is presently to destroy it at
his pleasure?"
"Sir," cried the other, flushing from red to purple at this assault, "I
know not on what ground you insinuate that my private convictions differ
from my public doctrine--"
But here, with a firmness tempered by the most scrupulous courtesy,
Professor Vivaldi intervened.
"Gentlemen," said he, "the discussion in which you are engaged,
interesting as it is, must, I fear, distract us from the true purpose of
our meeting. I am happy to offer my house as the asylum of all free
research; but you must remember that the first object of these reunions
is, not the special study of any one branch of modern science, but the
application of physical investigation to the origin and destiny of man.
In other words, we ask the study of nature to lead us to the knowledge
of ourselves; and it is because we approach this great problem from a
point as yet unsanctioned by dogmatic authority, that I am reluctantly
obliged"--and here he turned to Odo with a smile--"to throw a veil of
privacy over these inoffensive meetings."
Here at last was the key to the enigma. The gentlemen assembled in
Professor Vivaldi's rooms were met there to discuss questions not safely
aired in public. They were conspirators indeed, but the liberation they
planned was intellectual rather than political; though the acuter among
them doubtless saw whither such innovations tended. Meanwhile they were
content to linger in that wide field of speculation which the
development of the physical sciences had recently opened to philosophic
thought. As, at the Revival of Learning, the thinker imprisoned in
mediaeval dialectics suddenly felt under his feet the firm ground of
classic argument, so, in the eighteenth century, philosophy, long
suspended in the void of metaphysic, touched earth again and,
Antaeus-like, drew fresh life from the contact. It was clear that
Professor Vivaldi, whose very name had been unknown to Odo, was an
important figure in the learned world, and one uniting the tact and
firmness necessary to control those dissensions from which philosophy
itself does not preserve its disciples. His words calmed the two
disputants who were preparing to do battle over Odo's unborn scientific
creed, and the talk growing more general, the Professor turned to his
daughter, saying, "My Fulvia, is the study prepared?"
She signed her assent, and her father led the way to an inner cabinet,
where seats were drawn about a table scattered with pamphlets, gazettes
and dictionaries, and set out with modest refreshments. Here began a
conversation ranging from chemistry to taxation, and from the
perfectibility of man to the secondary origin of the earth's surface. It
was evident to Odo that, though the Professor's guests represented all
shades of opinion, some being clearly loth to leave the safe anchorage
of orthodoxy, while others already braved the seas of free enquiry, yet
all were at one as to the need of unhampered action and discussion.
Odo's dormant curiosity woke with a start at the summons of fresh
knowledge. Here were worlds to explore, or rather the actual world about
him, a region then stranger and more unfamiliar than the lost Atlantis
of fable. Liberty was the word on every lip, and if to some it
represented the right to doubt the Diluvial origin of fossils, to others
that of reforming the penal code, to a third (as to Alfieri) merely
personal independence and relief from civil restrictions; yet these
fragmentary conceptions seemed, to Odo's excited fancy, to blend in the
vision of a New Light encircling the whole horizon of thought. He
understood at last Alfieri's allusion to a face for the sight of which
men were ready to lay down their lives; and if, as he walked home before
dawn, those heavenly lineaments were blent in memory with features of a
mortal cast, yet these were pure and grave enough to stand for the image
of the goddess.
2.4.
Professor Orazio Vivaldi, after filling with distinction the chair of
Philosophy at the University of Turin, had lately resigned his office
that he might have leisure to complete a long-contemplated work on the
Origin of Civilisation. His house was the meeting-place of a society
calling itself of the Honey-Bees and ostensibly devoted to the study of
the classical poets, from whose pages the members were supposed to cull
mellifluous nourishment; but under this guise the so-called literati had
for some time indulged in free discussion of religious and scientific
questions. The Academy of the Honey-Bees comprised among its members all
the independent thinkers of Turin: doctors of law, of philosophy and
medicine, chemists, philologists and naturalists, with one or two
members of the nobility, who, like Alfieri, felt, or affected, an
interest in the graver problems of life, and could be trusted not to
betray the true character of the association.
These details Odo learned the next day from Alfieri; who went on to say
that, owing to the increased vigilance of the government, and to the
banishment of several distinguished men accused by the Church of
heretical or seditious opinions, the Honey-Bees had of late been obliged
to hold their meetings secretly, it being even rumoured that Vivaldi,
who was their president, had resigned his professorship and withdrawn
behind the shelter of literary employment in order to elude the
observation of the authorities. Men had not yet forgotten the fate of
the Neapolitan historian, Pietro Giannone, who for daring to attack the
censorship and the growth of the temporal power had been driven from
Naples to Vienna, from Vienna back to Venice, and at length, at the
prompting of the Holy See, lured across the Piedmontese frontier by
Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, and imprisoned for life in the citadel of
Turin. The memory of his tragic history--most of all, perhaps, of his
recantation and the "devout ending" to which solitude and persecution
had forced the freest spirit of his day--hovered like a warning on the
horizon of thought and constrained political speculation to hide itself
behind the study of fashionable trifles. Alfieri had lately joined the
association of the Honey-Bees, and the Professor, at his suggestion, had
invited Odo, for whose discretion his friend declared himself ready to
answer. The Honey-Bees were in fact desirous of attracting young men of
rank who felt an interest in scientific or economic problems; for it was
hoped that in this manner the new ideas might imperceptibly permeate the
class whose privileges and traditions presented the chief obstacle to
reform. In France, it was whispered, free-thinkers and political
agitators were the honoured guests of the nobility, who eagerly embraced
their theories and applied them to the remedy of social abuses. Only by
similar means could the ideals of the Piedmontese reformers be realised;
and in those early days of universal illusion none appeared to suspect
the danger of arming inexperienced hands with untried weapons. Utopia
was already in sight; and all the world was setting out for it as for
some heavenly picnic ground.
Of Vivaldi himself, Alfieri spoke with extravagant admiration. His
affable exterior was said to conceal the moral courage of one of
Plutarch's heroes. He was a man after the antique pattern, ready to lay
down fortune, credit and freedom in the defence of his convictions. "An
Agamemnon," Alfieri exclaimed, "who would not hesitate to sacrifice his
daughter to obtain a favourable wind for his enterprise!"
The metaphor was perhaps scarcely to Odo's taste; but at least it gave
him the chance for which he had waited. "And the daughter?" he asked.
"The lovely doctoress?" said Alfieri carelessly. "Oh, she's one of your
prodigies of female learning, such as our topsy-turvy land produces: an
incipient Laura Bassi or Gaetana Agnesi, to name the most distinguished
of their tribe; though I believe that hitherto her father's good sense
or her own has kept her from aspiring to academic honours. The beautiful
Fulvia is a good daughter, and devotes herself, I'm told, to helping
Vivaldi in his work; a far more becoming employment for one of her age
and sex than defending Latin theses before a crew of ribald students."
In this Odo was of one mind with him; for though Italy was used to the
spectacle of the Improvisatrice and the female doctor of philosophy, it
is doubtful if the character was one in which any admirer cared to see
his divinity figure. Odo, at any rate, felt a distinct satisfaction in
learning that Fulvia Vivaldi had thus far made no public display of her
learning. How much pleasanter to picture her as her father's aid,
perhaps a sharer in his dreams: a vestal cherishing the flame of Liberty
in the secret sanctuary of the goddess! He scarce knew as yet of what
his feeling for the girl was compounded. The sentiment she had roused
was one for which his experience had no name: an emotion in which awe
mingled with an almost boyish sense of fellowship, sex as yet lurking
out of sight as in some hidden ambush. It was perhaps her association
with a world so unfamiliar and alluring that lent her for the moment her
greatest charm. Odo's imagination had been profoundly stirred by what he
had heard and seen at the meeting of the Honey-Bees. That impatience
with the vanity of his own pursuits and with the injustice of existing
conditions, which hovered like a phantom at the feast of life, had at
last found form and utterance. Parini's satires and the bitter mockery
of the "Frusta Letteraria" were but instruments of demolition; but the
arguments of the Professor's friends had that constructive quality so
appealing to the urgent temper of youth. Was the world in ruins? Then
here was a plan to rebuild it. Was humanity in chains? Behold the angel
on the threshold of the prison!
Odo, too impatient to await the next reunion of the Honey-Bees, sought
out and frequented those among the members whose conversation had
chiefly attracted him. They were grave men, of studious and retiring
habit, leading the frugal life of the Italian middle-class, a life in
dignified contrast to the wasteful and aimless existence of the
nobility. Odo's sensitiveness to outward impressions made him peculiarly
alive to this contrast. None was more open than he to the seducements of
luxurious living, the polish of manners, the tacit exclusion of all that
is ugly or distressing; but it seemed to him that fine living should be
but the flower of fine feeling, and that such external graces, when they
adorned a dull and vapid society, were as incongruous as the royal
purple on a clown. Among certain of his new friends he found a
clumsiness of manner somewhat absurdly allied with an attempt at Roman
austerity; but he was fair-minded enough to see that the middle-class
doctor or lawyer who tries to play the Cicero is, after all, a more
respectable figure than the Marquess who apes Caligula or Commodus.
Still, his lurking dilettantism made him doubly alive to the elegance of
the Palazzo Tournanches when he went thither from a coarse meal in the
stuffy dining-parlour of one of his new acquaintances; as he never
relished the discourse of the latter more than after an afternoon in the
society of the Countess's parasites.
Alfieri's allusions to the learned ladies for whom Italy was noted made
Odo curious to meet the wives and daughters of his new friends; for he
knew it was only in their class that women received something more than
the ordinary conventual education; and he felt a secret desire to
compare Fulvia Vivaldi with other young girls of her kind. Learned
ladies he met, indeed; for though the women-folk of some of the
philosophers were content to cook and darn for them (and perhaps
secretly burn a candle in their behalf to Saint Thomas Aquinas or Saint
Dominick, refuters of heresy), there were others who aspired to all the
honours of scholarship, and would order about their servant-girls in
Tuscan, and scold their babies in Ciceronian Latin. Among these fair
grammarians, however, he met none that wore her learning lightly. They
were forever tripping in the folds of their doctors' gowns, and
delivering their most trivial views ex cathedra; and too often the poor
philosophers, their lords and fathers, cowered under their harangues
like frightened boys under the tongue of a schoolmaster.
It was in fact only in the household of Orazio Vivaldi that Odo found
the simplicity and grace of living for which he longed. Alfieri had
warned him not to visit the Professor too often, since the latter, being
under observation, might be compromised by the assiduity of his friends.
Odo therefore waited for some days before presenting himself, and when
he did so it was at the angelus, when the streets were crowded and a
man's comings and goings the less likely to be marked. He found Vivaldi
reading with his daughter in the long library where the Honey-Bees held
their meetings; but Fulvia at once withdrew, nor did she show herself
again during Odo's visit. It was clear that, proud of her as Vivaldi
was, he had no wish to parade her attainments, and that in her daily
life she maintained the Italian habit of seclusion; but to Odo she was
everywhere present in the quiet room with its well-ordered books and
curiosities, and the scent of flowers rising through the shuttered
windows. He was sensible of an influence permeating even the inanimate
objects about him, so that they seemed to reflect the spirit of those
who dwelt there. No room had given him this sense of companionship since
he had spent his boyish holidays in the old Count Benedetto's
apartments; but it was of another, intangible world that his present
surroundings spoke. Vivaldi received him kindly and asked him to repeat
his visit; and Odo returned as often as he thought prudent.
The Professor's conversation engaged him deeply. Vivaldi's familiarity
with French speculative literature, and with its sources in the
experiential philosophy of the English school, gave Odo his first clear
conception of the origin and tendency of the new movement. This
coordination of scattered ideas was aided by his readings in the
Encyclopaedia, which, though placed on the Index in Piedmont, was to be
found behind the concealed panels of more than one private library. From
his talks with Alfieri, and from the pages of Plutarch, he had gained a
certain insight into the Stoical view of reason as the measure of
conduct, and of the inherent sufficiency of virtue as its own end. He
now learned that all about him men were endeavouring to restore the
human spirit to that lost conception of its dignity; and he longed to
join the band of new crusaders who had set out to recover the tomb of
truth from the forces of superstition. The distinguishing mark of
eighteenth-century philosophy was its eagerness to convert its
acquisitions in every branch of knowledge into instruments of practical
beneficence; and this quality appealed peculiarly to Odo, who had ever
been moved by abstract theories only as they explained or modified the
destiny of man. Vivaldi, pleased by his new pupil's eagerness to learn,
took pains to set before him this aspect of the struggle.
"You will now see," he said, after one of their long talks about the
Encyclopaedists, "why we who have at heart the mental and social
regeneration of our countrymen are so desirous of making a concerted
effort against the established system. It is only by united action that
we can prevail. The bravest mob of independent fighters has little
chance against a handful of disciplined soldiers, and the Church is
perfectly logical in seeing her chief danger in the Encyclopaedia's
systematised marshalling of scattered truths. As long as the attacks on
her authority were isolated, and as it were sporadic, she had little to
fear even from the assaults of genius; but the most ordinary intellect
may find a use and become a power in the ranks of an organised
opposition. Seneca tells us the slaves in ancient Rome were at one time
so numerous that the government prohibited their wearing a distinctive
dress lest they should learn their strength and discover that the city
was in their power; and the Church knows that when the countless spirits
she has enslaved without subduing have once learned their number and
efficiency they will hold her doctrines at their mercy.--The Church
again," he continued, "has proved her astuteness in making faith the
gift of grace and not the result of reason. By so doing she placed
herself in a position which was well-nigh impregnable till the school of
Newton substituted observation for intuition and his followers showed
with increasing clearness the inability of the human mind to apprehend
anything outside the range of experience. The ultimate claim of the
Church rests on the hypothesis of an intuitive faculty in man. Disprove
the existence of this faculty, and reason must remain the supreme test
of truth. Against reason the fabric of theological doctrine cannot long
hold out, and the Church's doctrinal authority once shaken, men will no
longer fear to test by ordinary rules the practical results of her
teaching. We have not joined the great army of truth to waste our time
in vain disputations over metaphysical subtleties. Our aim is, by
freeing the mind of man from superstition to relieve him from the
practical abuses it entails. As it is impossible to examine any fiscal
or industrial problem without discovering that the chief obstacle to
improvement lies in the Church's countless privileges and exemptions, so
in every department of human activity we find some inveterate wrong
taking shelter under the claim of a divinely-revealed authority. This
claim demolished, the stagnant current of human progress will soon burst
its barriers and set with a mighty rush toward the wide ocean of truth
and freedom..."
That general belief in the perfectibility of man which cheered the
eighteenth-century thinkers in their struggle for intellectual liberty
coloured with a delightful brightness this vision of a renewed humanity.
It threw its beams on every branch of research, and shone like an
aureole round those who laid down fortune and advancement to purchase
the new redemption of mankind. Foremost among these, as Odo now learned,
were many of his own countrymen. In his talks with Vivaldi he first
explored the course of Italian thought and heard the names of the great
jurists, Vico and Gravina, and of his own contemporaries, Filangieri,
Verri and Beccaria. Vivaldi lent him Beccaria's famous volume and
several numbers of the "Caffe," the brilliant gazette which Verri and
his associates were then publishing in Milan, and in which all the
questions of the day, theological, economic and literary, were discussed
with a freedom possible only under the lenient Austrian rule.
"Ah," Vivaldi cried, "Milan is indeed the home of the free spirit, and
were I not persuaded that a man's first duty is to improve the condition
of his own city and state, I should long ago have left this unhappy
kingdom; indeed I sometimes fancy I may yet serve my own people better
by proclaiming the truth openly at a distance than by whispering it in
their midst."
It was a surprise to Odo to learn that the new ideas had already taken
such hold in Italy, and that some of the foremost thinkers on scientific
and economic subjects were among his own countrymen. Like all
eighteenth-century Italians of his class he had been taught to look to
France as the source of all culture, intellectual and social; and he was
amazed to find that in jurisprudence, and in some of the natural
sciences, Italy led the learning of Europe.
Once or twice Fulvia showed herself for a moment; but her manner was
retiring and almost constrained, and her father always contrived an
excuse for dismissing her. This was the more noticeable as she continued
to appear at the meetings of the Honey-Bees, where she joined freely in
the conversation, and sometimes diverted the guests by playing on the
harpsichord or by recitations from the poets; all with such art and
grace, and withal so much simplicity, that it was clear she was
accustomed to the part. Odo was thus driven to the not unflattering
conclusion that she had been instructed to avoid his company; and after
the first disappointment he was too honest to regret it. He was deeply
drawn to the girl; but what part could she play in the life of a man of
his rank? The cadet of an impoverished house, it was unlikely that he
would marry; and should he do so, custom forbade even the thought of
taking a wife outside of his class. Had he been admitted to free
intercourse with Fulvia, love might have routed such prudent counsels;
but in the society of her father's associates, where she moved, as in a
halo of learning, amid the respectful admiration of middle-aged
philosophers and jurists, she seemed as inaccessible as a young Minerva.
Odo, at first, had been careful not to visit Vivaldi too often; but the
Professor's conversation was so instructive, and his library so
inviting, that inclination got the better of prudence, and the young man
fell into the habit of turning almost daily down the lane behind the
Corpus Domini. Vivaldi, too proud to betray any concern for his personal
safety, showed no sign of resenting the frequency of these visits;
indeed, he received Odo with an increasing cordiality that, to an older
observer, might have betokened an effort to hide his apprehension.
One afternoon, escaping later than usual from the Valentino, Odo had
again bent toward the quiet quarter behind the palace. He was afoot,
with a cloak over his laced coat, and the day being Easter Monday the
streets were filled with a throng of pleasure-seekers amid whom it
seemed easy enough for a man to pass unnoticed. Odo, as he crossed the
Piazza Castello, thought it had never presented a gayer scene. Booths
with brightly-striped awnings had been set up under the arcades, which
were thronged with idlers of all classes; court-coaches dashed across
the square or rolled in and out of the palace-gates; and the Palazzo
Madama, lifting against the sunset its ivory-tinted columns and statues,
seemed rather some pictured fabric of Claude's or Bibbiena's than an
actual building of brick and marble. The turn of a corner carried him
from this spectacle into the solitude of a by-street where his own tread
was the only sound. He walked on carelessly; but suddenly he heard what
seemed an echo of his step. He stopped and faced about. No one was in
sight but a blind beggar crouching at the side-door of the Corpus
Domini. Odo walked on, listening, and again he heard the step, and again
turned to find himself alone. He tried to fancy that his ear had tricked
him; but he knew too much of the subtle methods of Italian espionage not
to feel a secret uneasiness. His better judgment warned him back; but
the desire to spend a pleasant hour prevailed. He took a turn through
the neighbouring streets, in the hope of diverting suspicion, and ten
minutes later was at the Professor's gate.
It opened at once, and to his amazement Fulvia stood before him. She had
thrown a black mantle over her head, and her face looked pale and vivid
in the fading light. Surprise for a moment silenced Odo, and before he
could speak the girl, without pausing to close the gate, had drawn him
toward her and flung her arms about his neck. In the first disorder of
his senses he was conscious only of seeking her lips; but an instant
later he knew it was no kiss of love that met his own, and he felt her
tremble violently in his arms. He saw in a flash that he was on unknown
ground; but his one thought was that Fulvia was in trouble and looked to
him for aid. He gently freed himself from her hold and tried to shape a
soothing question; but she caught his arm and, laying a hand over his
mouth, drew him across the garden and into the house. The lower floor
stood dark and empty. He followed Fulvia up the stairs and into the
library, which was also empty. The shutters stood wide, admitting the
evening freshness and a drowsy scent of jasmine from the garden.
Odo could not control a thrill of strange anticipation as he found
himself alone in this silent room with the girl whose heart had so
lately beat against his own. She had sunk into a chair, with her face
hidden, and for a moment or two he stood before her without speaking.
Then he knelt at her side and took her hands with a murmur of
endearment.
At his touch she started up. "And it was I," she cried, "who persuaded
my father that he might trust you!" And she sank back sobbing.
Odo rose and moved away, waiting for her overwrought emotion to subside.
At length he gently asked, "Do you wish me to leave you?"
She raised her head. "No," she said firmly, though her lip still
trembled; "you must first hear an explanation of my conduct; though it
is scarce possible," she added, flushing to the brow, "that you have not
already guessed the purpose of this lamentable comedy."
"I guess nothing," he replied, "save that perhaps I may in some way
serve you."
"Serve me?" she cried, with a flash of anger through her tears. "It is a
late hour to speak of service, after what you have brought on this
house!"
Odo turned pale. "Here indeed, madam," said he, "are words that need an
explanation."
"Oh," she broke forth, "and you shall have it; though I think to any
other it must be writ large upon my countenance." She rose and paced the
floor impetuously. "Is it possible," she began again, "you do not yet
perceive the sense of that execrable scene? Or do you think, by feigning
ignorance, to prolong my humiliation? Oh," she said, pausing before him,
her breast in a tumult, her eyes alight, "it was I who persuaded my
father of your discretion and prudence, it was through my influence that
he opened himself to you so freely; and is this the return you make?
Alas, why did you leave your fashionable friends and a world in which
you are so fitted to shine, to bring unhappiness on an obscure household
that never dreamed of courting your notice?"
As she stood before him in her radiant anger, it went hard with Odo not
to silence with a kiss a resentment that he guessed to be mainly
directed against herself; but he controlled himself and said quietly:
"Madam, I were a dolt not to perceive that I have had the misfortune to
offend; but when or how, I swear to heaven I know not; and till you
enlighten me I can neither excuse nor defend myself."
She turned pale, but instantly recovered her composure. "You are right,"
she said; "I rave like a foolish girl; but indeed I scarce know if I am
in my waking senses"--She paused, as if to check a fresh rush of
emotion. "Oh, sir," she cried, "can you not guess what has happened? You
were warned, I believe, not to frequent this house too openly; but of
late you have been an almost daily visitor, and you never come here but
you are followed. My father's doctrines have long been under suspicion,
and to be accused of perverting a man of your rank must be his ruin. He
was too proud to tell you this, and profiting today by his absence, and
knowing that if you came the spies would be at your heels, I resolved to
meet you at the gate, and welcome you in such a way that our enemies
should be deceived as to the true cause of your visits."
Her voice wavered on the last words, but she faced him proudly, and it
was Odo whose gaze fell. Never perhaps had he been conscious of cutting
a meaner figure; yet shame was so blent in him with admiration for the
girl's nobility and courage, that compunction was swept away in the
impulse that flung him at her feet.
"Ah," he cried, "I have been blind indeed, and what you say abases me to
earth. Yes, I was warned that my visits might compromise your father;
nor had I any pretext for returning so often but my own selfish pleasure
in his discourse; or so at least," he added in a lower voice, "I chose
to fancy--but when we met just now at the gate, if you acted a comedy,
believe me, I did not; and if I have come day after day to this house,
it is because, unknowingly, I came for you."
The words had escaped him unawares, and he was too sensible of their
untimeliness not to be prepared for the gesture with which she cut him
short.
"Oh," said she, in a tone of the liveliest reproach, "spare me this last
affront if you wish me to think the harm you have already done was done
unknowingly!"
Odo rose to his feet, tingling under the rebuke. "If respect and
admiration be an affront, madam," he said, "I cannot remain in your
presence without offending, and nothing is left me but to withdraw; but
before going I would at least ask if there is no way of repairing the
harm that my over-assiduity has caused."
She flushed high at the question. "Why, that," she said, "is in part, I
trust, already accomplished; indeed," she went on with an effort, "it
was when I learned the authorities suspected you of coming here on a
gallant adventure that I devised the idea of meeting you at the gate;
and for the rest, sir, the best reparation you can make is one that will
naturally suggest itself to a gentleman whose time must already be so
fully engaged."
And with that she made him a deep reverence, and withdrew to the inner
room.
2.5.
When the Professor's gate closed on Odo night was already falling and
the oil-lamp at the end of the arched passage-way shed its weak circle
of light on the pavement. This light, as Odo emerged, fell on a
retreating figure which resembled that of the blind beggar he had seen
crouching on the steps of the Corpus Domini. He ran forward, but the man
hurried across the little square and disappeared in the darkness. Odo
had not seen his face; but though his dress was tattered, and he leaned
on a beggar's staff, something about his broad rolling back recalled the
well-filled outline of Cantapresto's cassock.
Sick at heart, Odo rambled on from one street to another, avoiding the
more crowded quarters, and losing himself more than once in the
districts near the river, where young gentlemen of his figure seldom
showed themselves unattended. The populace, however, was all abroad, and
he passed as unregarded as though his sombre thoughts had enveloped him
in actual darkness.
It was late when at length he turned again into the Piazza Castello,
which was brightly lit and still thronged with pleasure-seekers. As he
approached, the crowd divided to make way for three or four handsome
travelling-carriages, preceded by linkmen and liveried out-riders and
followed by a dozen mounted equerries. The people, evidently in the
humour to greet every incident of the streets as part of a show prepared
for their diversion, cheered lustily as the carriages dashed across the
square; and Odo, turning to a man at his elbow, asked who the
distinguished visitors might be.
"Why, sir," said the other laughing, "I understand it is only an
Embassage from some neighbouring state; but when our good people are in
their Easter mood they are ready to take a mail-coach for Elijah's
chariot and their wives' scolding for the Gift of Tongues."
Odo spent a restless night face to face with his first humiliation.
Though the girl's rebuff had cut him to the quick, it was the vision of
the havoc his folly had wrought that stood between him and sleep. To
have endangered the liberty, the very life, perhaps, of a man he loved
and venerated, and who had welcomed him without heed of personal risk,
this indeed was bitter to his youthful self-sufficiency. The thought of
Giannone's fate was like a cold clutch at his heart; nor was there any
balm in knowing that it was at Fulvia's request he had been so freely
welcomed; for he was persuaded that, whatever her previous feeling might
have been, the scene just enacted must render him forever odious to her.
Turn whither it would, his tossing vanity found no repose; and dawn rose
for him on a thorny waste of disillusionment.
Cantapresto broke in early on this vigil, flushed with the importance of
a letter from the Countess Valdu. The lady summoned her son to dinner,
"to meet an old friend and distinguished visitor"; and a verbal message
bade Odo come early and wear his new uniform. He was too well acquainted
with his mother's exaggerations to attach much importance to the
summons; but being glad of an excuse to escape his daily visit at the
Palazzo Tournanches, he sent Donna Laura word that he would wait on her
at two.
On the very threshold of Casa Valdu, Odo perceived that unwonted
preparations were afoot. The shabby liveries of the servants had been
refurbished and the marble floor newly scoured; and he found his mother
seated in the drawing-room, an apartment never unshrouded save on the
most ceremonious occasions. As to Donna Laura, she had undergone the
same process of renovation, and with more striking results. It seemed to
Odo, when she met him sparkling under her rouge and powder, as though
some withered flower had been dipped in water, regaining for the moment
a languid semblance of its freshness. Her eyes shone, her hand trembled
under his lips, and the diamonds rose and fell on her eager bosom.
"You are late!" she tenderly reproached him; and before he had time to
reply, the double doors were thrown open, and the major-domo announced
in an awed voice: "His excellency Count Lelio Trescorre."
Odo turned with a start. To his mind, already crowded with a confusion
of thoughts, the name summoned a throng of memories. He saw again his
mother's apartments at Pianura, and the handsome youth with lace ruffles
and a clouded amber cane, who came and went among her other visitors
with an air of such superiority, and who rode beside the
travelling-carriage on the first stage of their journey to Donnaz. To
that handsome youth the gentleman just announced bore the likeness of
the finished portrait to the sketch. He was a man of about
two-and-thirty, of the middle height, with a delicate dark face and an
air of arrogance not unbecomingly allied to an insinuating courtesy of
address. His dress of sombre velvet, with a star on the breast, and a
profusion of the finest lace, suggested the desire to add dignity and
weight to his appearance without renouncing the softer ambitions of his
age.
He received with a smile Donna Laura's agitated phrases of welcome. "I
come," said he kissing her hand, "in my private character, not as the
Envoy of Pianura, but as the friend and servant of the Countess Valdu;
and I trust," he added turning to Odo, "of the Cavaliere Valsecca also."
Odo bowed in silence.
"You may have heard," Trescorre continued, addressing him in the same
engaging tone, "that I am come to Turin on a mission from his Highness
to the court of Savoy: a trifling matter of boundary-lines and customs,
which I undertook at the Duke's desire, the more readily, it must be
owned, since it gave me the opportunity to renew my acquaintance with
friends whom absence has not taught me to forget." He smiled again at
Donna Laura, who blushed like a girl.
The curiosity which Trescorre's words excited was lost to Odo in the
painful impression produced by his mother's agitation. To see her, a
woman already past her youth, and aged by her very efforts to preserve
it, trembling and bridling under the cool eye of masculine indifference,
was a spectacle the more humiliating that he was too young to be moved
by its human and pathetic side. He recalled once seeing a memento mori
of delicately-tinted ivory, which represented a girl's head, one side
all dewy freshness, the other touched with death; and it seemed to him
that his mother's face resembled this tragic toy, the side her mirror
reflected being still rosy with youth, while that which others saw was
already a ruin. His heart burned with disgust as he followed Donna Laura
and Trescorre into the dining-room, which had been set out with all the
family plate, and decked with rare fruits and flowers. The Countess had
excused her husband on the plea of his official duties, and the three
sat down alone to a meal composed of the costliest delicacies.
Their guest, who ate little and drank less, entertained them with the
latest news of Pianura, touching discreetly on the growing estrangement
between the Duke and Duchess, and speaking with becoming gravity of the
heir's weak health. It was clear that the speaker, without filling an
official position at the court, was already deep in the Duke's counsels,
and perhaps also in the Duchess's; and Odo guessed under his smiling
indiscretions the cool aim of the man who never wastes a shot.
Toward the close of the meal, when the servants had withdrawn, he turned
to Odo with a graver manner. "You have perhaps guessed, cavaliere," he
said, "that in venturing to claim the Countess's hospitality in so
private a manner, I had in mind the wish to open myself to you more
freely than would be possible at court." He paused a moment, as though
to emphasise his words; and Odo fancied he cultivated the trick of
deliberate speaking to counteract his natural arrogance of manner. "The
time has come," he went on, "when it seems desirable that you should be
more familiar with the state of affairs at Pianura. For some years it
seemed likely that the Duchess would give his Highness another son; but
circumstances now appear to preclude that hope; and it is the general
opinion of the court physicians that the young prince has not many years
to live." He paused again, fixing his eyes on Odo's flushed face. "The
Duke," he continued, "has shown a natural reluctance to face a situation
so painful both to his heart and his ambitions; but his feelings as a
parent have yielded to his duty as a sovereign, and he recognises the
fact that you should have an early opportunity of acquainting yourself
more nearly with the affairs of the duchy, and also of seeing something
of the other courts of Italy. I am persuaded," he added, "that, young as
you are, I need not point out to you on what slight contingencies all
human fortunes hang, and how completely the heir's recovery or the birth
of another prince must change the aspect of your future. You have, I am
sure, the heart to face such chances with becoming equanimity, and to
carry the weight of conditional honours without any undue faith in their
permanence."
The admonition was so lightly uttered that it seemed rather a tribute to
Odo's good sense than a warning to his inexperience; and indeed it was
difficult for him, in spite of an instinctive aversion to the man, to
quarrel with anything in his address or language. Trescorre in fact
possessed the art of putting younger men at their ease, while appearing
as an equal among his elders: a gift doubtless developed by the
circumstances of court life, and the need of at once commanding respect
and disarming diffidence.
He took leave upon his last words, declaring, in reply to the Countess's
protests, that he had promised to accompany the court that afternoon to
Stupinigi. "But I hope," he added, turning to Odo, "to continue our talk
at greater length, if you will favour me with a visit tomorrow at my
lodgings."
No sooner was the door closed on her illustrious visitor than Donna
Laura flung herself on Odo's bosom.
"I always knew it," she cried, "my dearest; but, oh, that I should live
to see the day!" and she wept and clung to him with a thousand
endearments, from the nature of which he gathered that she already
beheld him on the throne of Pianura. To his laughing reminder of the
distance that still separated him from that dizzy eminence, she made
answer that there was far more than he knew, that the Duke had fallen
into all manner of excesses which had already gravely impaired his
health, and that for her part she only hoped her son, when raised to a
station so far above her own, would not forget the tenderness with which
she had ever cherished him, or the fact that Count Valdu's financial
situation was one quite unworthy the stepfather of a reigning prince.
Escaping at length from this parody of his own sensations, Odo found
himself in a tumult of mind that solitude served only to increase.
Events had so pressed upon him within the last few days that at times he
was reduced to a passive sense of spectatorship, an inability to regard
himself as the centre of so many converging purposes. It was clear that
Trescorre's mission was mainly a pretext for seeing the Duke's young
kinsman; and that some special motive must have impelled the Duke to
show such sudden concern for his cousin's welfare. Trescorre need hardly
have cautioned Odo against fixing his hopes on the succession. The Duke
himself was a man not above five-and-thirty, and more than one chance
stood between Odo and the duchy; nor was it this contingency that set
his pulses beating, but rather the promise of an immediate change in his
condition. The Duke wished him to travel, to visit the different courts
of Italy: what was the prospect of ruling over a stagnant principality
to this near vision of the world and the glories thereof, suddenly
discovered from the golden height of opportunity? Save for a few weeks
of autumn villeggiatura at some neighbouring chase or vineyard, Odo had
not left Turin for nine years. He had come there a child and had grown
to manhood among the same narrow influences and surroundings. To be
turned loose on the world at two-and-twenty, with such an arrears of
experience to his credit, was to enter on a richer inheritance than any
duchy; and in Odo's case the joy of the adventure was doubled by its
timeliness. That fate should thus break at a stroke the meshes of habit,
should stoop to play the advocate of his secret inclinations, seemed to
promise him the complicity of the gods. Once in a lifetime, chance will
thus snap the toils of a man's making; and it is instructive to see the
poor puppet adore the power that connives at his evasion...
Trescorre remained a week in Turin; and Odo saw him daily at court, at
his lodgings, or in company. The little sovereignty of Pianura being an
important factor in the game of political equilibrium, her envoy was
sure of a flattering reception from the neighbouring powers; and
Trescorre's person and address must have commended him to the most
fastidious company. He continued to pay particular attention to Odo, and
the rumour was soon abroad that the Cavaliere Valsecca had been sent for
to visit his cousin, the reigning Duke; a rumour which, combined with
Donna Laura's confidential hints, made Odo the centre of much feminine
solicitude, and roused the Countess Clarice to a vivid sense of her
rights. These circumstances, and his own tendency to drift on the
current of sensation, had carried Odo more easily than he could have
hoped past the painful episode of the Professor's garden. He was still
tormented by the sense of his inability to right so grave a wrong; but
he found solace in the thought that his absence was after all the best
reparation he could make.
Trescorre, though distinguishing Odo by his favours, had not again
referred to the subject of their former conversation; but on the last
day of his visit he sent for Odo to his lodgings and at once entered
upon the subject.
"His Highness," said he, "does not for the present recommend your
resigning your commission in the Sardinian army; but as he desires you
to visit him at Pianura, and to see something of the neighbouring
courts, he has charged me to obtain for you a two years' leave of
absence from his Majesty's service: a favour the King has already been
pleased to accord. The Duke has moreover resolved to double your present
allowance and has entrusted me with the sum of two hundred ducats, which
he desires you to spend in the purchase of a travelling-carriage, and
such other appointments as are suitable to a gentleman of your rank and
expectations." As he spoke, he unlocked his despatch-box and handed a
purse to Odo. "His Highness," he continued, "is impatient to see you;
and once your preparations are completed, I should advise you to set out
without delay; that is," he added, after one of his characteristic
pauses, "if I am right in supposing that there is no obstacle to your
departure."
Odo, inferring an allusion to the Countess Clarice, smiled and coloured
slightly. "I know of none," he said.
Trescorre bowed. "I am glad to hear it," he said, "for I know that a man
of your age and appearance may have other inclinations than his own to
consider. Indeed, I have had reports of a connection that I should not
take the liberty of mentioning, were it not that your interest demands
it." He waited a moment, but Odo remained silent. "I am sure," he went
on, "you will do me the justice of believing that I mean no reflection
on the lady, when I warn you against being seen too often in the quarter
behind the Corpus Domini. Such attachments, though engaging at the
outset to a fastidious taste, are often more troublesome than a young
man of your age can foresee; and in this case the situation is
complicated by the fact that the girl's father is in ill odour with the
authorities, so that, should the motive of your visits be mistaken, you
might find yourself inconveniently involved in the proceedings of the
Holy Office."
Odo, who had turned pale, controlled himself sufficiently to listen in
silence, and with as much pretence of indifference as he could assume.
It was the peculiar misery of his situation that he could not defend
Fulvia without betraying her father, and that of the two alternatives
prudence bade him reject the one that chivalry would have chosen. It
flashed across him, however, that he might in some degree repair the
harm he had done by finding out what measures were to be taken against
Vivaldi; and to this end he carelessly asked:--"Is it possible that the
Professor has done anything to give offence in such quarters?"
His assumption of carelessness was perhaps overdone; for Trescorre's
face grew as blank as a shuttered house-front.
"I have heard rumours of the kind," he rejoined; "but they would
scarcely have attracted my notice had I not learned of your honouring
the young lady with your favours." He glanced at Odo with a smile. "Were
I a father," he added, "with a son of your age, my first advice to him
would be to form no sentimental ties but in his own society or in the
world of pleasure--the only two classes where the rules of the game are
understood."
2.6.
Odo had appointed to leave Turin some two weeks after Trescorre's
departure; but the preparations for a young gentleman's travels were in
those days a momentous business, and one not to be discharged without
vexatious postponements. The travelling-carriage must be purchased and
fitted out, the gold-mounted dressing-case selected and engraved with
the owner's arms, servants engaged and provided with liveries, and the
noble tourist's own wardrobe stocked with an assortment of costumes
suited to the vicissitudes of travel and the requirements of court life.
Odo's impatience to be gone increased with every delay, and at length he
determined to go forward at all adventure, leaving Cantapresto to
conclude the preparations and overtake him later. It had been agreed
with Trescorre that Odo, on his way to Pianura, should visit his
grandfather, the old Marquess, whose increasing infirmities had for some
years past imprisoned him on his estates, and accordingly about the
Ascension he set out in the saddle for Donnaz, attended only by one
servant, and having appointed that Cantapresto should meet him with the
carriage at Ivrea.
The morning broke cloudy as he rode out of the gates. Beyond the suburbs
a few drops fell, and as he pressed forward the country lay before him
in the emerald freshness of a spring rain, vivid strips of vineyard
alternating with silvery bands of oats, the domes of the walnut-trees
dripping above the roadside, and the poplars along the water-courses all
slanting one way in the soft continuous downpour. He had left Turin in
that mood of clinging melancholy which waits on the most hopeful
departures, and the landscape seemed an image of anticipations clouded
with regret. He had had a stormy but tender parting with Clarice, whose
efforts to act the forsaken Ariadne were somewhat marred by her
irrepressible pride in her lover's prospects, and whose last word had
charged him to bring her back one of the rare lap-dogs bred by the monks
of Bologna. Seen down the lengthening vista of separation even Clarice
seemed regrettable; and Odo would have been glad to let his mind linger
on their farewells. But another thought importuned him. He had left
Turin without news of Vivaldi or Fulvia, and without having done
anything to conjure the peril to which his rashness had exposed them.
More than once he had been about to reveal his trouble to Alfieri; but
shame restrained him when he remembered that it was Alfieri who had
vouched for his discretion. After his conversation with Trescorre he had
tried to find some way of sending a word of warning to Vivaldi; but he
had no messenger whom he could trust; and would not Vivaldi justly
resent a warning from such a source? He felt himself the prisoner of his
own folly, and as he rode along the wet country roads an invisible
gaoler seemed to spur beside him.
The clouds lifted at noon; and leaving the plain he mounted into a world
sparkling with sunshine and quivering with new-fed streams. The first
breath of mountain-air lifted the mist from his spirit, and he began to
feel himself a boy again as he entered the high gorges in the cold light
after sunset. It was about the full of the moon, and in his impatience
to reach Donnaz he resolved to push on after nightfall. The forest was
still thinly-leaved, and the rustle of wind in the branches and the
noise of the torrents recalled his first approach to the castle, in the
wild winter twilight. The way lay in darkness till the moon rose, and
once or twice he took a wrong turn and found himself engaged in some
overgrown woodland track; but he soon regained the high-road, and his
servant, a young fellow of indomitable cheerfulness, took the edge off
their solitude by frequent snatches of song. At length the moon rose,
and toward midnight Odo, spurring out of a dark glen, found himself at
the opening of the valley of Donnaz. A cold radiance bathed the familiar
pastures, the houses of the village along the stream, and the turrets
and crenellations of the castle at the head of the gorge. The air was
bitter, and the horses' hoofs struck sharply on the road as they trotted
past the slumbering houses and halted at the gateway through which Odo
had first been carried as a sleepy child. It was long before the
travellers' knock was answered, but a bewildered porter at length
admitted them, and Odo cried out when he recognised in the man's face
the features of one of the lads who had taught him to play pallone in
the castle court.
Within doors all were abed; but the cavaliere was expected, and supper
laid for him in the very chamber where he had slept as a lad. The sight
of so much that was strange and yet familiar--of the old stone walls,
the banners, the flaring lamps and worn slippery stairs--all so much
barer, smaller, more dilapidated than he had remembered--stirred the
deep springs of his piety for inanimate things, and he was seized with a
fancy to snatch up a light and explore the recesses of the castle. But
he had been in the saddle since dawn, and the keen air and the long
hours of riding were in his blood. They weighted his lids, relaxed his
limbs, and gently divesting him of his hopes and fears, pressed him down
in the deep sepulchre of a dreamless sleep...
Odo remained a month at Donnaz. His grandfather's happiness in his
presence would in itself have sufficed to detain him, apart from his
natural tenderness for old scenes and associations. It was one of the
compensations of his rapidly travelling imagination that the past, from
each new vantage-ground of sensation, acquired a fascination which to
the more sober-footed fancy only the perspective of years can give.
Life, in childhood, is a picture-book of which the text is
undecipherable; and the youth now revisiting the unchanged setting of
his boyhood was spelling out for the first time the legend beneath the
picture.
The old Marquess, though broken in body, still ruled his household from
his seat beside the hearth. The failure of bodily activity seemed to
have doubled his moral vigour, and the walls shook with the vehemence of
his commands. The Marchioness was sunk in a state of placid apathy from
which only her husband's outbursts roused her; one of the canonesses was
dead, and the other, drier and more shrivelled than ever, pined in her
corner like a statue whose mate is broken. Bruno was dead too; his old
dog's bones had long since enriched a corner of the vineyard; and some
of the younger lads that Odo had known about the place were grown to
sober-faced men with wives and children.
Don Gervaso was still chaplain of Donnaz; and Odo saw with surprise that
the grave ecclesiastic who had formerly seemed an old man to him was in
fact scarce past the middle age. In general aspect he was unchanged; but
his countenance had darkened, and what Odo had once taken for harshness
of manner he now perceived to be a natural melancholy. The young man had
not been long at Donnaz without discovering that in that little world of
crystallised traditions the chaplain was the only person conscious of
the new forces abroad. It had never occurred to the Marquess that
anything short of a cataclysm such as it would be blasphemy to predict
could change the divinely established order whereby the territorial lord
took tithes from his peasantry and pastured his game on their crops. The
hierarchy which rested on the bowed back of the toiling serf and
culminated in the figure of the heaven-sent King seemed to him as
immutable as the everlasting hills. The men of his generation had not
learned that it was built on a human foundation and that a sudden
movement of the underlying mass might shake the structure to its
pinnacle. The Marquess, who, like Donna Laura, already beheld Odo on the
throne of Pianura, was prodigal of counsels which showed a touching
inability to discern the new aspect under which old difficulties were
likely to present themselves. That a ruler should be brave, prudent,
personally abstemious, and nobly lavish in his official display; that he
should repress any attempts on the privileges of the Church, while at
the same time protecting his authority from the encroachments of the
Holy See; these axioms seemed to the old man to sum up the sovereign's
duty to the state. The relation, to his mind, remained a distinctly
personal and paternal one; and Odo's attempts to put before him the new
theory of government, as a service performed by the ruler in the
interest of the ruled, resulted only in stirring up the old sediment of
absolutism which generations of feudal power had deposited in the Donnaz
blood.
Only the chaplain perceived what new agencies were at work; but even he
looked on as a watcher from a distant tower, who sees opposing armies
far below him in the night, without being able to follow their movements
or guess which way the battle goes.
"The days," he said to Odo, "are evil. The Church's enemies, the
basilisks and dragons of unbelief and license, are stirring in their old
lairs, the dark places of the human spirit. It is time that a fresh
purification by blood should cleanse the earth of its sins. That hour
has already come in France, where the blood of heretics has lately
fertilised the soil of faith; it will come here, as surely as I now
stand before you; and till it comes the faithful can only weary heaven
with their entreaties, if haply thereby they may mitigate the evil. I
shall remain here," he continued, "while the Marquess needs me; but that
task discharged, I intend to retire to one of the contemplative orders,
and with my soul perpetually uplifted like the arms of Moses, wear out
my life in prayer for those whom the latter days shall overtake."
Odo had listened in silence; but after a moment he said: "My father,
among those who have called in to question the old order of things there
are many animated by no mere desire for change, no idle inclination to
pry into the divine mysteries, but who earnestly long to ease the burden
of mankind and let light into what you have called the dark places of
the spirit. How is it, they ask, that though Christ came to save the
poor and the humble, it is on them that life presses most heavily after
eighteen hundred years of His rule? All cannot be well in a world where
such contradictions exist, and what if some of the worst abuses of the
age have found lodgment in the very ramparts that faith has built
against them?"
Don Gervaso's face grew stern and his eyes rested sadly on Odo. "You
speak," said he, "of bringing light into dark places; but what light is
there on earth save that which is shed by the Cross, and where shall
they find guidance who close their eyes to that divine illumination?"
"But is there not," Odo rejoined, "a divine illumination within each of
us, the light of truth which we must follow at any cost--or have the
worst evils and abuses only to take refuge in the Church to find
sanctuary there, as malefactors find it?"
The chaplain shook his head. "It is as I feared," he said, "and Satan
has spread his subtlest snare for you; for if he tempts some in the
guise of sensual pleasure, or of dark fears and spiritual abandonment,
it is said that to those he most thirsts to destroy he appears in the
likeness of their Saviour. You tell me it is to right the wrongs of the
poor and the humble that your new friends, the philosophers, have
assailed the authority of Christ. I have only one answer to make:
Christ, as you said just now, died for the poor--how many of your
philosophers would do as much? Because men hunger and thirst, is that a
sign that He has forsaken them? And since when have earthly privileges
been the token of His favour? May He not rather have designed that, by
continual sufferings and privations, they shall lay up for themselves
treasures in Heaven such as your eyes and mine shall never see or our
ears hear? And how dare you assume that any temporal advantages could
atone for that of which your teachings must deprive them--the heavenly
consolations of the love of Christ?"
Odo listened with a sense of deepening discouragement. "But is it
necessary," he urged, "to confound Christ with His ministers, the law
with its exponents? May not men preserve their hope of heaven and yet
lead more endurable lives on earth?"
"Ah, my child, beware, for this is the heresy of private judgment, which
has already drawn down thousands into the pit. It is one of the most
insidious errors in which the spirit of evil has ever masqueraded; for
it is based on the fallacy that we, blind creatures of a day, and
ourselves in the meshes of sin, can penetrate the counsels of the
Eternal, and test the balances of the heavenly Justice. I tremble to
think into what an abyss your noblest impulses may fling you, if you
abandon yourself to such illusions; and more especially if it pleases
God to place in your hands a small measure of that authority of which He
is the supreme repository.--When I took leave of you here nine years
since," Don Gervaso continued in a gentler tone, "we prayed together in
the chapel; and I ask you, before setting out on your new life, to
return there with me and lay your doubts and difficulties before Him who
alone is able to still the stormy waves of the soul."
Odo, touched by the appeal, accompanied him to the chapel, and knelt on
the steps whence his young spirit had once soared upward on the heavenly
pleadings of the Mass. The chapel was as carefully tended as ever; and
amid the comely appointments of the altar shone forth that Presence
which speaks to men of an act of love perpetually renewed. But to Odo
the voice was mute, the divinity wrapped in darkness; and he remembered
reading in some Latin author that the ancient oracles had ceased to
speak when their questioners lost faith in them. He knew not whether his
own faith was lost; he felt only that it had put forth on a sea of
difficulties across which he saw the light of no divine command.
In this mood there was no more help to be obtained from Don Gervaso than
from the Marquess. Odo's last days at Donnaz were clouded by a sense of
the deep estrangement between himself and that life of which the outward
aspect was so curiously unchanged. His past seemed to look at him with
unrecognising eyes, to bar the door against his knock; and he rode away
saddened by that sense of isolation which follows the first encounter
with a forgotten self.
At Ivrea the sight of Cantapresto and the travelling-carriage roused him
as from a waking dream. Here, at his beck were the genial realities of
life, embodied, humorously enough, in the bustling figure which for so
many years had played a kind of comic accompaniment to his experiences.
Cantapresto was in a fever of expectation. To set forth on the road
again, after nine years of well-fed monotony, and under conditions so
favourable to his physical well-being, was to drink the wine of romance
from a golden cup. Odo was at the age when the spirit lies as naturally
open to the variations of mood as a lake to the shifting of the breeze;
and Cantapresto's exuberant humour, and the novel details of their
travelling equipment, had soon effaced the graver influences of Donnaz.
Life stretched before him alluring and various as the open road; and his
pulses danced to the tune of the postillion's whip as the carriage
rattled out of the gates.
It was a bright morning and the plain lay beneath them like a planted
garden, in all the flourish and verdure of June; but the roads being
deep in mire, and unrepaired after the ravages of the winter, it was
past noon before they reached the foot of the hills. Here matters were
little better, for the highway was ploughed deep by the wheels of the
numberless vans and coaches journeying from one town to another during
the Whitsun holidays, so that even a young gentleman travelling post
must resign himself to a plebeian rate of progression. Odo at first was
too much pleased with the novelty of the scene to quarrel with any
incidental annoyances; but as the afternoon wore on the way began to
seem long, and he was just giving utterance to his impatience when
Cantapresto, putting his head out of the window, announced in a tone of
pious satisfaction that just ahead of them were a party of travellers in
far worse case than themselves. Odo, leaning out, saw that, a dozen
yards ahead, a modest chaise of antique pattern had in fact come to
grief by the roadside. He called to his postillion to hurry forward, and
they were soon abreast of the wreck, about which several people were
grouped in anxious colloquy. Odo sprang out to offer his services; but
as he alit he felt Cantapresto's hand on his sleeve.
"Cavaliere," the soprano whispered, "these are plainly people of no
condition, and we have yet a good seven miles to Vercelli, where all the
inns will be crowded for the Whitsun fair. Believe me, it were better to
go forward."
Odo advanced without heeding this admonition; but a moment later he had
almost regretted his action; for in the centre of the group about the
chaise stood the two persons whom, of all the world, he was at that
moment least wishful of meeting.
2.7.
It was in fact Vivaldi who, putting aside the knot of idlers about the
chaise, stepped forward at Odo's approach. The philosopher's countenance
was perturbed, his travelling-coat spattered with mud, and his daughter,
hooded and veiled, clung to him with an air of apprehension that smote
Odo to the heart. He caught a blush of recognition beneath her veil; and
as he drew near she raised a finger to her lip and faintly shook her
head.
The mute signal reassured him. "I see, sir," said he, turning
courteously to Vivaldi, "that you are in a bad plight, and I hope that I
or my carriage may be of service to you." He ventured a second glance at
Fulvia, but she had turned aside and was inspecting the wheel of the
chaise with an air of the most disheartening detachment.
Vivaldi, who had returned Odo's greeting without any sign of ill-will,
bowed slightly and seemed to hesitate a moment. "Our plight, as you
see," he said, "is indeed a grave one; for the wheel has come off our
carriage and my driver here tells me there is no smithy this side
Vercelli, where it is imperative we should lie tonight. I hope,
however," he added, glancing down the road, "that with all the traffic
now coming and going we may soon be overtaken by some vehicle that will
carry us to our destination."
He spoke calmly, but it was plain some pressing fear underlay his
composure, and the nature of the emergency was but too clear to Odo.
"Will not my carriage serve you?" he hastily rejoined. "I am for
Vercelli, and if you will honour me with your company we can go forward
at once."
Fulvia, during this exchange of words, had affected to be engaged with
the luggage, which lay in a heap beside the chaise; but at this point
she lifted her head and shot a glance at her father from under her black
travelling-hood.
Vivaldi's constraint increased. "This, sir," said he, "is a handsome
offer, and one for which I thank you; but I fear our presence may
incommode you and the additional weight of our luggage perhaps delay
your progress. I have little fear but some van or waggon will overtake
us before nightfall; and should it chance otherwise," he added with a
touch of irresistible pedantry, "why, it behoves us to remember that we
shall be none the worse off, since the sage is independent of
circumstances."
Odo could hardly repress a smile. "Such philosophy, sir, is admirable in
principle, but in practice hardly applicable to a lady unused to passing
her nights in a rice-field. The region about here is notoriously
unhealthy and you will surely not expose your daughter to the risk of
remaining by the roadside or of finding a lodging in some peasant's
hut."
Vivaldi drew himself up. "My daughter," said he, "has been trained to
face graver emergencies with an equanimity I have no fear of putting to
the touch--'the calm of a mind blest in the consciousness of its
virtue'; and were it not that circumstances are somewhat pressing--" he
broke off and glanced at Cantapresto, who was fidgeting about Odo's
carriage or talking in undertones with the driver of the chaise.
"Come, sir," said Odo urgently, "Let my servants put your luggage up and
we'll continue this argument on the road."
Vivaldi again paused. "Sir," he said at length, "will you first step
aside with me a moment?" he led Odo a few paces down the road. "I make
no pretence," he went on when they were out of Cantapresto's hearing,
"of concealing from you that this offer comes very opportune to our
needs, for it is urgent we should be out of Piedmont by tomorrow. But
before accepting a seat in your carriage, I must tell you that you offer
it to a proscribed man; since I have little reason to doubt that by this
time the sbirri are on my track."
It was impossible to guess from Vivaldi's manner whether he suspected
Odo of being the cause of his misadventure; and the young man, though
flushing to the forehead, took refuge in the thought of Fulvia's signal
and maintained a self-possessed silence.
"The motive of my persecution," Vivaldi continued, "I need hardly
explain to one acquainted with my house and with the aims and opinions
of those who frequent it. We live, alas, in an age when it is a moral
offence to seek enlightenment, a political crime to share it with
others. I have long foreseen that any attempt to raise the condition of
my countrymen must end in imprisonment or flight; and though perhaps to
have suffered the former had been a more impressive vindication of my
views, why, sir, the father at the last moment overruled the
philosopher, and thinking of my poor girl there, who but for me stands
alone in the world, I resolved to take refuge in a state where a man may
work for the liberty of others without endangering his own."
Odo had listened with rising eagerness. Was not here an opportunity, if
not to atone, at least to give practical evidence of his contrition?
"What you tell me sir," he exclaimed, "cannot but increase my zeal to
serve you. Here is no time to palter. I am on my way to Lombardy, which,
from what you say, I take to be your destination also; and if you and
your daughter will give me your company across the border I think you
need fear no farther annoyance from the police, since my passports, as
the Duke of Pianura's cousin, cover any friends I choose to take in my
company."
"Why, sir," said Vivaldi, visibly moved by the readiness of the
response, "here is a generosity so far in excess of our present needs
that it encourages me to accept the smaller favour of travelling with
you to Vercelli. There we have friends with whom we shall be safe for
the night, and soon after sunrise I hope we may be across the border."
Odo at once followed up his advantage by pointing out that it was on the
border that difficulties were most likely to arise; but after a few
moments of debate Vivaldi declared he must first take counsel with his
daughter, who still hung like a mute interrogation on the outskirts of
their talk.
After a few words with her, he returned to Odo. "My daughter," said he,
"whose good sense puts my wisdom to the blush, wishes me first to
enquire if you purpose returning to Turin; since in that case, as she
points out, your kindness might result in annoyances to which we have no
right to expose you."
Odo coloured. "Such considerations, I beg your daughter to believe,
would not weigh with me an instant; but as I am leaving Piedmont for two
years I am not so happy as to risk anything by serving you."
Vivaldi on this assurance at once consented to accept a seat in his
carriage as far as Boffalora, the first village beyond the Sardinian
frontier. It was agreed that at Vercelli Odo was to set down his
companions at an inn whence, alone and privately, they might gain their
friend's house; that on the morrow at daybreak he was to take them up at
a point near the convent of the Umiliati, and that thence they were to
push forward without a halt for Boffalora.
This agreement reached, Odo was about to offer Fulvia a hand to the
carriage when an unwelcome thought arrested him.
"I hope, sir," said he, again turning to Vivaldi, and blushing furiously
as he spoke, "that you feel assured of my discretion; but I ought
perhaps to warn you that my companion yonder, though the good-naturedest
fellow alive, is not one to live long on good terms with a secret,
whether his own or another's."
"I am obliged to you," said Vivaldi, "for the hint; but my daughter and
I are like those messengers who, in time of war, learn to carry their
despatches beneath their tongues. You may trust us not to betray
ourselves; and your friend may, if he chooses, suppose me to be
travelling to Milan to act as governor to a young gentleman of quality."
The Professor's luggage had by this been put on Odo's carriage, and the
latter advanced to Fulvia. He had drawn a favourable inference from the
concern she had shown for his welfare; but to his mortification she
merely laid two reluctant finger tips in his hand and took her seat
without a word of thanks or so much as a glance at her rescuer. This
unmerited repulse, and the constraint occasioned by Cantapresto's
presence, made the remainder of the drive interminable. Even the
Professor's apposite reflections on rice-growing and the culture of the
mulberry did little to shorten the way; and when at length the
bell-towers of Vercelli rose in sight Odo felt the relief of a man who
has acquitted himself of a tedious duty. He had looked forward with the
most romantic anticipations to the outcome of this chance encounter with
Fulvia; but the unforgiving humour which had lent her a transitory charm
now became as disfiguring as some physical defect; and his heart swelled
with the defiance of youthful disappointment.
It was near the angelus when they entered the city. Just within the
gates Odo set down his companions, who took leave of him, the one with
the heartiest expressions of gratitude, the other with a hurried
inclination of her veiled head. Thence he drove on to the Three Crowns,
where he designed to lie. The streets were still crowded with
holiday-makers and decked out with festal hangings. Tapestries and
silken draperies adorned the balconies of the houses, innumerable tiny
lamps framed the doors and windows, and the street-shrines were dressed
with a profusion of flowers; while every square and open space in the
city was crowded with booths, with the tents of ambulant comedians and
dentists, and with the outspread carpets of snake-charmers,
posture-makers and jugglers. Among this mob of quacks and pedlars
circulated other fantastic figures, the camp-followers of the army of
hucksters: dwarfs and cripples, mendicant friars, gypsy fortune-tellers,
and the itinerant reciters of Ariosto and Tasso. With these mingled the
towns-people in holiday dress, the well-to-do farmers and their wives,
and a throng of nondescript idlers, ranging from the servants of the
nobility pushing their way insolently through the crowd, to those
sinister vagabonds who lurk, as it were, in the interstices of every
concourse of people.
It was not long before the noise and animation about him had dispelled
Odo's ill-humour. The world was too fair to be darkened by a girl's
disdain, and a reaction of feeling putting him in tune with the humours
of the market-place, he at once set forth on foot to view the city. It
was now near sunset and the day's decline irradiated the stately front
of the Cathedral, the walls of the ancient Hospital that faced it, and
the groups gathered about the stalls and platforms obstructing the
square. Even in his travelling-dress Odo was not a figure to pass
unnoticed, and he was soon assailed by laughing compliments on his looks
and invitations to visit the various shows concealed behind the flapping
curtains of the tents. There were enough pretty faces in the crowd to
justify such familiarities, and even so modest a success was not without
solace to his vanity. He lingered for some time in the square, answering
the banter of the blooming market-women, inspecting the
filigree-ornaments from Genoa, and watching a little yellow bitch in a
hooped petticoat and lappets dance the furlana to the music of an
armless fiddler who held the bow in his teeth. As he turned from this
show Odo's eye was caught by a handsome girl who, on the arm of a
dashing cavalier in somewhat shabby velvet, was cheapening a pair of
gloves at a neighbouring stall. The girl, who was masked, shot a dark
glance at Odo from under her three-cornered Venetian hat; then, tossing
down a coin, she gathered up the gloves and drew her companion away. The
manoeuvre was almost a challenge, and Odo was about to take it up when a
pretty boy in a Scaramouch habit, waylaying him with various graceful
antics, thrust a play-bill in his hand; and on looking round he found
the girl and her gallant had disappeared. The play-bill, with a wealth
of theatrical rhetoric, invited Odo to attend the Performance to be
given that evening at the Philodramatic Academy by the celebrated Capo
Comico Tartaglia of Rimini and his world-renowned company of Comedians,
who, in the presence of the aristocracy of Vercelli, were to present a
new comedy entitled "Le Gelosie di Milord Zambo," with an Intermezzo of
singing and dancing by the best Performers of their kind.
Dusk was already falling, and Odo, who had brought no letters to the
gentry of Vercelli, where he intended to stay but a night, began to
wonder how he should employ his evening. He had hoped to spend it in
Vivaldi's company, but the Professor not having invited him, he saw no
prospect but to return to the inn and sup alone with Cantapresto. In the
doorway of the Three Crowns he found the soprano awaiting him.
Cantapresto, who had been as mute as a fish during the afternoon's
drive, now bustled forward with a great show of eagerness.
"What poet was it," he cried, "that paragoned youth to the Easter
sunshine, which, wherever it touches, causes a flower to spring up? Here
we are scarce alit in a strange city, and already a messenger finds the
way to our inn with a most particular word from his lady to the
Cavaliere Odo Valsecca." And he held out a perfumed billet sealed with a
flaming dart.
Odo's heart gave a leap at the thought that the letter might be from
Fulvia; but on breaking the seal he read these words, scrawled in an
unformed hand:--
"Will the Cavaliere Valsecca accept from an old friend, who desires to
renew her acquaintance with him, the trifling gift of a side-box at Don
Tartaglia's entertainment this evening?"
Vexed at his credulity, Odo tossed the invitation to Cantapresto; but a
moment later, recalling the glance of the pretty girl in the
market-place, he began to wonder if the billet might not be the prelude
to a sufficiently diverting adventure. It at least offered a way of
passing the evening; and after a hurried supper he set out with
Cantapresto for the Philodramatic Academy. It was late when they entered
their box, and several masks were already capering before the
footlights, exchanging lazzi with the townsfolk in the pit, and
addressing burlesque compliments to the quality in the boxes. The
theatre seemed small and shabby after those of Turin, and there was
little in the old-fashioned fopperies of a provincial audience to
interest a young gentleman fresh from the capital. Odo looked about for
any one resembling the masked beauty of the market-place; but he beheld
only ill-dressed dowagers and matrons, or ladies of the town more
conspicuous for their effrontery than for their charms.
The main diversion of the evening was by this begun. It was a comedy in
the style of Goldoni's early pieces, representing the actual life of the
day, but interspersed with the antics of the masks, to whose improvised
drolleries the people still clung. A terrific Don Spavento in cloak and
sword played the jealous English nobleman, Milord Zambo, and the part of
Tartaglia was taken by the manager, one of the best-known interpreters
of the character in Italy. Tartaglia was the guardian of the prima
amorosa, whom the enamoured Briton pursued; and in the Columbine, when
she sprang upon the stage with a pirouette that showed her slender
ankles and embroidered clocks, Odo instantly recognised the graceful
figure and killing glance of his masked beauty. Her face, which was now
uncovered, more than fulfilled the promise of her eyes, being indeed as
arch and engaging a countenance as ever flashed distraction across the
foot-lights. She was greeted with an outburst of delight that cost her a
sour glance from the prima amorosa, and presently the theatre was
ringing with her improvised sallies, uttered in the gay staccato of the
Venetian dialect. There was to Odo something perplexingly familiar in
this accent and in the light darting movements of her little head framed
in a Columbine's ruff, with a red rose thrust behind one ear; but after
a rapid glance about the house she appeared to take no notice of him and
he began to think it must be to some one else he owed his invitation.
From this question he was soon diverted by his increasing enjoyment of
the play. It was not indeed a remarkable example of its kind, being
crudely enough put together, and turning on a series of ridiculous and
disconnected incidents; but to a taste formed on the frigid elegancies
of Metastasio and the French stage there was something refreshing in
this plunge into the coarse homely atmosphere of the old popular
theatre. Extemporaneous comedies were no longer played in the great
cities, and Odo listened with surprise to the swift thrust and parry,
the inexhaustible flow of jest and repartee, the readiness with which
the comedians caught up each other's leads, like dancers whirling
without a false step through the mazes of some rapid contradance.
So engaged was he that he no longer observed the Columbine save as a
figure in this flying reel; but presently a burst of laughter fixed his
attention and he saw that she was darting across the stage pursued by
Milord Zambo, who, furious at the coquetries of his betrothed, was
avenging himself by his attentions to the Columbine. Half way across,
her foot caught and she fell on one knee. Zambo rushed to the rescue;
but springing up instantly, and feigning to treat his advance as a part
of the play, she cried out with a delicious assumption of outraged
dignity:--
"Not a step farther, villain! Know that it is sacrilege for a common
mortal to embrace one who has been kissed by his most illustrious
Highness the Heir-presumptive of Pianura!"
"Mirandolina of Chioggia!" sprang to Odo's lips. At the same instant the
Columbine turned about and swept him a deep curtsey, to the delight of
the audience, who had no notion of what was going forward, but were in
the humour to clap any whim of their favourite's; then she turned and
darted off the stage, and the curtain fell on a tumult of applause.
Odo had hardly recovered from his confusion when the door of the box
opened and the young Scaramouch he had seen in the market-place peeped
in and beckoned to Cantapresto. The soprano rose with alacrity, leaving
Odo alone in the dimly-lit box, his mind agrope in a labyrinth of
memories. A moment later Cantapresto returned with that air of furtive
relish that always proclaimed him the bearer of a tender message. The
one he now brought was to the effect that the Signorina Miranda
Malmocco, justly renowned as one of the first Columbines of Italy, had
charged him to lay at the Cavaliere Valsecca's feet her excuses for the
liberty she had taken with his illustrious name, and to entreat that he
would show his magnanimity by supping with her after the play in her
room at the Three Crowns--a request she was emboldened to make by the
fact that she was lately from Pianura, and could give him the last news
of the court.
The message chimed with Odo's mood, and the play over he hastened back
to the inn with Cantapresto, and bid the landlord send to the Signorina
Miranda's room whatever delicacies the town could provide. Odo on
arriving that afternoon had himself given orders that his carriage
should be at the door the next morning an hour before sunrise; and he
now repeated these instructions to Cantapresto, charging him on his life
to see that nothing interfered with their fulfilment. The soprano
objected that the hour was already late, and that they could easily
perform the day's journey without curtailing their rest; but on Odo's
reiteration of the order he resigned himself, with the remark that it
was a pity old age had no savings-bank for the sleep that youth
squandered.
2.8.
It was something of a disappointment to Odo, on entering the Signorina
Miranda's room, to find that she was not alone. Engaged in feeding her
pet monkey with sugar-plums was the young man who had given her his arm
in the Piazza. This gentleman, whom she introduced to Odo as her cousin
and travelling companion, the Count of Castelrovinato, had the same air
of tarnished elegance as his richly-laced coat and discoloured ruffles.
He seemed, however, of a lively and obliging humour, and Mirandolina
observed with a smile that she could give no better notion of his
amiability than by mentioning that he was known among her friends as the
Cavaliere Frattanto. This praise, Odo thought, seemed scarcely to the
cousin's liking; but he carried it off with the philosophic remark that
it is the mortar between the bricks that holds the building together.
"At present," said Mirandolina laughing, "he is engaged in propping up a
ruin; for he has fallen desperately in love with our prima amorosa, a
lady who lost her virtue under the Pharaohs, but whom, for his sake, I
have been obliged to include in our little supper."
This, it was clear, was merely a way of palliating the Count's
infatuation for herself; but he took the second thrust as good-naturedly
as the first, remarking that he had been bred for an archeologist and
had never lost his taste for the antique.
Odo's servants now appearing with a pasty of beccafichi, some bottles of
old Malaga and a tray of ices and fruits, the three seated themselves at
the table, which Mirandolina had decorated with a number of wax candles
stuck in the cut-glass bottles of the Count's dressing-case. Here they
were speedily joined by the actress's monkey and parrot, who had soon
spread devastation among the dishes. While Miranda was restoring order
by boxing the monkey's ears and feeding the shrieking bird from her
lips, the door opened to admit the prima amorosa, a lady whose mature
charms and mellifluous manner suggested a fine fruit preserved in syrup.
The newcomer was clearly engrossed in captivating the Count, and the
latter amply justified his nick-name by the cynical complaisance with
which he cleared the way for Odo by responding to her advances.
The tete-a-tete thus established, Miranda at once began to excuse
herself for the means she had taken to attract Odo's attention at the
theatre. She had heard from the innkeeper that the Duke of Pianura's
cousin, the Cavaliere Valsecca, was expected that day in Vercelli; and
seeing in the Piazza a young gentleman in travelling-dress and French
toupet, had at once guessed him to be the distinguished stranger from
Turin. At the theatre she had been much amused by the air of
apprehension with which Odo had appeared to seek, among the dowdy or
vulgar inmates of the boxes, the sender of the mysterious billet; and
the contrast between the elegant gentleman in embroidered coat and
gold-hilted sword, and the sleepy bewildered little boy of the midnight
feast at Chivasso, had seized her with such comic effect that she could
not resist a playful allusion to their former meeting. All this was set
forth with so sprightly an air of mock-contrition that, had Odo felt the
least resentment, it must instantly have vanished. He was, however, in
the humour to be pleased by whatever took his mind off his own affairs,
and none could be more skilled than Mirandolina in profiting by such a
mood.
He pressed her to tell him something of what had befallen her since they
had met, but she replied by questioning him about his own experiences,
and on learning that he had been called to Pianura on account of the
heir's ill-health she declared it was notorious that the little prince
had not long to live, and that the Duke could not hope for another son.
"The Duke's life, however," said Odo, "is as good as mine, and in truth
I am far less moved by my remote hopes of the succession than by the
near prospect of visiting so many famous cities and seeing so much that
is novel and entertaining."
Miranda shrugged her pretty shoulders. "Why, as to the Duke's life,"
said she, "there are some that would not give a counterfeit penny for
it; but indeed his Highness lives so secluded from the world, and is
surrounded by persons so jealous to conceal his true condition even from
the court, that the reports of his health are no more to be trusted than
the other strange rumours about him. I was told in Pianura that but four
persons are admitted to his familiarity: his confessor, his mistress,
Count Trescorre, who is already comptroller of finance and will soon be
prime-minister, and a strange German doctor or astrologer that is lately
come to the court. As to the Duchess, she never sees him; and were it
not for Trescorre, who has had the wit to stand well with both sides, I
doubt if she would know more of what goes on about her husband than any
scullion in the ducal kitchens."
She spoke with the air of one well-acquainted with the subject, and Odo,
curious to learn more, asked her how she came to have such an insight
into the intrigues of the court.
"Why," said she, "in the oddest way imaginable--by being the guest of
his lordship the Bishop of Pianura; and since you asked me just now to
tell you something of my adventures, I will, if you please, begin by
relating the occurrences that procured me this extraordinary honour. But
first," she added with a smile, "would it not be well to open another
bottle of Malaga?"
MIRANDOLINA'S STORY.
You must know, she continued, when Odo had complied with her request,
that soon after our parting at Chivasso the company with which I was
travelling came to grief through the dishonesty of the Harlequin, who
ran away with the Capo Comico's wife, carrying with him, besides the
lady, the far more irretrievable treasure of our modest earnings. This
brought us to destitution, and the troop was disbanded. I had nothing
but the spangled frock on my back, and thinking to make some use of my
sole possession I set out as a dancer with the flute-player of the
company, a good-natured fellow that had a performing marmozet from the
Indies. We three wandered from one town to another, spreading our carpet
wherever there was a fair or a cattle-market, going hungry in bad
seasons, and in our luckier days attaching ourselves to some band of
strolling posture-makers or comedians.
One day, after about a year of this life, I had the good fortune, in the
market-place of Parma, to attract the notice of a rich English nobleman
who was engaged in writing a book on the dances of the ancients. This
gentleman, though no longer young, and afflicted with that strange
English malady that obliges a man to wrap his feet in swaddling-clothes
like a new-born infant, was of a generous and paternal disposition, and
offered, if I would accompany him to Florence, to give me a home and a
genteel education. I remained with him about two years, during which
time he had me carefully instructed in music, French and the art of the
needle. In return for this, my principal duties were to perform in
antique dances before the friends of my benefactor--whose name I could
never learn to pronounce--and to read aloud to him the works of the
modern historians and philosophers.
We lived in a large palace with exceedingly high-ceilinged rooms, which
my friend would never have warmed on account of his plethoric habit, and
as I had to dance at all seasons in the light draperies worn by the
classical goddesses, I suffered terribly from chilblains and contracted
a cruel cough. To this, however, I might have resigned myself; but when
I learned from a young abate who frequented the house that the books I
was compelled to read were condemned by the Church, and could not be
perused without deadly peril to the soul, I at once resolved to fly from
such contaminating influences. Knowing that his lordship would not
consent to my leaving him, I took the matter out of his hands by
slipping out one day during the carnival, carrying with me from that
accursed house nothing but the few jewels that my benefactor had
expressed the intention of leaving me in his will. At the nearest church
I confessed my involuntary sin in reading the prohibited books, and
having received absolution and the sacrament, I joined my friend the
abate at Cafaggiolo, whence we travelled to Modena, where he was
acquainted with a theatrical manager just then in search of a Columbine.
My dancing and posturing at Florence had given me something of a name
among the dilettanti, and I was at once engaged by the manager, who took
me to Venice, where I subsequently joined the company of the excellent
Tartaglia with whom I am now acting. Since then I have been attended by
continued success, which I cannot but ascribe to my virtuous resolve to
face poverty and distress rather than profit a moment longer by the
beneficence of an atheist.
All this I have related to show you how the poor ignorant girl you met
at Chivasso was able to acquire something of the arts and usages of good
company; but I will now pass on to the incident of my visit to Pianura.
Our manager, then, had engaged some time since to give a series of
performances at Pianura during the last carnival. The Bishop's nephew,
Don Serafino, who has a pronounced taste for the theatre, had been
instrumental in making the arrangement; but at the last moment he wrote
us that, owing to the influence of the Duke's confessor, the Bishop had
been obliged to prohibit the appearance of women on the stage of
Pianura. This was a cruel blow, as we had prepared a number of comedies
in which I was to act the leading part; and Don Serafino was equally
vexed, since he did me the honour of regarding me as the chief ornament
of the company. At length it was agreed that, to overcome the
difficulty, it should be given out that the celebrated Tartaglia of
Rimini would present himself at Pianura with his company of comedians,
among whom was the popular favourite, Mirandolino of Chioggia, twin
brother of the Signorina Miranda Malmocco, and trained by that actress
to play in all her principal parts.
This satisfied the scruples and interests of all concerned, and soon
afterward I made my first appearance in Pianura. My success was greater
than we had foreseen; for I threw myself into the part with such zest
that every one was taken in, and even Don Serafino required the most
categorical demonstration to convince him that I was not my own brother.
The illusion I produced was, however, not without its inconveniences;
for, among the ladies who thronged to see the young Mirandolino, were
several who desired a closer acquaintance with him; and one of these, as
it happened, was the Duke's mistress, the Countess Belverde. You will
see the embarrassment of my situation. If I failed to respond to her
advances, her influence was sufficient to drive us from the town at the
opening of a prosperous season; if I discovered my sex to her, she might
more cruelly avenge herself by throwing the whole company into prison,
to be dealt with by the Holy Office. Under these circumstances, I
decided to appeal to the Bishop, but without, of course, revealing to
him that I was, so to speak, my own sister. His lordship, who is never
sorry to do the Belverde a bad turn, received me with the utmost
indulgence, and declared that, to protect my innocence from the designs
of this new Potiphar's wife, he would not only give me a lodging in the
Episcopal palace, but confer on me the additional protection of the
minor orders. This was rather more than I had bargained for, but he that
wants the melon is a fool to refuse the rind, and I thanked the Bishop
for his kindness and allowed him to give out that, my heart having been
touched by grace, I had resolved, at the end of the season, to withdraw
from the stage and prepare to enter the Church.
I now fancied myself safe; for I knew the Countess could not attempt my
removal without risk of having her passion denounced to the Duke. I
spent several days very agreeably in the Episcopal palace, entertained
at his lordship's own table, and favoured with private conversations
during which he told me many curious and interesting things about the
Duke and the court, and delicately abstained from all allusion to my
coming change of vocation. The Countess, however, had not been idle. One
day I received notice that the Holy Office disapproved of the appearance
on the stage of a young man about to enter the Church, and requested me
to withdraw at once to the Barnabite monastery, where I was to remain
till I received the minor orders. Now the Abbot of the Barnabites was
the Belverde's brother, and I saw at once that to obey his order would
place me in that lady's power. I again addressed myself to the Bishop,
but to my despair he declared himself unable to aid me farther, saying
that he dared not offend the Holy Office, and that he had already run
considerable risk in protecting me from the Countess.
I was accordingly transferred to the monastery, in spite of my own
entreaties and those of the good Tartaglia, who moved heaven and earth
to save his Columbine from sequestration. You may imagine my despair. My
fear of doing Tartaglia an injury kept me from revealing my sex, and for
twenty-four hours I languished in my cell, refusing food and air, and
resisting the repeated attempts of the good monks to alleviate my
distress. At length however I bethought me that the Countess would soon
appear; and it flashed across me that the one person who could protect
me from her was her brother. I at once sought an interview with the
Abbot, who received me with great indulgence. I explained to him that
the distress I suffered was occasioned by the loss that my sequestration
was causing my excellent manager, and begged him to use his influence to
have me released from the monastery. The Abbot listened attentively, and
after a pause replied that there was but one person who could arrange
the matter, and that was his sister the Countess Belverde, whose
well-known piety gave her considerable influence in such matters. I now
saw that no alternative remained but to confess the truth; and with
tears of agitation I avowed my sex, and threw myself on his mercy.
I was not disappointed in the result. The Abbot listened with the
greatest benevolence to all the details of my adventure. He laughed
heartily at his sister's delusion, but said I had done right in not
undeceiving her, as her dread of ridicule might have led to unpleasant
reprisals. He declared that for the present he could not on any account
consent to let me out of his protection; but he promised if I submitted
myself implicitly to his guidance, not only to preserve me from the
Belverde's machinations, but to ensure my reappearing on the stage
within two days at the latest. Knowing him to be a very powerful
personage I thought it best to accept these conditions, which in any
case it would have been difficult to resist; and the next day he
informed me that the Holy Office had consented to the Signorina Miranda
Malmocco's appearing on the stage of Pianura during the remainder of the
season, in consideration of the financial injury caused to the manager
of the company by the edifying conversion of her twin-brother.
"In this way," the Abbot was pleased to explain, "you will be quite safe
from my sister, who is a woman of the most unexceptionable morals, and
at the same time you will not expose our excellent Bishop to the charge
of having been a party to a grave infraction of ecclesiastical
discipline.--My only condition," he added with a truly paternal smile,
"is that, after the Signorina Miranda's performance at the theatre her
twin-brother the Signor Mirandolino shall return every evening to the
monastery: a condition which seems necessary to the preservation of our
secret, and which I trust you will not regard as too onerous, in view of
the service I have been happy enough to render you."
It would have ill become me to dispute the excellent ecclesiastic's
wishes, and Tartaglia and the rest of the company having been sworn to
secrecy, I reappeared that very evening in one of my favourite parts,
and was afterward carried back to the monastery in the most private
manner. The Signorina Malmocco's successes soon repaired the loss
occasioned by her brother's withdrawal, and if any suspected their
identity all were interested to conceal their suspicions.
Thus it came about that my visit to Pianura, having begun under the roof
of a Bishop, ended in a monastery of Barnabites--nor have I any cause to
complain of the hospitality of either of my hosts...
* * * * *
Odo, charmed by the vivacity with which this artless narrative was
related, pressed Miranda to continue the history of her adventures. The
actress laughingly protested that she must first refresh herself with
one of the ices he had so handsomely provided; and meanwhile she begged
the Count to favour them with a song.
This gentleman, who seemed glad of any pretext for detaching himself
from his elderly flame, rescued Mirandolina's lute from the inquisitive
fingering of the monkey, and striking a few melancholy chords, sang the
following words, which he said he had learned from a peasant of the
Abruzzi:--
Flower of the thyme!
She draws me as your fragrance draws the bees,
She draws me as the cold moon draws the seas,
And summer winter-time.
Flower of the broom!
Like you she blossoms over dark abysses,
And close to ruin bloom her sweetest kisses,
And on the brink of doom.
Flower of the rue!
She wore you on her breast when first we met.
I begged your blossom and I wear it yet--
Flower of regret!
The song ended, the prima amorosa, overcome by what she visibly deemed
an appeal to her feelings, declared with some agitation that the hour
was late and she must withdraw. Miranda wished the actress an
affectionate goodnight and asked the Count to light her to her room,
which was on the farther side of the gallery surrounding the courtyard
of the inn. Castelrovinato complied with his usual air of resignation,
and the door closing on the couple, Odo and Miranda found themselves
alone.
"And now," said the good-natured girl, placing herself on the sofa and
turning to her guest with a smile, "if you will take a seat at my side I
will gladly continue the history of my adventures"...
2.9.
Odo woke with a start. He had been trying to break down a great
gold-barred gate, behind which Fulvia, pale and disordered, struggled in
the clutch of the blind beggar of the Corpus Domini...
He sat up and looked about him. The gate was still there; but as he
gazed it resolved itself into his shuttered window, barred with wide
lines of sunlight. It was day, then! He sprang out of bed and flung open
the shutters. Beneath him lay the piazza of Vercelli, bathed in the
vertical brightness of a summer noon; and as he stared out on this
inexorable scene, the clock over the Hospital struck twelve.
Twelve o'clock! And he had promised to meet Vivaldi at dawn behind the
Umiliati! As the truth forced itself on Odo he dropped into a chair and
hid his face with a groan. He had failed them again, then--and this time
how cruelly and basely! He felt himself the victim of a conspiracy which
in some occult manner was forever forcing him to outrage and betray the
two beings he most longed to serve. The idea of a conspiracy flashed a
sudden light on his evening's diversion, and he sprang up with a cry.
Yes! It was a plot, and any but a dolt must have traced the soprano's
hand in this vulgar assault upon his senses. He choked with anger at the
thought of having played the dupe when two lives he cherished were
staked upon his vigilance...
To his furious summons Cantapresto presented a blank wall of ignorance.
Yes, the Cavaliere had given orders that the carriage should be ready
before daybreak; but who was authorised to wake the cavaliere? After
keeping the carriage two hours at the door Cantapresto had ventured to
send it back to the stable; but the horses should instantly be put to,
and within an hour they would be well forward on their journey.
Meanwhile, should the barber be summoned at once? Or would the cavaliere
first refresh himself with an excellent cup of chocolate, prepared under
Cantapresto's own supervision?
Odo turned on him savagely. "Traitor--spy! In whose pay--?"
But the words roused him to a fresh sense of peril. Cantapresto, though
he might have guessed Odo's intention, was not privy to his plan of
rejoining Vivaldi and Fulvia; and it flashed across the young man that
his self-betrayal must confirm the others' suspicions. His one hope of
protecting his friends was to affect indifference to what had happened;
and this was made easier, by the reflection that Cantapresto was after
all but a tool in more powerful hands. To be spied on was so natural to
an Italian of that day that the victim's instinct was rather to
circumvent the spy than to denounce him.
Odo dismissed Cantapresto with the reply that he would give orders about
the carriage later; desiring that meanwhile the soprano should purchase
the handsomest set of filigree ornaments to be found in Vercelli, and
carry them with the Cavaliere Valsecca's compliments to the Signorina
Malmocco.
Having thus rid himself of observation he dressed as rapidly as
possible, trying the while to devise some means of tracing Vivaldi. But
the longer he pondered the attempt the more plainly he saw its futility.
Vivaldi, doubtless from motives of prudence, had not named the friend
with whom he and Fulvia were to take shelter; nor did Odo even know in
what quarter of the city to seek them. To question the police was to
risk their last chance of safety; and for the same reason he dared not
enquire of the posting-master whether any travellers had set out that
morning for Lombardy. His natural activity of mind was hampered by a
leaden sense of remissness. With what anguish of spirit must Vivaldi and
Fulvia have awaited him in that hour of dawn behind the convent! What
thoughts must have visited the girl's mind as day broadened, the city
woke, and peril pressed on them with every voice and eye! And when at
length they saw that he had failed them, which way did their hunted
footsteps turn? Perhaps they dared not go back to the friend who had
taken them in for the night. Perhaps even now they wandered through the
streets, fearing arrest if they revealed themselves by venturing to
engage a carriage, at every turn of his thoughts Odo was mocked by some
vision of disaster; and an hour of perplexity yielded no happier
expedient than that of repairing to the meeting-place behind the
Umiliati. It was a deserted lane with few passers; and after vainly
questioning the blank wall of the convent and the gates of a
sinister-looking alms-house that faced it, he retraced his steps to the
inn.
He spent a day of futile research and bitter thoughts, now straying
forth in the hope of meeting Vivaldi, now hastening back to the Three
Crowns on the chance that some message might await him. He dared not let
his mind rest on what might have befallen his friends; yet the
alternative of contemplating his own course was scarcely more endurable.
Nightfall brought the conviction that the Professor and Fulvia had
passed beyond his reach. It was clear that if they were still in
Vercelli they did not mean to make their presence known to him, while in
the event of their escape he was without means of tracing them farther.
He knew indeed that their destination was Milan, but, should they reach
there safely, what hope was there of finding them in a city of
strangers? By a stroke of folly he had cut himself off from all
communication with them, and his misery was enhanced by the discovery of
his weakness. He who had fed his fancy on high visions, cherishing in
himself the latent patriot and hero, had been driven by a girl's caprice
to break the first law of manliness and honour! The event had already
justified her; and in a flash of self-contempt he saw himself as she no
doubt beheld him--the fribble preying like a summer insect on the slow
growths of difficult years...
In bitterness of spirit he set out the next morning for Pianura. A
half-melancholy interest drew him back to the scene of his lonely
childhood, and he had started early in order to push on that night to
Pontesordo. At Valsecca, the regular posting-station between Vercelli
and Pianura, he sent Cantapresto forward to the capital, and in a stormy
yellow twilight drove alone across the waste land that dipped to the
marshes. On his right the woods of the ducal chase hung black against
the sky; and presently he saw ahead of him the old square keep, with a
flight of swallows circling low about its walls.
In the muddy farm-yard a young man was belabouring a donkey laden with
mulberry-shoots. He stared for a moment at Odo's approach and then
sullenly returned to his task.
Odo sprang out into the mud. "Why do you beat the brute?" said he
indignantly. The other turned a dull face on him and he recognised his
old enemy Giannozzo.
"Giannozzo," he cried, "don't you know me? I am the Cavaliere Valsecca,
whose ears you used to box when you were a lad. Must you always be
pummelling something, that you can't let that poor brute alone at the
end of its day's work?"
Giannozzo, dropping his staff, stammered out that he craved his
excellency's pardon for not knowing him, but that as for the ass it was
a stubborn devil that would not have carried Jesus Christ without
gibbing.
"The beast is tired and hungry," cried Odo, his old compassion for the
sufferings of the farm-animals suddenly reviving. "How many hours have
you worked it without rest or food?"
"No more than I have worked myself," said Giannozzo sulkily; "and as for
its being hungry, why should it fare better than its masters?"
Their words had called out of the house a lean bent woman, whose
shrivelled skin showed through the rents in her unbleached shift. At
sight of Odo she pushed Giannozzo aside and hurried forward to ask how
she might serve the gentleman.
"With supper and a bed, my good Filomena," said Odo; and she flung
herself at his feet with a cry.
"Saints of heaven, that I should not have known his excellency! But I am
half blind with the fever, and who could have dreamed of such an
honour?" She clung to his knees in the mud, kissing his hands and
calling down blessings on him. "And as for you, Giannozzo, you
curd-faced fool, quick, see that his excellency's horses are stabled and
go call your father from the cow-house while I prepare his excellency's
supper. And fetch me in a faggot to light the fire in the bailiff's
parlour."
Odo followed her into the kitchen, where he had so often crouched in a
corner to eat his polenta out of reach of her vigorous arm. The roof
seemed lower and more smoke-blackened than ever, but the hearth was
cold, and he noticed that no supper was laid. Filomena led him into the
bailiff's parlour, where a mortal chill seized him. Cobwebs hung from
the walls, the window-panes were broken and caked with grime, and the
few green twigs which Giannozzo presently threw on the hearth poured a
cloud of smoke into the cold heavy air.
There was a long delay while supper was preparing, and when at length
Filomena appeared, it was only to produce, with many excuses, a loaf of
vetch-bread, a bit of cheese and some dried quinces. There was nothing
else in the house, she declared: not so much as a bit of lard to make
soup with, a handful of pasti or a flask of wine. In the old days, as
his excellency might remember, they had eaten a bit of meat on Sundays,
and drunk aquarolle with their supper; but since the new taxes it was as
much as the farmers could do to feed their cattle, without having a
scrap to spare for themselves. Jacopone, she continued, was bent double
with the rheumatism, and had not been able to drive a plough or to work
in the mulberries for over two years. He and the farm-lads sat in the
cow-stables when their work was over, for the sake of the heat, and she
carried their black bread out there to them: a cold supper tasted better
in a warm place, and as his excellency knew, all the windows in the
house were unglazed save in the bailiff's parlour. Her man would be in
presently to pay his duty to his excellency; but he had grown
dull-witted since the rheumatism took him, and his excellency must not
take it ill if his talk was a little childish.
Thereupon Filomena excused herself, that she might put a clean shirt on
Jacopone, and Odo was left to his melancholy musings. His mind had of
late run much on economic abuses; but what was any philandering with
reform to this close contact with misery? It was as though white hungry
faces had suddenly stared in at the windows of his brightly-lit life.
What did these people care for education, enlightenment, the religion of
humanity? What they wanted was fodder for their cattle, a bit of meat on
Sundays and a faggot on the hearth.
Filomena presently returned with her husband; but Jacopone had shrunk
into a crippled tremulous old man, who pulled a vague forelock at Odo
without sign of recognition. Filomena, it was clear, was master at
Pontesordo; for though Giannozzo was a man grown, and did a man's work,
he still danced to the tune of his mother's tongue. It was from her that
Odo, shivering over the smoky hearth, gathered the details of their
wretched state. Pontesordo being a part of the ducal domain, they had
led in their old days an easier life than their neighbours; but the new
taxes had stripped them as bare as a mulberry-tree in June.
"How is a Christian to live, excellency, with the salt-tax doubled, so
that the cows go dry for want of it; with half a zecchin on every pair
of oxen, a stajo of wheat and two fowls to the parish, and not so much
as a bite of grass allowed on the Duke's lands? In his late Highness's
day the poor folk were allowed to graze their cattle on the borders of
the chase; but now a man dare not pluck a handful of weeds there, or so
much as pick up a fallen twig; though the deer may trample his young
wheat, and feed off the patch of beans at his very door. They do say the
Duchess has a kind heart, and gives away money to the towns-folk; but we
country-people who spend our lives raising fodder for her game never
hear of her Highness but when one of her game-keepers comes down on us
for poaching or stealing wood.--Yes, by the saints, and it was her
Highness who sent a neighbour's lad to the galleys last year for felling
a tree in the chase; a good lad as ever dug furrow, but he lacked wood
for a new plough-share, and how in God's name was he to plough his field
without it?"
So she went on, like a torrent after the spring rains; but when he named
Momola she fell silent, and Giannozzo, looking sideways, drummed with
his heel on the floor.
Odo glanced from one to the other. "She's dead, then?" he cried.
Filomena opened deprecating palms. "Can one tell, excellency? It may be
she is off with the gypsies."
"The gypsies? How long since?"
"Giannozzo," cried his mother, as he stood glowering, "go see that the
stable is locked and his excellency's horses bedded down." He slunk out
and she began to gather up the remains of Odo's meagre supper.
"But you must remember when this happened."
"Holy Mother! It was the year we had frost in April and lost our
hatching for want of leaves. But as for that child of ingratitude, one
day she was here, the next she was gone--clean gone, as a nut drops from
the tree--and I that had given the blood of my veins to nourish her!
Since then, God is my witness, we have had nothing but misfortune. The
next year it was the weevils in the wheat; and so it goes."
Odo was silent, seeing it was vain to press her. He fancied that the
girl must have died--of neglect perhaps, or ill usage--and that they
feared to own it. His heart swelled, but not against them: they seemed
to him no more accountable than cowed hunger-driven animals.
He tossed impatiently on the hard bed Filomena had made up for him in
the bailiff's parlour, and was afoot again with the first light.
Stepping out into the farm-yard he looked abroad over the flat grey face
of the land. Around the keep stretched the new-ploughed fields and the
pollarded mulberry orchards; but these, with the clustered hovels of the
village, formed a mere islet in the surrounding waste of marsh and
woodland. The scene symbolised fitly enough of social conditions of the
country: the over-crowded peasantry huddled on their scant patches of
arable ground, while miles of barren land represented the feudal rights
that hemmed them in on every side.
Odo walked across the yard to the chapel. On the threshold he stumbled
over a heap of mulberry-shoots and a broken plough-share. Twilight held
the place; but as he stood there the frescoes started out in the slant
of the sunrise like dead faces floating to the surface of a river. Dead
faces, yes: plaintive spectres of his childish fears and longings, lost
in the harsh daylight of experience. He had forgotten the very dreams
they stood for: Lethe flowed between and only one voice reached across
the torrent. It was that of Saint Francis, lover of the poor...
The morning was hot as Odo drove toward Pianura, and limping ahead of
him in the midday glare he presently saw the figure of a hump-backed man
in a decent black dress and three-cornered hat. There was something
familiar in the man's gait, and in the shape of his large head, poised
on narrow stooping shoulders, and as the carriage drew abreast of him,
Odo, leaning from the window, cried out, "Brutus--this must be Brutus!"
"Your excellency has the advantage of me," said the hunchback, turning
on him a thin face lit by the keen eyes that had once searched his
childish soul.
Odo met the rebuff with a smile. "Does that," said he, "prevent my
suggesting that you might continue your way more comfortably in my
carriage? The road is hot and dusty, and, as you see, I am in want of
company."
The pedestrian, who seemed unprepared for this affable rejoinder, had
the sheepish air of a man whose rudeness has missed the mark.
"Why, sir," said he, recovering himself, "comfort is all a matter of
habit, and I daresay the jolting of your carriage might seem to me more
unpleasant than the heat and dust of the road, to which necessity has
long since accustomed me."
"In that case," returned Odo with increasing amusement, "you will have
the additional merit of sacrificing your pleasure to add to mine."
The hunchback stared. "And what have you or yours ever done for me," he
retorted, "that I should sacrifice to your pleasure even the wretched
privilege of being dusted by the wheels of your coach?"
"Why, that," replied Odo, "is a question I can scarce answer till you
give me the opportunity of naming myself.--If you are indeed Carlo
Gamba," he continued, "I am your old friend and companion Odo Valsecca."
The hunchback started. "The Cavaliere Valsecca!" he cried. "I had heard
that you were expected." He stood gazing at Odo. "Our next Duke!" he
muttered.
Odo smiled. "I had rather," he said, "that my past commended me than my
future. It is more than doubtful if I am ever able to offer you a seat
in the Duke's carriage; but Odo Valsecca's is very much at your
service."
Gamba bowed with a kind of awkward dignity. "I am grateful for a
friend's kindness," he said, "but I do not ride in a nobleman's
carriage."
"There," returned Odo with perfect good-humour, "you have had advantage
of ME; for I can no more escape doing so than you can escape spending
your life in the company of an ill-tempered man." And courteously
lifting his hat he called to the postillion to drive on.
The hunchback at this, flushing red, laid a hand on the carriage door.
"Sir," said he, "I freely own myself in the wrong; but a smooth temper
was not one of the blessings my unknown parents bequeathed to me; and I
confess I had heard of you as one little concerned with your inferiors
except as they might chance to serve your pleasure."
It was Odo's turn to colour. "Look," said he, "at the fallibility of
rumour; for I had heard of you as something of a philosopher, and here I
find you not only taking a man's character on hearsay but denying him
the chance to prove you mistaken!"
"I deny it no longer," said Gamba stepping into the coach; "but as to
philosophy, the only claim I can make to it is that of being by birth a
peripatetic."
His dignity appeased, the hunchback proved himself a most engaging
companion, and as the carriage lumbered slowly toward Pianura he had
time not only to recount his own history but to satisfy Odo as to many
points of the life awaiting him.
Gamba, it appeared, owed his early schooling to a Jesuit priest who,
visiting the foundling asylum, had been struck by the child's quickness,
and had taken him home and bred him to be a clerk. The priest's death
left his charge adrift, with a smattering of scholarship above his
station, and none to whom he could turn for protection. For a while he
had lived, as he said, like a street-cat, picking up a meal where he
could, and sleeping in church porches and under street-arcades, till one
of the Duke's servants took pity on him and he was suffered to hang
about the palace and earn his keep by doing the lacquey's errands. The
Duke's attention having been called to him as a lad of parts, his
Highness had given him to the Marquess of Cerveno, in whose service he
remained till shortly before that young nobleman's death. The hunchback
passed hastily over this period; but his reticence was lit by the angry
flash of his eyes. After the Marquess's death he had lived for a while
from hand to mouth, copying music, writing poetry for weddings and
funerals, doing pen-and-ink portraits at a scudo apiece, and putting his
hand to any honest job that came his way. Count Trescorre, who now and
then showed a fitful recognition of the tie that was supposed to connect
them, at length heard of the case to which he was come and offered him a
trifling pension. This the hunchback refused, asking instead to be given
some fixed employment. Trescorre then obtained his appointment as
assistant to the Duke's librarian, a good old priest engrossed in
compiling the early history of Pianura from the ducal archives; and this
post Gamba had now filled for two years.
"It must," said Odo, "be one singularly congenial to you, if, as I have
heard, you are of a studious habit. Though I suppose," he tentatively
added, "the library is not likely to be rich in works of the new
scientific and philosophic schools."
His companion received this observation in silence; and after a moment
Odo continued: "I have a motive in asking, since I have been somewhat
deeply engaged in the study of these writers, and my dearest wish is to
continue while in Pianura my examination of their theories, and if
possible to become acquainted with any who share their views."
He was not insensible of the risk of thus opening himself to a stranger;
but the sense of peril made him the more eager to proclaim himself on
the side of the cause he seemed to have deserted.
Gamba turned as he spoke, and their eyes met in one of those revealing
glances that lay the foundations of friendship.
"I fear, Cavaliere," said the hunchback with a smile, "that you will
find both branches of investigation somewhat difficult to pursue in
Pianura; for the Church takes care that neither the philosophers nor
their books shall gain a footing in our most Christian state. Indeed,"
he added, "not only must the library be free from heretical works, but
the librarian clear of heretical leanings; and since you have honoured
me with your confidence I will own that, the court having got wind of my
supposed tendency to liberalism, I live in daily expectation of
dismissal. For the moment they are content to keep their spies on me;
but were it not for the protection of the good abate, my superior, I
should long since have been turned out."
"And why," asked Odo, "do you speak of the court and the Church as one?"
"Because, sir, in our virtuous duchy the terms are interchangeable. The
Duke is in fact so zealous a son of the Church that if the latter showed
any leniency to sinners the secular arm would promptly repair her
negligence. His Highness, as you may have heard, is ruled by his
confessor, an adroit Dominican. The confessor, it is true, has two
rivals, the Countess Belverde, a lady distinguished for her piety, and a
German astrologer or alchemist, lately come to Pianura, and calling
himself a descendant of the Egyptian priesthood and an adept of the
higher or secret doctrines of Neoplatonism. These three, however, though
ostensibly rivals for the Duke's favour, live on such good terms with
one another that they are suspected of having entered into a secret
partnership; while some regard them all as the emissaries of the
Jesuits, who, since the suppression of the Society, are known to have
kept a footing in Pianura, as in most of the Italian states. As to the
Duke, the death of the Marquess of Cerveno, the failing health of the
little prince, and his own strange physical infirmities, have so preyed
on his mind that he is the victim of any who are unscrupulous enough to
trade on the fears of a diseased imagination. His counsellors, however
divided in doctrine, have at least one end in common; and that is, to
keep the light of reason out of the darkened chamber in which they have
confined him; and with such a ruler and such principles of government,
you may fancy that poor philosophy has not where to lay her head."
"And the people?" Odo pursued. "What of the fiscal administration? In
some states where liberty of thought is forbidden the material welfare
of the subject is nevertheless considered."
The hunchback shook his head. "It may be so," said he, "though I had
thought the principle of moral tyranny must infect every branch of
public administration. With us, at all events, where the Church party
rules, the privileges and exemptions of the clergy are the chief source
of suffering, and the state of passive ignorance in which they have kept
the people has bred in the latter a dull resignation that is the surest
obstacle to reform. Oh, sir," he cried, his eyes darkening with emotion,
"if you could see, as I do, the blind brute misery on which all the
magnificence of rank and all the refinements of luxury are built, you
would feel, as you drive along this road, that with every turn of the
wheels you are passing over the bodies of those who have toiled without
ceasing that you might ride in a gilt coach, and have gone hungry that
you might feast in Kings' palaces!"
The touch of rhetoric in this adjuration did not discredit it with Odo,
to whom the words were as caustic on an open wound. He turned to make
some impulsive answer; but as he did so he caught sight of the towers of
Pianura rising above the orchards and market-gardens of the suburbs. The
sight started a new train of feeling, and Gamba, perceiving it, said
quietly: "But this is no time to speak of such things."
A moment later the carriage had passed under the great battlemented
gates, with their Etruscan bas-reliefs, and the motto of the house of
Valsecca--Humilitas--surmounted by the ducal escutcheon.
Though the hour was close on noon the streets were as animated as at the
angelus, and the carriage could hardly proceed for the crowd obstructing
its passage. So unusual at that period was such a sight in one of the
lesser Italian cities that Odo turned to Gamba for an explanation. At
the same moment a roar rose from the crowd; and the coach turning into
the Corso which led to the ducal palace and the centre of the town, Odo
caught sight of a strange procession advancing from that direction. It
was headed by a clerk or usher with a black cap and staff, behind whom
marched two bare-foot friars escorting between them a middle-aged man in
the dress of an abate, his hands bound behind him and his head
surmounted by a paste-board mitre inscribed with the title: A Destroyer
of Female Chastity. This man, who was of a simple and decent aspect, was
so dazed by the buffeting of the crowd, so spattered by the mud and
filth hurled at him from a hundred taunting hands, and his countenance
distorted by so piteous a look of animal fear, that he seemed more like
a madman being haled to Bedlam than a penitent making public amends for
his offence.
"Are such failings always so severely punished in Pianura?" Odo asked,
turning ironically to Gamba as the mob and its victim passed out of
sight.
The hunchback smiled. "Not," said he, "if the offender be in a position
to benefit by the admirable doctrines of probabilism, the direction of
intention, or any one of the numerous expedients by which an indulgent
Church has smoothed the way of the sinner; but as God does not give the
crop unless man sows the seed, so His ministers bestow grace only when
the penitent has enriched the treasury. The fellow," he added, "is a man
of some learning and of a retired and orderly way of living, and the
charge was brought against him by a jeweller and his wife, who owed him
a sum of money and are said to have chosen this way of evading payment.
The priests are always glad to find a scape-goat of the sort, especially
when there are murmurs against the private conduct of those in high
places, and the woman, having denounced him, was immediately assured by
her confessor that any debt incurred to a seducer was null and void, and
that she was entitled to a hundred scudi of damages for having been led
into sin."
2.10.
At the Duke's express wish, Odo was to lodge in the palace; and when he
entered the courtyard he found Cantapresto waiting to lead him to his
apartment.
The rooms assigned to him lay at the end of one of the wings overlooking
the gardens; and as he mounted the great stairway and walked down the
corridors with their frescoed walls and busts of Roman emperors he
recalled the far-off night when he had passed through the same scenes as
a frightened awe-struck child. Where he had then beheld a supernatural
fabric, peopled with divinities of bronze and marble, and glowing with
light and colour, he now saw a many-corridored palace, stately indeed,
and full of a faded splendour, but dull and antiquated in comparison
with the new-fangled elegance of the Sardinian court. Yet at every turn
some object thrilled the fibres of old association or pride of race.
Here he traversed a gallery hung with the portraits of his line; there
caught a glimpse of the pages' antechamber through which he and his
mother had been led when they waited on the Duke; and from the windows
of his closet he overlooked the alleys and terraces where he had
wandered with the hunchback.
One of the Duke's pages came to say that his Highness would receive the
cavaliere when the court rose from dinner; and finding himself with two
hours on his hands, Odo determined to await his kinsman's summons in the
garden. Thither he presently repaired; and was soon, with a mournful
pleasure, retracing the paths he had first explored in such an ecstasy
of wonder. The pleached walks and parterres were in all the freshness of
June. Roses and jasmine mingled on the terrace-walls, citron-trees
ingeniously grafted with red and white carnations stood in Faenza jars
before the lemon-house, and marble nymphs and fauns peeped from thickets
of flowering camellias. A noise of childish voices presently attracted
Odo, and following a tunnel of clipped limes he came out on a theatre
cut in the turf and set about with statues of Apollo and the Muses. A
handful of boys in military dress were performing a series of evolutions
in the centre of this space; and facing them stood a child of about ten
years, in a Colonel's uniform covered with orders, his hair curled and
powdered, a paste-board sword in his hand, and his frail body supported
on one side by a turbaned dwarf, and on the other by an ecclesiastic who
was evidently his governor. The child, as Odo approached, was calling
out his orders to his regiment in a weak shrill voice, moving now here,
now there on his booted tottering legs, as his two supporters guided
him, and painfully trying to flourish the paper weapon that was too
heavy for his nerveless wrist. Behind this strange group stood another
figure, that of a tall heavy man, richly dressed, with a curious
Oriental-looking order on his breast and a veiled somnolent eye which he
kept fixed on the little prince.
Odo had been about to advance and do homage to his cousin; but a sign
from the man in the background arrested him. The manoeuvres were soon
over, the heir was lifted into a little gilded chariot drawn by white
goats, his regiment formed in line and saluted him, and he disappeared
down one of the alleys with his attendants.
This ceremony over, the tall man advanced to Odo with a bow and asked
pardon for the liberty he had taken.
"You are doubtless," said he, "his Highness's cousin, the Cavaliere
Valsecca; and my excuse for intruding between yourself and the prince is
that I am the Duke's physician, Count Heiligenstern, and that the heir
is at present undergoing a course of treatment under my care. His
health, as you probably know, has long been a cause of anxiety to his
illustrious parents, and when I was summoned to Pianura the College of
Physicians had given up all hope of saving him. Since my coming,
however, I flatter myself that a marked change is perceptible. My method
is that of invigorating the blood by exciting the passions most likely
to produce a generous vital ardour. Thus, by organising these juvenile
manoeuvres, I arouse the prince's martial zeal; by encouraging him to
study the history of his ancestors, I evoke his political ambition; by
causing him to be led about the gardens on a pony, accompanied by a
miniature pack of Maltese dogs in pursuit of a tame doe, I stimulate the
passion of the chase; but it is essential to my system that one emotion
should not violently counteract another, and I am therefore obliged to
protect my noble patient from the sudden intrusion of new impressions."
This explanation, delivered in a sententious tone, and with a strong
German accent, seemed to Odo no more than a learned travesty of the
familiar and pathetic expedient of distracting a sick child by the
pretence of manly diversions. He was struck, however, by the physician's
aspect, and would have engaged him in talk had not one of the Duke's
gentlemen appeared with the announcement that his Highness would be
pleased to receive the Cavaliere Valsecca.
Like most dwellings of its kind in Italy, the palace of Pianura
resembled one of those shells which reveal by their outer convolutions
the gradual development of the creature housed within. For two or three
generations after Bracciaforte, the terrible founder of the line, had
made himself master of the republic, his descendants had clung to the
old brick fortress or rocca which the great condottiere had held
successfully against the burghers' arquebuses and the battering-rams of
rival adventurers, and which still glassed its battlements in the slow
waters of the Piana beside the city wall. It was Ascanio, the first
Duke, the correspondent of Politian and Castiglione, who, finding the
ancestral lair too cramped for the court of a humanist prince, had
summoned Luciano da Laurana to build a palace better fitted to his
state. Duke Ascanio, in bronze by Verocchio, still looked up with pride
from the palace-square at the brick and terra-cotta facade with its
fruit-wreathed arches crowned by imperial profiles; but a later prince
found the small rooms and intricate passages of Laurana's structure
inadequate to the pomp of an ally of Leo X., and Vignola added the state
apartments, the sculpture gallery and the libraries.
The palace now passed for one of the wonders of Italy. The Duke's guest,
the witty and learned Aretino, celebrated it in verse, his friend
Cardinal Bembo in prose; Correggio painted the walls of one room, Guilio
Romano the ceiling of another. It seemed that magnificence could go no
farther, till the seventeenth century brought to the throne a Duke who
asked himself how a self-respecting prince could live without a theatre,
a riding-school and an additional wing to lodge the ever-growing train
of court officials who had by this time replaced the feudal men-at-arms.
He answered the question by laying an extra tax on his people and
inviting to Pianura the great Roman architect Carlo Borromini, who
regretfully admitted that his illustrious patron was on the whole less
royally housed than their Highnesses of Mantua and Parma. Within five
years the "cavallerizza," the theatre and the gardens flung defiance at
these aspiring potentates; and again Pianura took precedence of her
rivals. The present Duke's father had expressed the most recent tendency
of the race by the erection of a chapel in the florid Jesuit style; and
the group of buildings thus chronicled in rich durable lines the varying
passions and ambitions of three hundred years of power.
As Odo followed his guide toward the Duke's apartments he remarked a
change in the aspect of the palace. Where formerly the corridors had
been thronged with pages, lacqueys and gaily-dressed cavaliers and
ladies, only a few ecclesiastics now glided by: here a Monsignore in
ermine and lace rochet, attended by his chaplain and secretaries, there
a cowled Dominican or a sober-looking secular priest. The Duke was
lodged in the oldest portion of the palace, and Odo, who had never
visited these apartments, looked with interest at the projecting
sculptured chimney and vaulted ceiling of the pages' ante-chamber, which
had formerly been the guardroom and was still hung with panoplies.
Thence he was led into a gallery lined with scriptural tapestries and
furnished in the heavy style of the seventeenth century. Here he waited
a few moments, hearing the sound of conversation in the room beyond;
then the door of this apartment opened, and a handsome Dominican passed
out, followed by a page who invited Odo to step into the Duke's cabinet.
This was a very small room, completely panelled in delicate wood-carving
touched with gold. Over this panelling, regardless of the beauty of its
design, had been hung a mass of reliquaries and small devotional
bas-reliefs and paintings, making the room appear more like the chapel
of a wonder-working saint than a prince's closet. Here again Odo found
himself alone; but the page presently returned to say that his Highness
was not well and begged the cavaliere to wait on him in his bed-chamber.
The most conspicuous object in this room was a great bedstead raised on
a dais. The plumed posts and sumptuous hangings of the bed gave it an
altar-like air, and the Duke himself, who lay between the curtains, his
wig replaced by a nightcap, a scapular about his neck, and his
shrivelled body wrapped in a brocaded dressing-gown, looked more like a
relic than a man. His heavy under-lip trembled slightly as he offered
his hand to Odo's salute.
"You find me, cousin," said he after a brief greeting, "much troubled by
a question that has of late incessantly disturbed my rest--can the soul,
after full intuition of God, be polluted by the sins of the body?" he
clutched Odo's hand in his burning grasp. "Is it possible that there are
human beings so heedless of their doom that they can go about their
earthly pleasures with this awful problem unsolved? Oh, why has not some
Pope decided it? Why has God left this hideous uncertainty hanging over
us? You know the doctrine of Plotinus--'he who has access to God leaves
the virtues behind him as the images of the gods are left in the outer
temple.' Many of the fathers believed that the Neoplatonists were
permitted to foreshadow in their teachings the revelation of Christ; but
on these occult points much doubt remains, and though certain of the
great theologians have inclined to this interpretation, there are others
who hold that it leans to the heresy of Quietism."
Odo, who had inferred in the Duke's opening words an allusion to the
little prince's ill-health, or to some political anxiety, was at a loss
how to reply to this strange appeal; but after a moment he said, "I have
heard that your Highness's director is a man of great learning and
discrimination. Can he not help your Highness to some decision on this
point?"
The Duke glanced at him suspiciously. "Father Ignazio," said he, "is in
fact well-versed in theology; but there are certain doctrines
inaccessible to all but a few who have received the direct illumination
of heaven, and on this point I cannot feel that his judgment is final."
He wiped the dampness from his sallow forehead and pressed the scapular
to his lips. "May you never know," he cried, "the agony of a father
whose child is dying, of a sovereign who longs to labour for the welfare
of his people, but who is racked by the thought that in giving his mind
to temporal duties and domestic affections while such spiritual
difficulties are still unsolved, he may be preparing for himself an
eternity of torture such as that--" and he pointed to an old and
blackened picture of the Last Judgment that hung on the opposite wall.
Odo tried to frame a soothing rejoinder; but the Duke passionately
interrupted him. "Alas, cousin, no rest is possible for one who has
attained the rapture of the Beatific Vision, yet who trembles lest the
mere mechanical indulgence of the senses may still subject him to the
common penalty of sin! As a man who has devoted himself to the study of
theology is privileged to argue on questions forbidden to the vulgar, so
surely fasting, maceration and ecstasy must liberate the body from the
bondage of prescribed morality. Shall no distinction be recognised
between my conduct and that of the common sot or debauchee whose soul
lies in blind subjection to his lower instincts? I, who have laboured
early and late to remove temptation from my people--who have punished
offences against conduct as unsparingly as spiritual error--I, who have
not scrupled to destroy every picture in my galleries that contained a
nude figure or a wanton attitude--I, who have been blessed from
childhood by tokens of divine favour and miraculous intervention--can I
doubt that I have earned the privileges of that higher state in which
the soul is no longer responsible for the failings of the body? And
yet--and yet--what if I were mistaken?" he moaned. "What if my advisors
have deceived me? Si autem et sic impius sum, quare frustra laboravi?"
And he sank back on his pillows limp as an empty glove.
Alarmed at his disorder, Odo stood irresolute whether to call for help;
but as he hesitated the Duke feebly drew from his bosom a gold key
attached to a slender Venetian chain.
"This," said he, "unlocks the small tortoise-shell cabinet yonder. In it
you will find a phial of clear liquor, a few drops of which will restore
me. 'Tis an essence distilled by the Benedictine nuns of the Perpetual
Adoration and peculiarly effective in accesses of spiritual
disturbance."
Odo complied, and having poured the liquor into a glass, held it to his
cousin's lips. In a moment the Duke's eye revived and he began to speak
in a weak but composed voice, with an air of dignity in singular
contrast to his previous self-abandonment. "I am," said he, "unhappily
subject to such seizures after any prolonged exertion, and a
conversation I have just had with my director has left me in no fit
state to receive you. The cares of government sit heavy on one who has
scarce health enough for the duties of a private station; and were it
not for my son I should long since have withdrawn to the shelter of the
monastic life." He paused and looked at Odo with a melancholy kindness.
"In you," said he, "the native weakness of our complexion appears to
have been tempered by the blood of your mother's house, and your
countenance gives every promise of health and vivacity."
He broke off with a sigh and continued in a more authoritative tone:
"You have learned from Count Trescorre my motive in summoning you to
Pianura. My son's health causes me the liveliest concern, my own is
subject to such seizures as you have just witnessed. I cannot think
that, in this age of infidelity and disorder, God can design to deprive
a Christian state of a line of sovereigns uniformly zealous in the
defence of truth; but the purposes of Heaven are inscrutable, as the
recent suppression of the Society of Jesus has most strangely proved;
and should our dynasty be extinguished I am consoled by the thought that
the rule will pass to one of our house. Of this I shall have more to say
to you in future. Meanwhile your first business is to acquaint yourself
with your new surroundings. The Duchess holds a circle this evening,
where you will meet the court; but I must advise you that the persons
her Highness favours with her intimacy are not those best qualified to
guide and instruct a young man in your position. These you will meet at
the house of the Countess Belverde, one of the Duchess's ladies, a woman
of sound judgment and scrupulous piety, who gathers about her all our
most learned and saintly ecclesiastics. Count Trescorre will instruct
you in all that becomes your position at court, and my director, Father
Ignazio, will aid you in the selection of a confessor. As to the Bishop,
a most worthy and conversable prelate, to whom I would have you show all
due regard, his zeal in spiritual matters is not as great as I could
wish, and in private talk he indulges in a laxity of opinion against
which I cannot too emphatically warn you. Happily, however, Pianura
offers other opportunities of edification. Father Ignazio is a man of
wide learning and inflexible doctrine, and in several of our
monasteries, notably that of the Barnabites, you will find examples of
sanctity and wisdom such as a young man may well devoutly consider. Our
convents also are distinguished for the severity of their rule and the
spiritual privileges accorded them. The Carmelites have every reason to
hope for the beatification of their aged Prioress, and among the nuns of
the Perpetual Adoration is one who has recently received the ineffable
grace of the vulnus divinum. In the conversation of these saintly nuns,
and of the holy Abbot of the Barnabites, you will find the surest
safeguard against those errors and temptations that beset your age." He
leaned back with a gesture of dismissal; but added, reddening slightly,
as Odo prepared to withdraw: "You will oblige me, cousin, when you meet
my physician, Count Heiligenstern, by not touching on the matter of the
restorative you have seen me take."
Odo left his cousin's presence with a feeling of deep discouragement. To
a spirit aware of the new influences abroad, and fresh from contact with
evils rooted in the very foundations of the existing system, there was a
peculiar irony in being advised to seek guidance and instruction in the
society of ecstatic nuns and cloistered theologians. The Duke, with his
sickly soul agrope in a maze of Neoplatonism and probabilism, while his
people groaned under unjust taxes, while knowledge and intellectual
liberty languished in a kind of moral pest-house, seemed to Odo like a
ruler who, in time of famine, should keep the royal granaries locked and
spend his days praying for the succour that his own hand might have
dispensed.
In the tapestry room one of his Highness's gentlemen waited to reconduct
Odo. Their way lay through the portrait gallery of which he had
previously caught a glimpse, and here he begged his guide to leave him.
He felt a sudden desire to meet his unknown ancestors face to face, and
to trace the tendencies which, from the grim Bracciaforte and the
stately sceptical humanist of Leo's age, had mysteriously forced the
race into its ever-narrowing mould. The dusky canvases, hung high in
tarnished escutcheoned frames, presented a continuous chronicle of the
line, from Bracciaforte himself, with his predatory profile outlined by
some early Tuscan hand against the turrets of his impregnable fortress.
Odo lingered long on this image, but it was not till he stood beneath
Piero della Francesca's portrait of the first Duke that he felt the
thrill of kindred instincts. In this grave face, with its sensuous mouth
and melancholy speculative eyes, he recognised the mingled strain of
impressionability and unrest that had reached such diverse issues in his
cousin and himself. The great Duke of the "Golden Age," in his
Titianesque brocade, the statuette of a naked faun at his elbow, and a
faun-like smile on his own ruddy lips, represented another aspect of the
ancestral spirit: the rounded temperament of an age of Cyrenaicism, in
which every moment was a ripe fruit sunned on all sides. A little
farther on, the shadow of the Council of Trent began to fall on the
ducal faces, as the uniform blackness of the Spanish habit replaced the
sumptuous colours of the Renaissance. Here was the persecuting Bishop,
Paul IV.'s ally against the Spaniards, painted by Caravaggio in hauberk
and mailed gloves, with his motto--Etiam cum gladio--surmounting the
episcopal chair; there the Duke who, after a life of hard warfare and
stern piety, had resigned his office to his son and died in the
"angelica vestis" of the tertiary order; and the "beatified" Duchess who
had sold her jewels to buy corn for the poor during the famine of 1670,
and had worn a hair-shirt under a corset that seemed stiff enough to
serve all the purposes of bodily mortification. So the file descended,
the colours fading, the shadows deepening, till it reached a baby
porporato of the last century, who had donned the cardinal's habit at
four, and stood rigid and a little pale in his red robes and lace, with
a crucifix and a skull on the table to which the top of his berretta
hardly reached.
It seemed to Odo as he gazed on the long line of faces as though their
owners had entered one by one into a narrowing defile, where the sun
rose later and set earlier on each successive traveller; and in every
countenance, from that of the first Duke to that of his own peruked and
cuirassed grandfather, he discerned the same symptom of decadency: that
duality of will which, in a delicately-tempered race, is the fatal fruit
of an undisturbed pre-eminence. They had ruled too long and enjoyed too
much; and the poor creature he had just left to his dismal scruples and
forebodings seemed the mere empty husk of long-exhausted passions.
2.11.
The Duchess was lodged in the Borromini wing of the palace, and thither
Odo was conducted that evening.
To eyes accustomed to such ceremonial there was no great novelty in the
troop of powdered servants, the major-domo in his short cloak and chain,
and the florid splendour of the long suite of rooms, decorated in a
style that already appeared over-charged to the more fastidious taste of
the day. Odo's curiosity centred chiefly in the persons peopling this
scene, whose conflicting interests and passions formed, as it were, the
framework of the social structure of Pianura, so that there was not a
labourer in the mulberry-orchards or a weaver in the silk-looms but
depended for his crust of black bread and the leaking roof over his head
on the private whim of some member of that brilliant company.
The Duchess, who soon entered, received Odo with the flighty good-nature
of a roving mind; but as her deep-blue gaze met his her colour rose, her
eyes lingered on his face, and she invited him to a seat at her side.
Maria Clementina was of Austrian descent, and something in her free and
noble port and the smiling arrogance of her manner recalled the aspect
of her distant kinswoman, the young Queen of France. She plied Odo with
a hundred questions, interrupting his answers with a playful abruptness,
and to all appearances more engaged by his person than his discourse.
"Have you seen my son?" she asked. "I remember you a little boy scarce
bigger than Ferrante, whom your mother brought to kiss my hand in the
very year of my marriage. Yes--and you pinched my toy spaniel, sir, and
I was so angry with you that I got up and turned my back on the
company--do you remember? But how should you, being such a child at the
time? Ah, cousin how old you make me feel! I would to God my son looked
as you did then; but the Duke is killing him with his nostrums. The
child was healthy enough when he was born; but what with novenas and
touching of relics and animal magnetism and electrical treatment,
there's not a bone in his little body but the saints and the surgeons
are fighting over its possession. Have you read 'Emile,' cousin, by the
new French author--I forget his name? Well, I would have the child
brought up like 'Emile,' allowed to run wild in the country and grow up
sturdy and hard as a little peasant. But what heresies am I talking! The
book is on the Index, I believe, and if my director knew I had it in my
library I should be set up in the stocks in the market-place and all my
court-gowns burnt at the Church door as a warning against the danger of
importing the new fashions from France!--I hope you hunt, cousin?" she
cried suddenly. "'Tis my chief diversion and one I would have my friends
enjoy with me. His Highness has lately seen fit to cut down my stables,
so that I have scarce forty saddle-horses to my name, and the greater
part but sorry nags at that; yet I can still find a mount for any friend
that will ride with me and I hope to see you among the number if the
Duke can spare you now and then from mass and benediction. His Highness
complains that I am always surrounded by the same company; but is it my
fault if there are not twenty persons at court that can survive a day in
the saddle and a night at cards? Have you seen the Belverde, my mistress
of the robes? She follows the hunt in a litter, cousin, and tells her
beads at the death! I hope you like cards too, cousin, for I would have
all my weaknesses shared by my friends, that they may be the less
disposed to criticise them."
The impression produced on the Duchess by the cavaliere Valsecca was
closely observed by several members of the group surrounding her
Highness. One of these was Count Trescorre, who moved among the
courtiers with an air of ease that seemed to establish without
proclaiming the tie between himself and the Duchess. When Maria
Clementina sat down at play, Trescorre joined Odo and with his usual
friendliness pointed out the most conspicuous figures in the circle. The
Duchess's society, as the Duke had implied, was composed of the livelier
members of the court, chief among whom was the same Don Serafino who had
figured so vividly in the reminiscences of Mirandolina and Cantapresto.
This gentleman, a notorious loose-liver and gamester, with some remains
of good looks and a gay boisterous manner, played the leader of revels
to her Highness's following; and at his heels came the flock of pretty
women and dashing spendthrifts who compose the train of a young and
pleasure-loving princess. On such occasions as the present, however, all
the members of the court were obliged to pay their duty to her Highness;
and conspicuous among these less frequent visitors was the Duke's
director, the suave and handsome Dominican whom Odo had seen leaving his
Highness's closet that afternoon. This ecclesiastic was engaged in
conversation with the Prime Minister, Count Pievepelago, a small feeble
mannikin covered with gold lace and orders. The deference with which the
latter followed the Dominican's discourse excited Odo's attention; but
it was soon diverted by the approach of a lady who joined herself to the
group with an air of discreet familiarity. Though no longer young, she
was still slender and graceful, and her languid eye and vapourish manner
seemed to Odo to veil an uncommon alertness of perception. The rich
sobriety of her dress, the jewelled rosary about her wrist, and most of
all, perhaps, the murderous sweetness of the smile with which the
Duchess addressed her, told him that here was the Countess Belverde; an
inference which Trescorre confirmed.
"The Countess," said he, "or I should rather say the Marchioness of
Boscofolto, since the Duke has just bestowed on her the fief of that
name, is impatient to make your acquaintance; and since you doubtless
remember the saying of the Marquis de Montesquieu, that to know a ruler
one must know his confessor and his mistress, you will perhaps be glad
to seize both opportunities in one."
The Countess greeted Odo with a flattering deference and at once drew
him into conversation with Pievepelago and the Dominican.
"We are discussing," said she, "the details of Prince Ferrante's
approaching visit to the shrine of our Lady of the Mountain. This shrine
lies about half an hour's ride beyond my villa of Boscofolto, where I
hope to have the honour of receiving their Highnesses on their return
from the pilgrimage. The Madonna del Monte, as you doubtless know, has
often preserved the ducal house in seasons of peril, notably during the
great plague of 1630 and during the famine in the Duchess Polixena's
time, when her Highness, of blessed memory, met our Lady in the streets
distributing bread, in the dress of a peasant-woman from the hills, but
with a necklace made of blood-drops instead of garnets. Father Ignazio
has lately counselled the little prince's visiting in state the
protectress of his line, and his Highness's physician, Count
Heiligenstern, does not disapprove the plan. In fact," she added, "I
understand that he thinks all special acts of piety beneficial, as
symbolising the inward act by which the soul incessantly strives to
reunite itself to the One."
The Dominican glanced at Odo with a smile. "The Count's dialectics,"
said he, "might be dangerous were they a little clearer; but we must
hope he distinguishes more accurately between his drugs than his
dogmas."
"But I am told," the Prime Minister here interposed in a creaking rusty
voice, "that her Highness is set against the pilgrimage and will put
every obstacle in the way of its being performed."
The Countess sighed and cast down her eyes, the Dominican remained
silent, and Trescorre said quietly to Odo, "Her Highness would be
pleased to have you join her in a game at basset." As they crossed the
room he added in a low tone: "The Duchess, in spite of her remarkable
strength of character, is still of an age to be readily open to new
influences. I observed she was much taken by your conversation, and you
would be doing her a service by engaging her not to oppose this
pilgrimage to Boscofolto. We have Heiligenstern's word that it cannot
harm the prince, it will produce a good impression on the people, and it
is of vital importance to her Highness not to side against the Duke in
such matters." And he withdrew with a smile as Odo approached the
card-table.
Odo left the Duchess's circle with an increased desire to penetrate more
deeply into the organisation of the little world about him, to trace the
operation of its various parts, and to put his hand on the mainspring
about which they revolved; and he wondered whether Gamba, whose
connection with the ducal library must give him some insight into the
affairs of the court, might not prove as instructive a guide through
this labyrinth as through the mazes of the ducal garden.
The Duke's library filled a series of rooms designed in the classical
style of the cinque-cento. On the very threshold Odo was conscious of
leaving behind the trivial activities of the palace, with the fantastic
architecture which seemed their natural setting. Here all was based on a
noble permanence of taste, a convergence of accumulated effort toward a
chosen end; and the door was fittingly surmounted by Seneca's definition
of the wise man's state: "Omnia illi secula ut deo serviunt."
Odo would gladly have lingered among the books which filled the rooms
with an incense-like aroma of old leather. His imagination caressed in
passing the yellowish vellum backs, the worn tooling of Aldine folios,
the heavy silver clasps of ancient chronicles and psalters; but his
first object was to find Gamba and renew the conversation of the
previous day. In this he was disappointed. The only occupant of the
library was the hunchback's friend and protector, the abate Crescenti, a
tall white-haired priest with the roseate gravity and benevolent air of
a donator in some Flemish triptych. The abate, courteously welcoming
Odo, explained that he had despatched his assistant to the Benedictine
monastery to copy certain ancient records of transactions between that
order and the Lords of Valsecca, and added that Gamba, on his return,
should at once be apprised of the cavaliere's wish to see him.
The abate himself had been engaged, when his visitor entered, in
collating manuscripts, but on Odo's begging him to return to his work,
he said with a smile: "I do not suffer from an excess of interruptions,
for the library is the least visited portion of the palace, and I am
glad to welcome any who are disposed to inspect its treasures. I know
not, cavaliere," he added, "if the report of my humble labours has ever
reached you;" and on Odo's affirmative gesture he went on, with the
eagerness of a shy man who gathers assurance from the intelligence of
his listener: "Such researches into the rude and uncivilised past seem
to me as essential to the comprehension of the present as the mastering
of the major premiss to the understanding of a syllogism; and to those
who reproach me for wasting my life over the chronicles of barbarian
invasions and the records of monkish litigations, instead of
contemplating the illustrious deeds of Greek sages and Roman heroes, I
confidently reply that it is more useful to a man to know his own
father's character than that of a remote ancestor. Even in this quiet
retreat," he went on, "I hear much talk of abuses and of the need for
reform; and I often think that if they who rail so loudly against
existing institutions would take the trouble to trace them to their
source, and would, for instance, compare this state as it is today with
its condition five hundred or a thousand years ago, instead of measuring
it by the standard of some imaginary Platonic republic, they would find,
if not less subject for complaint, yet fuller means of understanding and
remedying the abuses they discover."
This view of history was one so new in the abate Crescenti's day that it
surprised Odo with the revelation of unsuspected possibilities. How was
it that among the philosophers whose works he had studied, none had
thought of tracing in the social and political tendencies of the race
the germ of wrongs so confidently ascribed to the cunning of priests and
the rapacity of princes? Odo listened with growing interest while
Crescenti, encouraged by his questions, pointed out how the abuses of
feudalism had arisen from the small land-owner's need of protection
against the northern invader, as the concentration of royal prerogative
had been the outcome of the king's intervention between his great
vassals and the communes. The discouragement which had obscured Odo's
outlook since his visit to Pontesordo was cleared away by the discovery
that in a sympathetic study of the past might lie the secret of dealing
with present evils. His imagination, taking the intervening obstacles at
a bound, arrived at once at the general axiom to which such inductions
pointed; and if he afterward learned that human development follows no
such direct line of advance, but must painfully stumble across the
wastes of error, prejudice and ignorance, while the theoriser traverses
the same distance with a stroke of his speculative pinions; yet the
influence of these teachings tempered his judgments with charity and
dignified his very failures by a tragic sense of their inevitableness.
Crescenti suggested that Gamba should wait on Odo that evening; but the
latter, being uncertain how far he might dispose of his time, enquired
where the hunchback lodged, with a view of sending for him at a
convenient moment. Having dined at the Duchess's table, and soon
wearying of the vapid company of her associates, he yielded to the
desire for contrast that so often guided his course, and set out toward
sunset in search of Gamba's lodging.
It was his first opportunity of inspecting the town at leisure, and for
a while he let his curiosity lead him as it would. The streets near the
palace were full of noble residences, recording, in their sculptured
doorways, in the wrought-iron work of torch-holders and window-grilles,
and in every architectural detail, the gradual change of taste that had
transformed the machicolations of the mediaeval fighter into the open
cortiles and airy balconies of his descendant. Here and there, amid
these inveterate records of dominion, rose the monuments of a mightier
and more ancient power. Of these churches and monasteries the greater
number, dating only from the ascendancy of the Valseccas, showed an
ordered and sumptuous architecture; but one or two buildings surviving
from the period of the free city stood out among them with the austerity
of desert saints in a throng of court ecclesiastics. The columns of the
Cathedral porch were still supported on featureless porphyry lions worn
smooth by generations of loungers; and above the octagonal baptistery
ran a fantastic basrelief wherein the spirals of the vine framed an
allegory of men and monsters symbolising, in their mysterious conflicts,
the ever-recurring Manicheism of the middle ages. Fresh from his talk
with Crescenti, Odo lingered curiously on these sculptures, which but
the day before he might have passed by as the efforts of ignorant
workmen, but which now seemed full of the significance that belongs to
any incomplete expression of human thought or feeling. Of their relation
to the growth of art he had as yet no clear notion; but as evidence of
sensations that his forefathers had struggled to record, they touched
him like the inarticulate stammerings in which childhood strives to
convey its meaning.
He found Gamba's lodging on the upper floor of a decayed palace in one
of the by-lanes near the Cathedral. The pointed arcades of this ancient
building enclosed the remains of floriated mouldings, and the walls of
the court showed traces of fresco-painting; but clothes-lines now hung
between the arches, and about the well-head in the centre of the court
sat a group of tattered women with half-naked children playing in the
dirt at their feet. One of these women directed Odo to the staircase
which ascended between damp stone walls to Gamba's door. This was opened
by the hunchback himself, who, with an astonished exclamation, admitted
his visitor to a scantily furnished room littered with books and papers.
A child sprawled on the floor, and a young woman, who had been sewing in
the fading light of the attic window, snatched him up as Odo entered.
Her back being turned to the light, he caught only a slender youthful
outline; but something in the turn of the head, the shrinking curve of
the shoulders, carried him back to the little barefoot figure cowering
in a corner of the kitchen at Pontesordo, while the farm-yard rang with
Filomena's call--"Where are you then, child of iniquity?"
"Momola--don't you know me?" he exclaimed.
She hung back trembling, as though the sound of his voice roused an echo
of fear; but Gamba, reddening slightly, took her hand and led her
forward.
"It is, indeed," said he, "your excellency's old playmate, the Momola of
Pontesordo, who consents to share my poverty and who makes me forget it
by the tenderness of her devotion."
But Momola, at this, found voice. "Oh, sir," she cried, "it is he who
took me in when I was half-dead and starving, who many a time went
hungry to feed me, and who cares for the child as if it were his own!"
As she stood there, in her half-wild hollowed-eyed beauty, which seemed
a sickly efflorescence of the marshes, pressing to her breast another
"child of iniquity" as pale and elfish as her former self, she seemed to
Odo the embodiment of ancient wrongs, risen from the wasted soil to
haunt the dreams of its oppressors.
Gamba shrugged his shoulders. "Why," said he, "a child of my own is a
luxury I am never likely to possess as long as I have wit to remember
the fundamental axiom of philosophy: entia non sunt multiplicanda
praeter necessitatum; so it is natural enough fate should single me out
to repair the negligence of those who have failed to observe that
admirable principle. And now," he added, turning gently to Momola, "it
is time to put the boy to bed."
When the door had closed on her Odo turned to Gamba. "I could learn
nothing at Pontesordo," he said. "They seemed unwilling to speak of her.
What is her story and where did you first know her?"
Gamba's face darkened. "You will remember, cavaliere," he said, "that
some time after your departure from Pianura I passed into the service of
the Marquess of Cerveno, then a youth of about twenty, who combined with
graceful manners and a fair exterior a nature so corrupt and cowardly
that he seemed like some such noble edifice as this, designed to house
great hopes and high ambitions, but fallen to base uses and become the
shelter of thieves and prostitutes. Prince Ferrante being sickly from
his birth, the Marquess was always looked on as the Duke's successor,
and to Trescorre, who even then, as Master of the Horse, cherished the
ambitions he has since realised, no prospect could have been more
distasteful. My noble brother, to do him justice, has always hated the
Jesuits, who, as you doubtless know, were all-powerful here before the
recent suppression of the Order. The Marquess of Cerveno was as
completely under their control as the Duke is under that of the
Dominicans, and Trescorre knew that with the Marquess's accession his
own rule must end. He did his best to gain an influence over his future
ruler, but failing in this resolved to ruin him.
"Cerveno, like all your house, was passionately addicted to the chase,
and spent much time hunting in the forest of Pontesordo. One day the
stag was brought to bay in the farm-yard of the old manor, and there
Cerveno saw Momola, then a girl of sixteen, of a singular wild beauty
which sickness and trouble have since effaced. The young Marquess was
instantly taken; and though hitherto indifferent to women, yielded so
completely to his infatuation that Trescorre, ever on the alert, saw in
it an unexpected means to his end. He instantly married Momola to
Giannozzo, whom she feared and hated; he schooled Giannozzo in the part
of the jealous and vindictive husband, and by the liberal use of money
contrived that Momola, while suffered to encourage the Marquess's
addresses, should be kept so close that Cerveno could not see her save
by coming to Pontesordo. This was the first step in the plan; the next
was to arrange that Momola should lure her lover to the hunting-lodge on
the edge of the chase. This lodge, as your excellency may remember, lies
level with the marsh, and so open to noxious exhalations that a night's
sojourn there may be fatal. The infernal scheme was carried out with the
connivance of the scoundrels at the farm, who had no scruples about
selling the girl for a few ducats; and as to Momola, can you wonder that
her loathing of Giannozzo and of her wretched life at Pontesordo threw
her defenceless into Trescorre's toils? All was cunningly planned to
exasperate Cerveno's passion and Momola's longing to escape; and at
length, pressed by his entreaties and innocently carrying out the
designs of his foe, the poor girl promised to meet him after night-fall
at the hunting-lodge. The secrecy of the adventure, and the peril to
which it exposed him (for Trescorre had taken care to paint Giannozzo
and his father in the darkest colours) were fuel to Cerveno's passion,
and he went night after night to Pontesordo. The time was August, when
the marsh breathes death, and the Duke, apprised of his favourite's
imprudence, forbade his returning to the chase.
"Nothing could better have served Trescorre; for opposition spurred the
Marquess's languid temper, and he had now the incredible folly to take
up his residence in the lodge. Within three weeks the fever held him. He
was at once taken to Pianura, and on recovering from his seizure was
sent to take the mountain air at the baths of Lucca. But the poison was
in his blood. He never regained more than a semblance of health, and his
madness having run its course, his passion for Momola turned to hate of
the poor girl to whom he ascribed his destruction. Giannozzo, meanwhile,
terrified by the report that the Duke had winded the intrigue, and
fearing to be charged with connivance, thought to prove his innocence by
casting off his wife and disowning her child.
"What part I played in this grim business I leave your excellency to
conceive. As the Marquess's creature I was forced to assist at the
spectacle without power to stay its consequences; but when the child was
born I carried the news to my master and begged him to come to the
mother's aid. For answer, he had me beaten by his lacqueys and flung out
of his house. I stomached the beating and addressed myself to Trescorre.
My noble brother, whose insight is seldom at fault, saw that I knew
enough to imperil him. The Marquess was dying and his enemy could afford
to be generous. He gave me a little money and the following year
obtained from the Duke my appointment as assistant librarian. In this
way I was able to give Momola a home, and to save her child from the
Innocenti. She and I, cavaliere, are the misshapen offspring of that
cruel foster-parent, who rears more than half the malefactors in the
state; but please heaven the boy shall have a better start in life, and
perhaps grow up to destroy some of the evils on which that cursed
charity thrives."
This narrative, and the sight of Momola and her child, followed so
strangely on the spectacle of sordid misery he had witnessed at
Pontesordo, that an inarticulate pity held Odo by the throat. Gamba's
anger against the people at the farm seemed as senseless as their own
cruelty to their animals. What were they all--Momola, her child, and her
persecutors--but a sickly growth of the decaying social order? He felt
an almost physical longing for fresh air, light, the rush of a purifying
wind through the atmosphere of moral darkness that surrounded him.
2.12.
To relieve the tension of his thoughts he set forth to Gamba the purpose
of his visit.
"I am," said he, "much like a stranger at a masked ball, where all the
masks are acquainted with each other's disguises and concerted to
mystify the visitor. Among the persons I have met at court several have
shown themselves ready to guide me through this labyrinth; but, till
they themselves unmask and declare their true characters, I am doubtful
whither they may lead me; nor do I know of any so well fitted as
yourself to give me a clue to my surroundings. As for my own disguise,"
he added with a smile, "I believe I removed it sufficiently on our first
meeting to leave you no doubt as to the use to which your information
will be put."
Gamba, who seemed touched by this appeal, nevertheless hesitated before
replying. At length he said: "I have the fullest trust in your
excellency's honour; but I must remind you that during your stay here
you will be under the closest observation and that any opinions you
express will at once be attributed to the persons you are known to
frequent. I would not," he continued hastily, "say this for myself
alone, but I have two mouths to feed and my views are already under
suspicion."
Reassured by Odo's protestations, or rather, perhaps, by the more
convincing warrant of his look and manner, Gamba proceeded to give him a
detailed description of the little world in which chance had placed
them.
"If you have seen the Duke," said he, "I need not tell you that it is
not he who governs the duchy. We are ruled at present by a triumvirate
consisting of the Belverde, the Dominican and Trescorre. Pievepelago,
the Prime Minister, is a dummy put in place by the Jesuits and kept
there by the rivalries of the other three; but he is in his dotage and
the courtiers are already laying wagers as to his successor. Many think
Father Ignazio will replace him, but I stake my faith on Trescorre. The
Duke dislikes him, but he is popular with the middle class, who, since
they have shaken off the yoke of the Jesuits, would not willingly see an
ecclesiastic at the head of the state. The duchess's influence is also
against the Dominican, for her Highness, being, as you know, connected
with the Austrian court, is by tradition unfavourable to the Church
party. The Duchess's preferences would weigh little with the Duke were
it not that she is sole heiress to the old Duke of Monte Alloro, and
that any attempt to bring that principality under the control of the
Holy See might provoke the interference of Austria.
"In so ticklish a situation I see none but Trescorre to maintain the
political balance. He has been adroit enough to make himself necessary
to the Duchess without alienating the Duke; he has introduced one or two
trifling reforms that have given him a name for liberality in spite of
the heavy taxes with which he has loaded the peasantry; and has in short
so played his cards as to profit by the foibles of both parties. Her
Highness," he continued, in reply to a question of Odo's, "was much
taken by him when she first came to Pianura; and before her feeling had
cooled he had contrived to make himself indispensable to her. The
Duchess is always in debt; and Trescorre, as Comptroller of Finance,
holds her by her besetting weakness. Before his appointment her
extravagance was the scandal of the town. She borrowed from her ladies,
her pages, her very lacqueys; when she went on a visit to her uncle of
Monte Alloro she pocketed the money he bestowed on her servants; nay,
she was even accused of robbing the Marchioness of Pievepelago, who,
having worn one evening a diamond necklace which excited her Highness's
admiration, was waylaid on the way home and the jewels torn from her
neck by a crowd of masked ruffians among whom she is said to have
recognised one of the ducal servants. These are doubtless idle reports;
but it is certain that Trescorre's appointment engaged him still more to
the Duchess by enabling him to protect her from such calumnies; while by
increasing the land taxes he has discharged the worst of her debts and
thus made himself popular with the tradesmen she had ruined. Your
excellency must excuse my attempting to paint the private character of
her Highness. Such facts as I have reported are of public notoriety, but
to exceed them would be an unwarranted presumption. I know she has the
name of being affable to her dependents, capable of a fitful generosity,
and easily moved by distress; and it is certain that her domestic
situation has been one to excite pity and disarm criticism.
"With regard to his Highness, it is difficult either to detect his
motives or to divine his preferences. His youth was spent in pious
practices; and a curious reason is given for the origin of this habit.
He was educated, as your excellency is doubtless aware, by a French
philosopher of the school of Hobbes; and it is said that in the interval
of his tasks the poor Duke, bewildered by his governor's distinctions
between conception and cognition, and the object and the sentient, used
to spend his time praying the saints to assist him in his atheistical
studies; indeed a satire of the day ascribes him as making a novena to
the Virgin to obtain a clearer understanding of the universality of
matter. Others with more likelihood aver that he frequented the churches
to escape from the tyranny of his pedagogue; and it is certain that from
one cause or another his education threw him into the opposite extreme
of a superstitious and mechanical piety. His marriage, his differences
with the Duchess, and the evil influence of Cerveno, exposed him to new
temptations, and for a time he led a life which seemed to justify the
worst charges of the enemies of materialism. Recent events have flung
him back on the exaggerated devotion of his youth, and now, when his
health permits, he spends his time serving mass, singing in the choir at
benediction and making pilgrimages to the relics of the saints in the
different churches of the duchy.
"A few years since, at the instigation of his confessor, he destroyed
every picture in the ducal gallery that contained any naked figure or
represented any subject offensive to religion. Among them was Titian's
famous portrait of Duke Ascanio's mistress, known as the Goldsmith's
Daughter, and a Venus by the Venetian painter Giorgione, so highly
esteemed in its day that Pope Leo X. is said to have offered in exchange
for it the gift of a papal benefice, and a Cardinal's hat for Duke
Guidobaldo's younger son. His Highness, moreover, impedes the
administration of justice by resisting all attempts to restrict the
Church's right of sanctuary, and upholds the decree forbidding his
subjects to study at the University of Pavia, where, as you know, the
natural sciences are professed by the ablest scholars of Italy. He
allows no public duties to interfere with his private devotions, and
whatever the urgency of affairs, gives no audience to his ministers on
holydays; and a Cardinal a latere recently passing through the duchy on
his return to Rome was not received at the Duke's table because he
chanced to arrive on a Friday.
"His Highness's fears for Prince Ferrante's health have drawn a swarm of
quacks to Pianura, and the influence of the Church is sometimes
counteracted by that of the physicians with whom the Duke surrounds
himself. The latest of these, the famous Count Heiligenstern, who is
said to have performed some remarkable cures by means of the electrical
fluid and of animal magnetism, has gained such an ascendancy over the
Duke that some suspect him of being an agent of the Austrian court,
while others declare that he is a Jesuit en robe courte. But just at
present the people scent a Jesuit under every habit, and it is even
rumoured that the Belverde is secretly affiliated to a female branch of
the Society. With such a sovereign and such ministers, your excellency
need not be told how the state is governed. Trescorre, heaven save the
mark! represents the liberal party; but his liberalism is like the
generosity of the unarmed traveller who throws his purse to a foot-pad;
and Father Ignazio is at hand to see that the people are not bettered at
the expense of the Church.
"As to the Duke, having no settled policy, and being governed only
through his fears, he leans first to one influence and then to another;
but since the suppression of the Jesuits nothing can induce him to
attack any ecclesiastical privileges. The diocese of Pianura holds a
fief known as the Caccia del Vescovo, long noted as the most lawless
district of the duchy. Before the death of the late Pope, Trescorre had
prevailed on the Duke to annex it to the principality; but the dreadful
fate of Ganganelli has checked bolder sovereigns than his Highness in
their attempts on the immunities of the Church, and one of the fairest
regions of our unhappy state remains a barren waste, the lair of outlaws
and assassins, and a menace to the surrounding country. His Highness is
not incapable of generous impulses and his occasional acts of humanity
might endear him to his people were it not that they despise him for
being the creature of his favourites. Thus, the gift of Boscofolto to
the Belverde has excited the bitterest discontent; for the Countess is
notorious for her cruel exactions, and it is certain that at her death
this rich fief will revert to the Church. And now," Gamba ended with a
smile, "I have made known to your excellency the chief characters in the
masque, as rumour depicts them to the vulgar. As to the court, like the
government, it is divided into two parties: the Duke's, headed by the
Belverde, and containing the staider and more conservative members of
the Church and nobility; and the Duchess's, composed of every fribble
and flatterer, every gamester and rake, every intriguing woman and
vulgar parvenu that can worm a way into her favour. In such an
atmosphere you may fancy how knowledge thrives. The Duke's library
consists of a few volumes of theological casuistry, and her Highness
never opens a book unless it be to scandalise her husband by reading
some prohibited pamphlet from France. The University, since the fall of
the Jesuits, has been in charge of the Barnabite order, and, for aught I
know, the Ptolemaic system is still taught there, together with the
dialectic of Aristotle. As to science, it is anathema; and the press
being subject to the restrictions of the Holy Office, and the University
closed to modern thought, but few scholars are to be found in the duchy,
save those who occupy themselves with belles-lettres, or, like the abate
Crescenti, are engaged in historical research. Pianura, even in the late
Duke's day, had its circle of lettered noblemen who patronised the arts
and founded the local Arcadia; but such pursuits are out of fashion, the
Arcadia languishes, and the Bishop of Pianura is the only dignitary that
still plays the Mecaenas. His lordship, whose theological laxity and
coolness toward the Holy Office have put him out of favour with the
Duke, has, I am told, a fine cabinet of paintings (some of them, it is
rumoured, the very pictures that his Highness ordered to be burnt) and
the episcopal palace swarms with rhyming abatini, fashionable
playwrights and musicians, and the travelling archeologists who hawk
their antiques about from one court to another. Here you may assist at
interminable disputes as to the relative merits of Tasso and Ariosto, or
listen to a learned dissertation on the verse engraved on a carnelian
stone; but as to the questions now agitating the world, they are held of
less account than a problem in counterpoint or the construction of a
doubtful line in Ovid. As long as Truth goes naked she can scarce hope
to be received in good company; and her appearance would probably cause
as much confusion among the Bishop's literati as in the councils of the
Holy Office."
The old analogy likening the human mind to an imperfect mirror, which
modifies the images it reflects, occurred more than once to Odo during
the hunchback's lively delineation. It was impossible not to remember
that the speaker owed his education to the charity of the order he
denounced; and this fact suggested to Odo that the other lights and
shadows in the picture might be disposed with more art than accuracy.
Still, they doubtless embodied a negative truth, and Odo thought it
probable that such intellectual diversion as he could hope for must be
sought in the Bishop's circle.
It was two days later that he first beheld that prelate, heading the
ducal pilgrimage to the shrine of the mountain Virgin. The day had
opened with a confused flight of chimes from every bell-tower in
Pianura, as though a migratory flock of notes had settled for a moment
on the roofs and steeples of the city. The ducal party set forth early
from the palace, but the streets were already spanned with arches and
garlands of foliage, tapestries and religious paintings decked the
facades of the wealthier houses, and at every street-shrine a cluster of
candle-flames hovered like yellow butterflies above the freshly-gathered
flowers. The windows were packed with spectators, and the crowds who
intended to accompany the pilgrimage were already gathering, with their
painted and gilt candles, from every corner of the town. Each church and
monastery door poured forth its priests or friars to swell the line, and
the various lay confraternities, issuing in their distinctive dress from
their "lodges" or assembly-rooms, formed a link between the secular and
religious divisions of the procession. The market-place was strewn with
sand and sweet herbs; and here, on the doorsteps of the Cathedral,
between the featureless porphyry lions, the Bishop waited with his
red-robed chapter, and the deacons carrying the painted banners of the
diocese. Seen thus, with the cloth-of-gold dalmatic above his pontifical
tunic, the mitre surmounting his clear-cut impassive face, and the
crozier held aloft in his jewelled gloves, he might have stood for a
chryselephantine divinity in the porch of some pagan temple.
Odo, riding beside the Duke's litter, had leisure to note not only the
diverse features of the procession but their varying effect on the
spectators. It was plain that, as Trescorre had said, the pilgrimage was
popular with the people. That imaginative sensuousness which has
perpetually renewed the Latin Church by giving form and colour to her
dogmatic abstractions, by transforming every successive phase of her
belief into something to be seen and handled, found an irresistible
outlet in a ceremony that seemed to combine with its devotional intent a
secret element of expiation. The little prince was dimly felt to be
paying for the prodigality of his fathers, to be in some way a link of
suffering between the tongue-tied misery of the fields and the insolent
splendour of the court; and a vague faith in the vicarious efficacy of
his devotion drew the crowd into momentary sympathy with its rulers. Yet
this was but an underlying element in the instinctive delight of the
people in the outward forms of their religion. Odo's late experiences
had wakened him to the influences acting on that obscure substratum of
human life that still seemed, to most men of his rank, of no more
account than the brick lining of their marble-coated palaces. As he
watched the mounting excitement of the throng, and pictured to himself
the lives suddenly lit up by this pledge of unseen promises, he wondered
that the enemies of the Church should ascribe her predominance to any
cause but the natural needs of the heart. The people lived in unlit
hovels, for there was a tax on mental as well as on material windows;
but here was a light that could pierce the narrowest crevice and scatter
the darkness with a single ray.
Odo noted with equal interest the impression produced by the various
members of the court and the Church dignitaries. The Duke's litter was
coldly received, but a pitying murmur widened about the gilt chair in
which Prince Ferrante was seated at his governor's side, and the
approach of Trescorre, mounted on a fine horse and dressed with his
usual sober elegance, woke a shout that made him for a moment the
central figure of the procession. The Bishop was none too warmly
welcomed; but when Crescenti appeared, white-haired and erect among the
parish priests, the crowd swayed toward him like grasses in the suction
of a current; and one of the Duke's gentlemen, seeing Odo's surprise,
said with a smile: "No one does more good in Pianura than our learned
librarian."
A different and still more striking welcome awaited the Duchess, who
presently appeared on her favourite white hackney, surrounded by the
members of her household. Her reluctance to take part in the pilgrimage
had been overcome by the exhilaration of showing herself to the public,
and as she rode along in her gold-embroidered habit and plumed hat she
was just such an image of radiant and indulgent sovereignty as turns
enforced submission into a romantic allegiance. Her flushing cheek and
kindled eye showed the reaction of the effect she produced, and if her
subjects forgot her debts, her violences and follies, she was perhaps
momentarily transformed into the being their enthusiasm created. She was
at any rate keenly alive to the admiration she excited and eager to
enhance it by those showy impulses of benevolence that catch the public
eye; as when, at the city gates, she stopped her horse to intervene in
behalf of a soldier who had been put under arrest for some slight
infraction of duty, and then rode on enveloped in the passionate
shouting of the crowd.
The shrine at which the young prince was to pay his devotions stood just
beyond the city, on the summit of one of the low knolls which pass for
hills in the level landscape of Pianura. The white-columned church with
its classical dome and portico had been erected as a thank-offering
after the plague of 1630, and the nave was lined with life-sized votive
figures of Dukes and Duchesses clad in the actual wigs and robes that
had dressed their transient grandeur. As the procession wound into the
church, to the ringing of bells and the chanting of the choir, Odo was
struck by the spectacle of that line of witnesses, watching in
glassy-eyed irony the pomp and display to which their moldering robes
and tarnished insignia seemed to fix so brief a term. Once or twice
already he had felt the shows of human power as no more than vanishing
reflections on the tide of being; and now, as he knelt near the shrine,
with its central glitter of jewels and its nimbus of wavering lights,
and listened to the reiterated ancient wail:
"Mater inviolata, ora pro nobis!
Virgo veneranda, ora pro nobis!
Speculum justitiae, ora pro nobis!"
it seemed to him as though the bounds of life and death were merged, and
the sumptuous group of which he formed a part already dusted over with
oblivion.
2.13.
Spite of the Mountain Madonna's much-vaunted powers, the first effect of
the pilgrimage was to provoke a serious indisposition in the Duke.
Exhausted by fasting and emotion, he withdrew to his apartments and for
several days denied himself to all but Heiligenstern, who was suspected
by some of suffering his patient's disorder to run its course with a
view to proving the futility of such remedies. This break in his
intercourse with his kinsman left Odo free to take the measure of his
new surroundings. The company most naturally engaging him was that which
surrounded the Duchess; but he soon wearied of the trivial diversions it
offered. It had ever been necessary to him that his pleasures should
touch the imagination as well as the senses; and with such refinement of
enjoyment the gallants of Pianura were unacquainted. Odo indeed
perceived with a touch of amusement that, in a society where Don
Serafino set the pace, he must needs lag behind his own lacquey.
Cantapresto had, in fact, been hailed by the Bishop's nephew with a
cordiality that proclaimed them old associates in folly; and the
soprano's manner seemed to declare that, if ever he had held the candle
for Don Serafino, he did not grudge the grease that might have dropped
on his cassock. He was soon prime favourite and court buffoon in the
Duchess's circle, organising pleasure-parties, composing scenarios for
her Highness's private theatre, and producing at court any comedian or
juggler the report of whose ability reached him from the market-place.
Indefatigable in the contriving of such diversions, he soon virtually
passed out of Odo's service into that of her Highness: a circumstance
which the young man the less regretted as it left him freer to cultivate
the acquaintance of Gamba and his friends without exposing them to
Cantapresto's espionage.
Odo had felt himself specially drawn toward the abate Crescenti; and the
afternoon after their first meeting he had repaired to the librarian's
dwelling. Crescenti was the priest of an ancient parish lying near the
fortress; and his tiny house was wedged in an angle of the city walls,
like a bird's nest in the mouth of a disused canon. A long flight of
steps led up to his study, which on the farther side opened level with a
vine-shaded patch of herbs and damask roses in the projection of a
ruined bastion. This interior, the home of studious peace, was as
cheerful and well-ordered as its inmate's mind; and Odo, seated under
the vine pergola in the late summer light, and tasting the abate's Val
Pulicella while he turned over the warped pages of old codes and
chronicles, felt the stealing charm of a sequestered life.
He had learned from Gamba that Crescenti was a faithful parish priest as
well as an assiduous scholar, but he saw that the librarian's
beneficence took that purely personal form which may coexist with a
serene acceptance of the general evils underlying particular hardships.
His charities were performed in the old unquestioning spirit of the
Roman distribution of corn; and doubtless the good man who carries his
loaf of bread and his word of hope into his neighbour's hovel reaps a
more tangible return than the lonely thinker who schemes to undermine
the strongholds of injustice. Still there was a perplexing contrast
between the superficiality of Crescenti's moral judgments and the
breadth and penetration of his historic conceptions. Odo was too
inexperienced to reflect that a man's sense of the urgency of
improvement lies mainly in the line of his talent: as the merchant is
persuaded that the roads most in need of mending are those on which his
business makes him travel. Odo himself was already conscious of living
in a many-windowed house, with outlooks diverse enough to justify more
than one view of the universe; but he had no conception of that
concentration of purpose that may make the mind's flight to its goal as
direct and unvarying as the course of a homing bird. The talk turning on
Gamba, Crescenti spoke of the help which the hunchback gave him in his
work among the poor.
"His early hardships," said he, "have given him an insight into
character that my happier circumstances have denied me; and he has more
than once been the means of reclaiming some wretch that I despaired of.
Unhappily, his parts and learning are beyond his station, and will not
let him rest in the performance of his duties. His mind, I often tell
him, is like one of those inn parlours hung with elaborate maps of the
three Heretical Cities; whereas the only topography with which the
virtuous traveller need be acquainted is that of the Heavenly City to
which all our journeyings should tend. The soundness of his heart
reassures me as to this distemper of the reason; but others are less
familiar with his good qualities and I tremble for the risks to which
his rashness may expose him."
The librarian went on to say that Gamba had a pretty poetical gift which
he was suspected of employing in the composition of anonymous satires on
the court, the government and the Church. At that period every Italian
town was as full of lampoons as a marsh of mosquitoes, and it was as
difficult in the one case as the other for the sufferer to detect the
specific cause of his sting. The moment in Italy was a strange one. The
tide of reform had been turned back by the very act devised to hasten
it: the suppression of the Society of Jesus. The shout of liberation
that rose over the downfall of the order had sunk to a guarded whisper.
The dark legend already forming around Ganganelli's death, the hint of
that secret liquor distilled for the order's use in a certain convent of
Perugia, hung like a menace on the political horizon; and the disbanded
Society seemed to have tightened its hold on the public conscience as a
dying man's clutch closes on his victorious enemy.
So profoundly had the Jesuits impressed the world with the sense of
their mysterious power that they were felt to be like one of those
animal organisms which, when torn apart, carry on a separate existence
in every fragment. Ganganelli's bull had provided against their exerting
any political influence, or controlling opinion as confessors or as
public educators; but they were known to be everywhere in Italy, either
hidden in other orders, or acting as lay agents of foreign powers, as
tutors in private families, or simply as secular priests. Even the
confiscation of their wealth did not seem to diminish the popular sense
of their strength. Perhaps because that strength had never been
completely explained, even by their immense temporal advantages, it was
felt to be latent in themselves, and somehow capable of withstanding
every kind of external assault. They had moreover benefited by the
reaction which always follows on the breaking up of any great
organisation. Their detractors were already beginning to forget their
faults and remember their merits. The people had been taught to hate the
Society as the possessor of wealth and privileges which should have been
theirs; but when the Society fell its possessions were absorbed by the
other powers, and in many cases the people suffered from abuses and
maladministration which they had not known under their Jesuit landlords.
The aristocracy had always been in sympathy with the order, and in many
states the Jesuits had been banished simply as a measure of political
expediency, a sop to the restless masses. In these cases the latent
power of the order was concealed rather than diminished by the pretence
of a more liberal government, and everywhere, in one form or another,
the unseen influence was felt to be on the watch for those who dared to
triumph over it too soon.
Such conditions fostered the growth of social satire. Constructive
ambition was forced back into its old disguises, and ridicule of
individual weaknesses replaced the general attack on beliefs and
institutions. Satirical poems in manuscript passed from hand to hand in
coffee-houses, casinos and drawing-rooms, and every conspicuous incident
in social or political life was borne on a biting quatrain to the
confines of the state. The Duke's gift of Boscofolto to the Countess
Belverde had stirred up a swarm of epigrams, and the most malignant
among them, Crescenti averred, were openly ascribed to Gamba.
"A few more imprudences," he added, "must cost him his post; and if your
excellency has any influence with him I would urge its being used to
restrain him from such excesses."
Odo, on taking his leave of the librarian, ran across Gamba at the first
street-corner; and they had not proceeded a dozen yards together when
the eye of the Duke's kinsman fell on a snatch of doggerel scrawled in
chalk on an adjacent wall.
"Beware (the quatrain ran) O virtuous wife or maid,
Our ruler's fondness for the shade,
Lest first he woo thee to the leafy glade
And then into the deeper wood persuade."
This crude play on the Belverde's former title and the one she had
recently acquired was signed "Carlo Gamba."
Odo glanced curiously at the hunchback, who met the look with a composed
smile. "My enemies don't do me justice," said he; "I could do better
than that if I tried;" and he effaced the words with a sweep of his
shabby sleeve.
Other lampoons of the same quality were continually cropping up on the
walls of Pianura, and the ducal police were kept as busy rubbing them
out as a band of weeders digging docks out of a garden. The Duchess's
debts, the Duke's devotions, the Belverde's extortions, Heiligenstern's
mummery, and the political rivalry between Trescorre and the Dominican,
were sauce to the citizen's daily bread; but there was nothing in these
popular satires to suggest the hunchback's trenchant irony.
It was in the Bishop's palace that Odo read the first lampoon in which
he recognised his friend's touch. In this society of polished dilettanti
such documents were valued rather for their literary merits than for
their political significance; and the pungent lines in which the Duke's
panaceas were hit off (the Belverde figuring among them as a Lenten
diet, a dinner of herbs, and a wonder-working bone) caused a flutter of
professional envy in the episcopal circle.
The Bishop received company every evening; and Odo soon found that, as
Gamba had said, it was the best company in Pianura. His lordship lived
in great state in the Gothic palace adjoining the Cathedral. The gloomy
vaulted rooms of the original structure had been abandoned to the small
fry of the episcopal retinue. In the chambers around the courtyard his
lordship drove a thriving trade in wines from his vineyards, while his
clients awaited his pleasure in the armoury, where the panoplies of his
fighting predecessors still rusted on the walls. Behind this facade a
later prelate had built a vast wing overlooking a garden which descended
by easy terraces to the Piana. In the high-studded apartments of this
wing the Bishop held his court and lived the life of a wealthy secular
nobleman. His days were agreeably divided between hunting, inspecting
his estates, receiving the visits of antiquarians, artists and literati,
and superintending the embellishments of his gardens, then the most
famous in North Italy; while his evenings were given to the more private
diversions which his age and looks still justified. In religious
ceremonies or in formal intercourse with his clergy he was the most
imposing and sacerdotal of bishops; but in private life none knew better
how to disguise his cloth. He was moreover a man of parts, and from the
construction of a Latin hexameter to the growing of a Holland bulb, had
a word worth hearing on all subjects likely to engage the dilettante. A
liking soon sprang up between Odo and this versatile prelate; and in the
retirement of his lordship's cabinet, or pacing with him the
garden-alleys set with ancient marbles, the young man gathered many
precepts of that philosophy of pleasure which the great churchmen of the
eighteenth century practised with such rare completeness.
The Bishop had not, indeed, given much thought to the problems which
most deeply engaged his companion. His theory of life took no account of
the future and concerned itself little with social conditions outside
his own class; but he was acquainted with the classical schools of
thought, and, having once acted as the late Duke's envoy to the French
court, had frequented the Baron d'Holbach's drawing-room and
familiarised himself with the views of the Encyclopaedists; though it
was clear that he valued their teachings chiefly as an argument against
asceticism.
"Life," said he to Odo, as they sat one afternoon in a garden-pavilion
above the river, a marble Mercury confronting them at the end of a vista
of clipped myrtle, "life, cavaliere, is a stock on which we may graft
what fruit or flower we choose. See the orange-tree in that Capo di
Monte jar: in a week or two it will be covered with red roses. Here
again is a citron set with carnations; and but yesterday my gardener
sent me word that he had at last succeeded in flowering a pomegranate
with jasmine. In such cases the gardener chooses as his graft the flower
which, by its colour and fragrance, shall most agreeably contrast with
the original stock; and he who orders his life on the same principle,
grafting it with pleasures that form a refreshing off-set to the
obligations of his rank and calling, may regard himself as justified by
Nature, who, as you see, smiles on such abnormal unions among her
children.--Not long ago," he went on, with a reminiscent smile, "I had
here under my roof a young person who practised to perfection this art
of engrafting life with the unexpected. Though she was only a player in
a strolling company--a sweetheart of my wild nephew's, as you may
guess--I have met few of her sex whose conversation was so instructive
or who so completely justified the Scriptural adage, "the sweetness of
the lips increaseth learning..." He broke off to sip his chocolate. "But
why," he continued, "do I talk thus to a young man whose path is lined
with such opportunities? The secret of happiness is to say with the
great Emperor, 'Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, O
Nature.'"
"Such a creed, monsignore," Odo ventured to return, "is as flattering to
the intelligence as to the senses; for surely it better becomes a
reasoning being to face fate as an equal than to cower before it like a
slave; but, since you have opened yourself so freely on the subject, may
I carry your argument a point farther and ask how you reconcile your
conception of man's destiny with the authorised teachings of the
Church?"
The Bishop raised his head with a guarded glance.
"Cavaliere," said he, "the ancients did not admit the rabble to their
sacred mysteries; nor dare we permit the unlettered to enter the
hollowed precincts of the temple of Reason."
"True," Odo acquiesced; "but if the teachings of Christianity are the
best safeguard of the people, should not those teachings at least be
stripped of the grotesque excrescences with which the superstitions of
the people and--perhaps--the greed and craft of the priesthood have
smothered the simple precepts of Jesus?"
The Bishop shrugged his shoulders. "As long," said he, "as the people
need the restraint of a dogmatic religion so long must we do our utmost
to maintain its outward forms. In our market-place on feast-days there
appears the strange figure of a man who carries a banner painted with an
image of Saint Paul surrounded by a mass of writhing serpents. This man
calls himself a descendant of the apostle and sells to our peasants the
miraculous powder with which he killed the great serpent at Malta. If it
were not for the banner, the legend, the descent from Saint Paul, how
much efficacy do you think those powders would have? And how long do you
think the precepts of an invisible divinity would restrain the evil
passions of an ignorant peasant? It is because he is afraid of the
plaster God in his parish church, and of the priest who represents that
God, that he still pays his tithes and forfeitures and keeps his hands
from our throats. By Diana," cried the Bishop, taking snuff, "I have no
patience with those of my calling who go about whining for apostolic
simplicity, and would rob the churches of their ornaments and the
faithful of their ceremonies.
"For my part," he added, glancing with a smile about the
delicately-stuccoed walls of the pavilion, through the windows of which
climbing roses shed their petals on the rich mosaics transferred from a
Roman bath, "for my part, when I remember that 'tis to Jesus of Nazareth
I owe the good roof over my head and the good nags in my stable; nay,
the very venison and pheasants from my preserves, with the gold plate I
eat them off, and above all the leisure to enjoy as they deserve these
excellent gifts of the Creator--when I consider this, I say, I stand
amazed at those who would rob so beneficent a deity of the least of his
privileges.--But why," he continued again after a moment, as Odo
remained silent, "should we vex ourselves with such questions, when
Providence has given us so fair a world to enjoy and such varied
faculties with which to apprehend its beauties? I think you have not
seen the Venus Callipyge in bronze that I have lately received from
Rome?" And he rose and led the way to the house.
This conversation revealed to Odo a third conception of the religious
idea. In Piedmont religion imposed itself as a military discipline, the
enforced duty of the Christian citizen to the heavenly state; to the
Duke it was a means of purchasing spiritual immunity from the
consequences of bodily weakness; to the Bishop, it replaced the panem et
circenses of ancient Rome. Where, in all this, was the share of those
whom Christ had come to save? Where was Saint Francis's devotion to his
heavenly bride, the Lady Poverty? Though here and there a good parish
priest like Crescenti ministered to the temporal wants of the peasantry,
it was only the free-thinker and the atheist who, at the risk of life
and fortune, laboured for their moral liberation. Odo listened with a
saddened heart, thinking, as he followed his host through the perfumed
shade of the gardens, and down the long saloon at the end of which the
Venus stood, of those who for the love of man had denied themselves such
delicate emotions and gone forth cheerfully to exile or imprisonment.
These were the true lovers of the Lady Poverty, the band in which he
longed to be enrolled; yet how restrain a thrill of delight as the
slender dusky goddess detached herself against the cool marble of her
niche, looking, in the sun-rippled green penumbra of the saloon, with a
sound of water falling somewhere out of sight, as though she had just
stepped dripping from the wave?
In the Duchess's company life struck another gait. Here was no waiting
on subtle pleasures, but a headlong gallop after the cruder sort.
Hunting, gaming and masquerading filled her Highness's days; and Odo had
felt small inclination to keep pace with the cavalcade, but for the
flying huntress at its head. To the Duchess's "view halloo" every drop
of blood in him responded; but a vigilant image kept his bosom barred.
So they rode, danced, diced together, but like strangers who cross hands
at a veglione. Once or twice he fancied the Duchess was for unmasking;
but her impulses came and went like fireflies in the dusk, and it suited
his humour to remain a looker-on.
So life piped to him during his first days at Pianura: a merry tune in
the Bishop's company, a mad one in the Duchess's; but always with the
same sad undertone, like the cry of the wind on a warm threshold.
2.14.
Trescorre too kept open house, and here Odo found a warmer welcome than
he had expected. Though Trescorre was still the Duchess's accredited
lover, it was clear that the tie between them was no longer such as to
make him resent her kindness to her young kinsman. He seemed indeed
anxious to draw Odo into her Highness's circle, and surprised him by a
frankness and affability of which his demeanour at Turin had given no
promise. As leader of the anti-clericals he stood for such liberalism as
dared show its head in Pianura; and he seemed disposed to invite Odo's
confidence in political matters. The latter was, however, too much the
child of his race not to hang back from such an invitation. He did not
distrust Trescorre more than the other courtiers; but it was a time when
every ear was alert for the foot-fall of treachery, and the rashest man
did not care to taste first of any cup that was offered him.
These scruples Trescorre made it his business to dispel. He was the only
person at court who was willing to discuss politics, and his clear view
of affairs excited Odo's admiration if not his concurrence. Odo's was in
fact one of those dual visions which instinctively see both sides of a
case and take the defence of the less popular. Gamba's principles were
dear to him; but he did not therefore believe in the personal baseness
of every opponent of the cause. He had refrained from mentioning the
hunchback to his supposed brother; but the latter, in one of their
talks, brought forward Gamba's name, without reference to the
relationship, but with high praise for the young librarian's parts.
This, at the moment, put Odo on his guard; but Trescorre having one day
begged him to give Gamba warning of some petty danger that threatened
him from the clerical side, it became difficult not to believe in an
interest so attested; the more so as Trescorre let it be seen that
Gamba's political views were not such as to distract from his sympathy.
"The fellow's brains," said he, "would be of infinite use to me; but
perhaps he serves us best at a distance. All I ask is that he shall not
risk himself too near Father Ignazio's talons, for he would be a pretty
morsel to throw to the Holy Office, and the weak point of such a man's
position is that, however dangerous in life, he can threaten no one from
the grave."
Odo reported this to Gamba, who heard with a two-edged smile. "Yes," was
his comment, "he fears me enough to want to see me safe in his fold."
Odo flushed at the implication. "And why not?" said he. "Could you not
serve the cause better by attaching yourself openly to the liberals than
by lurking in the ditch to throw mud at both parties?"
"The liberals!" sneered Gamba. "Where are they? And what have they done?
It was they who drove out the Jesuits; but to whom did the Society's
lands go? To the Duke, every acre of them! And the peasantry suffered
far less under the fathers, who were good agriculturists, than under the
Duke, who is too busy with monks and astrologers to give his mind to
irrigation or the reclaiming of waste land. As to the University, who
replaced the Jesuits there? Professors from Padua or Pavia? Heaven
forbid! But holy Barnabites that have scarce Latin enough to spell out
the Lives of the Saints! The Jesuits at least gave a good education to
the upper classes; but now the young noblemen are as ignorant as
peasants."
Trescorre received at his house, besides the court functionaries, all
the liberal faction and the Duchess's personal friends. He kept a lavish
state, but lacking the Bishop's social gifts, was less successful in
fusing the different elements of his circle. The Duke, for the first few
weeks after his kinsman's arrival, received no company; and did not even
appear in the Belverde's drawing-rooms; but Odo deemed it none the less
politic to show himself there without delay.
The new Marchioness of Boscofolto lived in one of the finest palaces of
Pianura, but prodigality was the least of her failings, and the
meagreness of her hospitality was an unfailing source of epigram to the
drawing-rooms of the opposition. True, she kept open table for half the
clergy in the town (omitting, of course, those worldly ecclesiastics who
frequented the episcopal palace), but it was whispered that she had
persuaded her cook to take half wages in return for the privilege of
victualling such holy men, and that the same argument enabled her to
obtain her provisions below the market price. In her outer ante-chamber
the servants yawned dismally over a cold brazier, without so much as a
game of cards to divert them, and the long enfilade of saloons leading
to her drawing-room was so scantily lit that her guests could scarce
recognise each other in passing. In the room where she sat, a tall
crucifix of ebony and gold stood at her elbow and a holy-water cup
encrusted with jewels hung on the wall at her side. A dozen or more
ecclesiastics were always gathered in stiff seats about the hearth; and
the aspect of the apartment, and the Marchioness's semi-monastic
costume, justified the nickname of "the sacristy," which the Duchess had
bestowed on her rival's drawing-room.
Around the small fire on this cheerless hearth the fortunes of the state
were discussed and directed, benefices disposed of, court appointments
debated, and reputations made and unmade in tones that suggested the low
drone of a group of canons intoning the psalter in an empty cathedral.
The Marchioness, who appeared as eager as the others to win Odo to her
party, received him with every mark of consideration and pressed him to
accompany her on a visit to her brother, the Abbot of the Barnabites; an
invitation which he accepted with the more readiness as he had not
forgotten the part played by that religious in the adventure of
Mirandolina of Chioggia.
He found the Abbot a man with a bland intriguing eye and centuries of
pious leisure in his voice. He received his visitors in a room hung with
smoky pictures of the Spanish school, showing Saint Jerome in the
wilderness, the death of Saint Peter Martyr, and other sanguinary
passages in the lives of the saints; and Odo, seated among such
surroundings, and hearing the Abbot deplore the loose lives and
religious negligence of certain members of the court, could scarce
repress a smile as the thought of Mirandolina flitted through his mind.
"She must," he reflected, "have found this a sad change from the
Bishop's palace;" and admired with what philosophy she had passed from
one protector to the other.
Life in Pianura, after the first few weeks, seemed on the whole a tame
business to a youth of his appetite; and he secretly longed for a
pretext to resume his travels. None, however, seemed likely to offer;
for it was clear that the Duke, in the interval of more pressing
concerns, wished to study and observe his kinsman. When sufficiently
recovered from the effects of the pilgrimage, he sent for Odo and
questioned him closely as to the way in which he had spent his time
since coming to Pianura, the acquaintances he had formed and the
churches he had frequented. Odo prudently dwelt on the lofty tone of the
Belverde's circle, and on the privilege he had enjoyed in attending her
on a visit to the holy Abbot of the Barnabites; touching more lightly on
his connection with the Bishop, and omitting all mention of Gamba and
Crescenti. The Duke assumed a listening air, but it was clear that he
could not put off his private thoughts long enough to give an open mind
to other matters; and Odo felt that he was nowhere so secure as in his
cousin's company. He remembered, however, that the Duke had plenty of
eyes to replace his own, and that a secret which was safe in his actual
presence might be in mortal danger on his threshold.
His Highness on this occasion was pleased to inform his kinsman that he
had ordered Count Trescorre to place at the young man's disposal an
income enabling him to keep a carriage and pair, four saddle-horses and
five servants. It was scant measure for an heir-presumptive, and Odo
wondered if the Belverde had had a hand in the apportionment; but his
indifference to such matters (for though personally fastidious he cared
little for display) enabled him to show such gratitude that the Duke,
fancying he might have been content with less, had nearly withdrawn two
of the saddle-horses. This becoming behaviour greatly advanced the young
man in the esteem of his Highness, who accorded him on the spot the
petites entrees of the ducal apartments. It was a privilege Odo had no
mind to abuse; for if life moved slowly in the Belverde's circle it was
at a standstill in the Duke's. His Highness never went abroad but to
serve mass in some church (his almost daily practice) or to visit one of
the numerous monasteries within the city. From Ash Wednesday to Easter
Monday it was his custom to transact no public or private business.
During this time he received none of his ministers, and saw his son but
for a few moments once a day; while in Holy Week he made a retreat with
the Barnabites, the Belverde withdrawing for the same period to the
convent of the Perpetual Adoration.
Odo, as his new life took shape, found his chief interest in the society
of Crescenti and Gamba. In the Duchess's company he might have lost all
taste for soberer pleasures, but that his political sympathies wore a
girl's reproachful shape. Ever at his side, more vividly than in the
body, Fulvia Vivaldi became the symbol of his best aims and deepest
failure. Sometimes, indeed, her look drove him forth in the Duchess's
train, but more often, drawing him from the crowd of pleasure-seekers,
beckoned the way to solitude and study. Under Crescenti's tuition he
began the reading of Dante, who just then, after generations of neglect,
was once more lifting his voice above the crowd of minor singers. The
mighty verse swept Odo out to open seas of thought, and from his vision
of that earlier Italy, hapless, bleeding, but alive and breast to breast
with the foe, he drew the presage of his country's resurrection.
Passing from this high music to the company of Gamba and his friends was
like leaving a church where the penitential psalms are being sung for
the market-place where mud and eggs are flying. The change was not
agreeable to a fastidious taste; but, as Gamba said, you cannot clean
out a stable by waving incense over it. After some hesitation, he had
agreed to make Odo acquainted with those who, like himself, were
secretly working in the cause of progress. These were mostly of the
middle class, physicians, lawyers, and such men of letters as could
subsist on the scant wants of an unliterary town. Ablest among them was
the bookseller, Andreoni, whose shop was the meeting place of all the
literati of Pianura. Andreoni, famous throughout Italy for his editions
of the classics, was a man of liberal views and considerable learning,
and in his private room were to be found many prohibited volumes, such
as Beccaria's Crime and Punishment, Gravina's Hydra Mystica, Concini's
History of Probabilism and the Amsterdam editions of the French
philosophical works.
The reformers met at various places, and their meetings were conducted
with as much secrecy as those of the Honey-Bees. Odo was at first
surprised that they should admit him to their conferences; but he soon
divined that the gatherings he attended were not those at which the
private designs of the party were discussed. It was plain that they
belonged to some kind of secret association; and before he had been long
in Pianura he learned that the society of the Illuminati, that bugbear
of priests and princes, was supposed to have agents at work in the
duchy. Odo had heard little of this execrated league, but that it was
said to preach atheism, tyrannicide and the complete abolition of
territorial rights; but this, being the report of the enemy, was to be
received with a measure of doubt. He tried to learn from Gamba whether
the Illuminati had a lodge in the city; but on this point he could
extract no information. Meanwhile he listened with interest to
discussions on taxation, irrigation, and such economic problems as might
safely be aired in his presence.
These talks brought vividly before him the political corruption of the
state and the misery of the unprivileged classes. All the land in the
duchy was farmed on the metayer system, and with such ill results that
the peasants were always in debt to their landlords. The weight of the
evil lay chiefly on the country-people, who had to pay on every pig they
killed, on all the produce they carried to market, on their farm
implements, their mulberry-orchards and their silk-worms, to say nothing
of the tithes to the parish. So oppressive were these obligations that
many of the peasants, forsaking their farms, enrolled themselves in the
mendicant orders, thus actually strengthening the hand of their
oppressors. Of legislative redress there was no hope, and the Duke was
inaccessible to all but his favourites. The previous year, as Odo
learned, eight hundred poor labourers, exasperated by want, had
petitioned his Highness to relieve them of the corvee; but though they
had raised fifteen hundred scudi to bribe the court official who was to
present their address, no reply had ever been received. In the city
itself, the monopoly of corn and tobacco weighed heavily on the
merchants, and the strict censorship of the press made the open
ventilation of wrongs impossible, while the Duke's sbirri and the agents
of the Holy Office could drag a man's thoughts from his bosom and search
his midnight dreams. The Church party, in the interest of their order,
fostered the Duke's fears of sedition and branded every innovator as an
atheist; the Holy Office having even cast grave doubts on the orthodoxy
of a nobleman who had tried to introduce the English system of ploughing
on his estates. It was evident to Odo that the secret hopes of the
reformers centred in him, and the consciousness of their belief was
sweeter than love in his bosom. It diverted him from the follies of his
class, fixed his thoughts at an age when they are apt to range, and thus
slowly shaped and tempered him for high uses.
In this fashion the weeks passed and summer came. It was the Duchess's
habit to escape the August heats by retiring to the dower-house on the
Piana, a league beyond the gates; but the little prince being still
under the care of the German physician, who would not consent to his
removal, her Highness reluctantly lingered in Pianura. With the first
leafing of the oaks Odo's old love for the budding earth awoke, and he
rode out daily in the forest toward Pontesordo. It was but a flat
stretch of shade, lacking the voice of streams and the cold breath of
mountain-gorges: a wood without humours or surprises; but the mere
spring of the turf was delightful as he cantered down the grass alleys
roofed with level boughs, the outer sunlight just gilding the lip of the
long green tunnel.
Sometimes he attended the Duchess, but oftener chose to ride alone,
setting forth early after a night at cards or a late vigil in
Crescenti's study. One of these solitary rides brought him without
premeditation to a low building on the fenny edge of the wood. It was a
small house, added, it appeared, to an ancient brick front adorned with
pilasters, perhaps a fragment of some woodland temple. The door-step was
overgrown with a stealthy green moss and tufted with giant fennel; and a
shutter swinging loose on its hinge gave a glimpse of inner dimness. Odo
guessed at once that this was the hunting lodge where Cerveno had found
his death; and as he stood looking out across the oozy secrets of the
marsh, the fever seemed to hang on his steps. He turned away with a
shiver; but whether it were the sullen aspect of the house, or the close
way in which the wood embraced it, the place suddenly laid a detaining
hand upon him. It was as though he had reached the heart of solitude.
Even the faint woodland noises seemed to recede from that dense circle
of shade, and the marsh turned a dead eye to heaven.
Odo tethered his horse to a bough and seated himself on the doorstep;
but presently his musings were disturbed by the sound of voices, and the
Duchess, attended by her gentlemen, swept by at the end of a long glade.
He fancied she waved her hand to him; but being in no humour to join the
cavalcade, he remained seated, and the riders soon passed out of sight.
As he sat there sombre thoughts came to him, stealing up like
exhalations from the fen. He saw his life stretched out before him, full
of broken purposes and ineffectual effort. Public affairs were in so
perplexed a case that consistent action seemed impossible to either
party, and their chief efforts were bent toward directing the choice of
a regent. It was this, rather than the possibility of his accession,
which fixed the general attention on Odo, and pledged him to
circumspection. While not concealing that in economic questions his
sympathies were with the liberals, he had carefully abstained from
political action, and had hoped, by the strict observance of his
religious duties, to avoid the enmity of the Church party. Trescorre's
undisguised sympathy seemed the pledge of liberal support, and it could
hardly be doubted that the choice of a regent in the Church party would
be unpopular enough to imperil the dynasty. With Austria hovering on the
horizon the Church herself was not likely to take such risks; and thus
all interests seemed to centre in Odo's appointment.
New elements of uncertainty were, however, perpetually disturbing the
prospect. Among these was Heiligenstern's growing influence over the
Duke. Odo had seen little of the German physician since their first
meeting. Hearsay had it that he was close-pressed by the spies of the
Holy Office, and perhaps for this reason he remained withdrawn in the
Duke's private apartments and rarely showed himself abroad. The little
prince, his patient, was as seldom seen, and the accounts of the
German's treatment were as conflicting as the other rumours of the
court. It was noised on all sides, however, that the Duke was
ill-satisfied with the results of the pilgrimage, and resolved upon less
hallowed measures to assure his heir's recovery. Hitherto, it was
believed, the German had conformed to the ordinary medical treatment;
but the clergy now diligently spread among the people the report that
supernatural agencies were to be employed. This rumour caused such
general agitation that it was said both parties had made secret advances
to the Duchess in the hope of inducing her to stay the scandal. Though
Maria Clementina felt little real concern for the public welfare, her
stirring temper had more than once roused her to active opposition of
the government, and her kinship with the old Duke of Monte Alloro made
her a strong factor in the political game. Of late, however, she seemed
to have wearied of this sport, throwing herself entirely into the
private diversions of her station, and alluding with laughing
indifference to her husband's necromantic researches.
Such was the conflicting gossip of the hour; but it was in fact idle to
forecast the fortunes of a state dependent on a valetudinary's whims;
and rumour was driven to feed upon her own conjectures. To Odo the state
of affairs seemed a satire on his secret aspirations. In a private
station or as a ruling prince he might have served his fellows: as a
princeling on the edge of power he was no more than the cardboard sword
in a toy armoury.
Suddenly he heard his name pronounced and starting up saw Maria
Clementina at his side. She rode alone, and held out her hand as he
approached.
"I have had an accident," said she, breathing quickly. "My girth is
broke and I have lost the rest of my company."
She was glowing with her quick ride, and as Odo lifted her from the
saddle her loosened hair brushed his face like a kiss. For a moment she
seemed like life's answer to the dreary riddle of his fate.
"Ah," she sighed, leaning on him, "I am glad I found you, cousin; I
hardly knew how weary I was;" and she dropped languidly to the doorstep.
Odo's heart was beating hard. He knew it was only the stir of the spring
sap in his veins, but Maria Clementina wore a look of morning brightness
that might have made a soberer judgment blink. He turned away to examine
her saddle. As he did so, he observed that her girth was not torn, but
clean cut, as with sharp scissors. He glanced up in surprise, but she
sat with drooping lids, her head thrown back against the lintel; and
repressing the question on his lips he busied himself with the
adjustment of the saddle. When it was in place he turned to give her a
hand; but she only smiled up at him through her lashes.
"What!" said she with an air of lovely lassitude, "are you so impatient
to be rid of me? I should have been so glad to linger here a little."
She put her hand in his and let him lift her to her feet. "How cool and
still it is! Look at that little spring bubbling through the moss. Could
you not fetch me a drink from it?"
She tossed aside her riding-hat and pushed back the hair from her warm
forehead.
"Your Highness must not drink of the water here," said Odo, releasing
her hand.
She gave him a quick derisive glance. "Ah, true," she cried; "this is
the house to which that abandoned wretch used to lure poor Cerveno." She
drew back to look at the lodge. "Were you ever in it?" she asked
curiously. "I should like to see how the place looks."
She laid her hand on the door-latch, and to Odo's surprise it yielded to
her touch. "We're in luck, I vow," she declared with a laugh. "Come
cousin, let us visit the temple of romance together."
The allusion to Cerveno jarred on Odo, and he followed her in silence.
Within doors, the lodge was seen to consist of a single room, gaily
painted with hunting-scenes framed in garlands of stucco. In the dusk
they could just discern the outlines of carved and gilded furniture, and
a Venice mirror gave back their faces like phantoms in a magic crystal.
"This is stifling," said Odo impatiently. "Would your Highness not be
better in the open?"
"No, no," she persisted. "Unbar the shutters and we shall have air
enough. I love a deserted house: I have always fancied that if one came
in noiselessly enough one might catch the ghosts of the people who used
to live in it."
He obeyed in silence, and the green-filtered forest noon filled the room
with a quiver of light. A chill stole upon Odo as he looked at the
dust-shrouded furniture, the painted harpsichord with green mould
creeping over its keyboard, the consoles set with empty wine flagons and
goblets of Venice glass. The place was like the abandoned corpse of
pleasure.
But Maria Clementina laughed and clapped her hands. "This is
enchanting," she cried, throwing herself into an arm-chair of threadbare
damask, "and I shall rest here while you refresh me with a glass of
Lacrima Christi from one of those dusty flagons. They are empty, you
say? Never mind, for I have a flask of cordial in my saddle-bag. Fetch
it, cousin, and wash these two glasses in the spring, that we may toast
all the dead lovers that have drunk out of them."
When Odo returned with the flask and glasses, she had brushed the dust
from a slender table of inlaid wood, and drawn a seat near her own. She
filled the two goblets with cordial and signed to Odo to seat himself
beside her.
"Why do you pull such a glum face?" she cried, leaning over to touch his
glass before she emptied hers. "Is it that you are thinking of poor
Cerveno? On my soul, I question if he needs your pity! He had his hour
of folly, and was too gallant a gentleman not to pay the shot. For my
part I would rather drink a poisoned draught than die of thirst."
The wine was rising in waves of colour over her throat and brow, and
setting her glass down she suddenly laid her ungloved hand on Odo's.
"Cousin," she said in a low voice, "I could help you if you would let
me."
"Help me?" he said, only half-aware of her words in the warm surprise of
her touch.
She drew back, but with a look that seemed to leave her hand in his.
"Are you mad," she murmured, "or do you despise your danger?"
"Am I in danger?" he echoed smiling. He was thinking how easily a man
might go under in that deep blue gaze of hers. She dropped her lids as
though aware of his thought.
"Why do you concern yourself with politics?" she went on with a new note
in her voice. "Can you find no diversion more suited to your rank and
age? Our court is a dull one, I own--but surely even here a man might
find a better use for his time."
Odo's self-possession returned in a flash. "I am not," cried he gaily,
"in a position to dispute it at this moment;" and he leaned over to
recapture her hand. To his surprise she freed herself with an affronted
air.
"Ah," she said, "you think this a device to provoke a gallant
conversation." She faced him nobly now. "Look," said she, drawing a
folded paper from the breast of her riding-coat. "Have you not
frequented these houses?"
Suddenly sobered, he ran his eye over the paper. It contained the dates
of the meetings he had attended at the houses of Gamba's friends, with
the designation of each house. He turned pale.
"I had no notion," said he, with a smile, "that my movements were of
interest in such high places; but why does your Highness speak of danger
in this connection?"
"Because it is rumoured that the lodge of the Illuminati, which is known
to exist in Pianura, meets secretly at the houses on this list."
Odo hesitated a moment. "Of that," said he, "I have no report. I am
acquainted with the houses only as the residences of certain learned and
reputable men, who devote their leisure to scientific studies."
"Oh," she interrupted, "call them by what name you please! It is all one
to your enemies."
"My enemies?" said he lightly. "And who are they?"
"Who are they?" she repeated impatiently. "Who are they not? Who is
there at court that has such cause to love you? The Holy Office? The
Duke's party?"
Odo smiled. "I am perhaps not in the best odour with the Church party,"
said he, "but Count Trescorre has shown himself my friend, and I think
my character is safe in his keeping. Nor will it be any news to him that
I frequent the company you name."
She threw back her head with a laugh. "Boy," she cried, "you are blinder
even than I fancied! Do you know why it was that the Duke summoned you
to Pianura? Because he wished his party to mould you to their shape, in
case the regency should fall into your hands. And what has Trescorre
done? Shown himself your friend, as you say--won your confidence,
encouraged you to air your liberal views, allowed you to show yourself
continually in the Bishop's company, and to frequent the secret
assemblies of free thinkers and conspirators--and all that the Duke may
turn against you and perhaps name him regent in your stead! Believe me,
cousin," she cried with a mounting urgency, "you never stood in greater
need of a friend than now. If you continue on your present course you
are undone. The Church party is resolved to hunt down the Illuminati,
and both sides would rejoice to see you made the scapegoat of the Holy
Office." She sprung up and laid her hand on his arm. "What can I do to
convince you?" she said passionately. "Will you believe me if I ask you
to go away--to leave Pianura on the instant?"
Odo had risen also, and they faced each other in silence. There was an
unmistakable meaning in her tone: a self-revelation so simple and
ennobling that she seemed to give herself as hostage for her words.
"Ask me to stay, cousin--not to go," he whispered, her yielding hand in
his.
"Ah, madman," she cried, "not to believe me NOW! But it is not too late
if you will still be guided."
"I will be guided--but not away from you."
She broke away, but with a glance that drew him after. "It is late now
and we must set forward," she said abruptly. "Come to me tomorrow early.
I have much more to say to you."
The words seemed to be driven out on her quick breathing, and the blood
came and went in her cheek like a hurried messenger. She caught up her
riding-hat and turned to put it on before the Venice mirror.
Odo, stepping up behind her, looked over her shoulder to catch the
reflection of her blush. Their eyes met for a laughing instant; then he
drew back deadly pale, for in the depths of the dim mirror he had seen
another face.
The Duchess cried out and glanced behind her. "Who was it? Did you see
her?" she said trembling.
Odo mastered himself instantly.
"I saw nothing," he returned quietly. "What can your Highness mean?"
She covered her eyes with her hands. "A girl's face," she
shuddered--"there in the mirror--behind mine--a pale face with a black
travelling hood over it--"
He gathered up her gloves and riding-whip and threw open the door of the
pavilion.
"Your Highness is weary and the air here insalubrious. Shall we not
ride?" he said.
Maria Clementina heard him with a blank stare. Suddenly she roused
herself and made as though to pass out; but on the threshold she
snatched her whip from him and, turning, flung it full at the mirror.
Her aim was good and the chiselled handle of the whip shattered the
glass to fragments.
She caught up her long skirt and stepped into the open.
"I brook no rivals!" said she with a white-lipped smile. "And now,
cousin," she added gaily, "to horse!"
2.15.
Odo, as in duty bound, waited the next morning on the Duchess; but word
was brought that her Highness was indisposed, and could not receive him
till evening.
He passed a drifting and distracted day. The fear lay much upon him that
danger threatened Gamba and his associates; yet to seek them out in the
present conjuncture might be to play the stalking-horse to their
enemies. Moreover, he fancied the Duchess not incapable of using
political rumours to further her private caprice; and scenting no
immediate danger he resolved to wait upon events.
On rising from dinner he was surprised by a summons from the Duke. The
message, an unusual one at that hour, was brought by a slender pale lad,
not in his Highness's service, but in that of the German physician
Heiligenstern. The boy, who was said to be a Georgian rescued from the
Grand Signior's galleys, and whose small oval face was as smooth as a
girl's, accosted Odo in one of the remoter garden alleys with the
request to follow him at once to the Duke's apartment. Odo complied, and
his guide loitered ahead with an air of unconcern, as though not wishing
to have his errand guessed. As they passed through the tapestry gallery
preceding the gentlemen's antechamber, footsteps and voices were heard
within. Instantly the boy was by Odo's side and had drawn him into the
embrasure of a window. A moment later Trescorre left the antechamber and
walked rapidly past their hiding-place. As soon as he was out of sight
the Georgian led Odo from his concealment and introduced him by a
private way to the Duke's closet.
His Highness was in his bed-chamber; and Odo, on being admitted, found
him, still in dressing-gown and night-cap, kneeling with a disordered
countenance before the ancient picture of the Last Judgment that hung on
the wall facing his bed. He seemed to have forgotten that he had asked
for his kinsman; for on the latter's entrance he started up with a
suspicious glance and hastily closed the panels of the picture, which
(as Odo now noticed) appeared to conceal an inner painting. Then,
gathering his dressing-gown about him, he led the way to his closet and
bade his visitor be seated.
"I have," said he, speaking in a low voice, and glancing apprehensively
about him, "summoned you hither privately to speak on a subject which
concerns none but ourselves.--You met no one on your way?" he broke off
to enquire.
Odo told him that Count Trescorre had passed, but without perceiving
him.
The Duke seemed relieved. "My private actions," said he querulously,
"are too jealously spied upon by my ministers. Such surveillance is an
offence to my authority, and my subjects shall learn that it will not
frighten me from my course." He straightened his bent shoulders and
tried to put on the majestic look of his official effigy. "It appears,"
he continued, with one of his sudden changes of manner, "that the
Duchess's uncle, the Duke of Monte Alloro, has heard favourable reports
of your wit and accomplishments, and is desirous of receiving you at his
court." He paused, and Odo concealed his surprise behind a profound bow.
"I own," the Duke went on, "that the invitation comes unseasonably,
since I should have preferred to keep you at my side; but his Highness's
great age, and his close kinship to my wife, through whom the request is
conveyed, make it impossible for me to refuse." The Duke again paused,
as though uncertain how to proceed. At length he resumed:--"I will not
conceal from you that his Highness is subject to the fantastical humours
of his age. He makes it a condition that the length of your stay shall
not be limited; but should you fail to suit his mood you may find
yourself out of favour in a week. He writes of wishing to send you on a
private mission to the court of Naples; but this may be no more than a
passing whim. I see no way, however, but to let you go, and to hope for
a favourable welcome for you. The Duchess is determined upon giving her
uncle this pleasure, and in fact has consented in return to oblige me in
an important matter." He flushed and averted his eyes. "I name this," he
added with an effort, "only that her Highness may be aware that it
depends on herself whether I hold to my side of the bargain. Your papers
are already prepared and you have my permission to set out at your
convenience. Meanwhile it were well that you should keep your
preparations private, at least till you are ready to take leave." And
with the air of dignity he could still assume on occasion, he rose and
handed Odo his passport.
Odo left the closet with a beating heart. It was clear that his
departure from Pianura was as strongly opposed by some one in high
authority as it was favoured by the Duchess; and why opposed and by whom
he could not so much as hazard a guess. In the web of court intrigues it
was difficult for the wariest to grope his way; and Odo was still new to
such entanglements. His first sensation was one of release, of a future
suddenly enlarged and cleared. The door was open again to opportunity,
and he was of an age to greet the unexpected like a bride. Only one
thought disturbed him. It was clear that Maria Clementina had paid high
for his security; and did not her sacrifice, whatever its nature,
constitute a claim upon his future? In sending him to her uncle, whose
known favourite she was, she did not let him out of her hand. If he
accepted this chance of escape he must hereafter come and go as she
bade. At the thought, his bounding fancy slunk back humbled. He saw
himself as Trescorre's successor, his sovereign's official lover, taking
up again, under more difficult circumstances, and without the zest of
inexperience, the dull routine of his former bondage. No, a thousand
times no; he would fetter himself to no woman's fancy! Better find a
pretext for staying in Pianura, affront the Duchess by refusing her aid,
risk his prospects, his life even, than bow his neck twice to the same
yoke. All her charm vanished in this vision of unwilling
subjection...Disturbed by these considerations, and anxious to compose
his spirits, Odo bethought himself of taking refuge in the Bishop's
company. Here at least the atmosphere was clear of mystery: the Bishop
held aloof from political intrigue and breathed an air untainted by the
odium theologicum. Odo found his lordship seated in the cool tessellated
saloon which contained his chiefest treasures--marble busts ranged on
pedestals between the windows, the bronze Venus Callipyge, and various
tables of pietra commessa set out with vases and tazzas of antique
pattern. A knot of virtuosi gathered about one of these tables were
engaged in examining a collection of engraved gems displayed by a
lapidary of Florence; while others inspected a Greek manuscript which
the Bishop had lately received from Syria. Beyond the windows, a
cedrario or orange-walk stretched its sunlit vista to the terrace above
the river; and the black cassocks of one or two priests who were
strolling in the clear green shade of a pleached alley made pleasant
spots of dimness in the scene.
Even here, however, Odo was aware of a certain disquietude. The Bishop's
visitors, instead of engaging in animated disputations over his
lordship's treasures, showed a disposition to walk apart, conversing in
low tones; and he himself, presently complaining of the heat, invited
Odo to accompany him to the grot beneath the terrace. In this shaded
retreat, studded with shells and coral and cooled by an artificial wind
forced through the conchs of marble Tritons, his lordship at once began
to speak of the rumours of public disaffection.
"As you know," said he, "my duties and tastes alike seclude me from
political intrigue, and the scandal of the day seldom travels beyond my
kitchens. But as creaking signboards announce a storm, the hints and
whispers of my household tell me there is mischief abroad. My position
protects me from personal risk, and my lack of ambition from political
enmity; for it is notorious I would barter the highest honours in the
state for a Greek vase or a bronze of Herculanaeum--not to mention the
famous Venus of Giorgione, which, if report be true, his Highness has
burned at Father Ignazio's instigation. But yours, cavaliere, is a less
sheltered walk, and perhaps a friendly warning may be of service. Yet,"
he added after a pause, "a warning I can scarce call it, since I know
not from what quarter the danger impends. Proximus ardet Ucalegon; but
there is no telling which way the flames may spread. I can only advise
you that the Duke's growing infatuation for his German magician has bred
the most violent discontent among his subjects, and that both parties
appear resolved to use this disaffection to their advantage. It is said
his Highness intends to subject the little prince to some mysterious
treatment connected with the rites of the Egyptian priesthood, of whose
secret doctrine Heiligenstern pretends to be an adept. Yesterday it was
bruited that the Duchess loudly opposed the experiment; this afternoon
it is given out that she has yielded. What the result may be, none can
foresee; but whichever way the storm blows, the chief danger probably
threatens those who have had any connection with the secret societies
known to exist in the duchy."
Odo listened attentively, but without betraying any great surprise; and
the Bishop, evidently reassured by his composure, suggested that, the
heat of the day having declined, they should visit the new Indian
pheasants in his volary.
The Bishop's hints had not helped his listener to a decision. Odo indeed
gave Cantapresto orders to prepare as privately as possible for their
departure; but rather to appear to be carrying out the Duke's
instructions than with any fixed intention of so doing. How to find a
pretext for remaining he was yet uncertain. To disobey the Duke was
impossible; but in the general state of tension it seemed likely enough
that both his Highness and the Duchess might change their minds within
the next twenty-four hours. He was reluctant to appear that evening in
the Duchess's circle; but the command was not to be evaded, and he went
thither resolved to excuse himself early.
He found her Highness surrounded by the usual rout that attended her.
She was herself in a mood of wild mirth, occasioned by the drolleries of
an automatic female figure which a travelling showman introduced by
Cantapresto had obtained leave to display at court. This lively puppet
performed with surprising skill on the harpsichord, giving the company,
among other novelties, selections from the maestro Piccini's latest
opera and a concerto of the German composer Gluck.
Maria Clementina seemed at first unaware of her kinsman's presence, and
he began to hope he might avoid any private talk with her; but when the
automaton had been dismissed and the card-tables were preparing, one of
her gentlemen summoned him to her side. As usual, she was highly rouged
in the French fashion, and her cold blue eyes had a light which set off
the extraordinary fairness of her skin.
"Cousin," said she at once, "have you your papers?" Her tone was haughty
and yet eager, as though she scorned to show herself concerned, yet
would not have had him believe in her indifference. Odo bowed without
speaking.
"And when do you set out?" she continued. "My good uncle is impatient to
receive you."
"At the earliest moment, madam," he replied with some hesitation.
The hesitation was not lost on her and he saw her flush through her
rouge.
"Ah," said she in a low voice, "the earliest moment is none too
early!--Do you go tomorrow?" she persisted; but just then Trescorre
advanced toward them, and under a burst of assumed merriment she
privately signed to Odo to withdraw.
He was glad to make his escape, for the sense of walking among hidden
pitfalls was growing on him. That he had acquitted himself awkwardly
with the Duchess he was well aware; but Trescorre's interruption had at
least enabled him to gain time. An increasing unwillingness to leave
Pianura had replaced his former impatience to be gone. The reluctance to
desert his friends was coupled with a boyish desire to stay and see the
game out; and behind all his other impulses lurked the instinctive
resistance to any feminine influence save one.
The next morning he half-expected another message from the Duchess; but
none came, and he judged her to be gravely offended. Cantapresto
appeared early with the rumour that some kind of magical ceremony was to
be performed that evening in the palace; and toward noon the Georgian
boy again came privately to Odo and requested him to wait on the Duke
when his Highness rose from supper. This increased Odo's fears for
Gamba, Andreoni and the other reformers; yet he dared neither seek them
out in person nor entrust a message to Cantapresto. As the day passed,
however, he began to throw off his apprehensions. It was not the first
time since he had come to Pianura that there had been ominous talk of
political disturbances, and he knew that Gamba and his friends were not
without means of getting under shelter. As to his own risk, he did not
give it a thought. He was not of an age or a temper to weigh personal
danger against the excitement of conflict; and as evening drew on he
found himself wondering with some impatience if after all nothing
unusual would happen.
He supped alone, and at the appointed hour proceeded to the Duke's
apartments, taking no farther precaution than to carry his passport
about him. The palace seemed deserted. Everywhere an air of apprehension
and mystery hung over the long corridors and dimly-lit antechambers. The
day had been sultry, with a low sky foreboding great heat, and not a
breath of air entered at the windows. There were few persons about, but
one or two beggars lurked as usual on the landings of the great
staircase, and Odo, in passing, felt his sleeve touched by a woman
cowering under the marble ramp in the shadow thrown by a colossal
Caesar. Looking down, he heard a voice beg for alms, and as he gave it
the woman pressed a paper into his hand and slipped away through the
darkness.
Odo hastened on till he could assure himself of being unobserved; then
he unfolded the paper and read these words in Gamba's hand: "Have no
fear for any one's safety but your own." With a sense of relief he hid
the message and entered the Duke's antechamber.
Here he was received by Heiligenstern's Oriental servant, who, with a
mute salutation, led him into a large room where the Duke's pages
usually waited. The walls of this apartment had been concealed under
hangings of black silk worked with cabalistic devices. Oil-lamps set on
tripods of antique design shed a faint light over the company seated at
one end of the room, among whom Odo recognised the chief dignitaries of
the court. The ladies looked pale but curious, the men for the most part
indifferent or disapproving. Intense quietness prevailed, broken only by
the soft opening and closing of the door through which the guests were
admitted. Presently the Duke and Duchess emerged from his Highness's
closet. They were followed by Prince Ferrante, supported by his governor
and his dwarf, and robed in a silken dressing-gown which hung in
voluminous folds about his little shrunken body. Their Highnesses seated
themselves in two armchairs in front of the court, and the little prince
reclined beside his mother.
No sooner had they taken their places than Heiligenstern stepped forth,
wearing a doctor's gown and a quaintly-shaped bonnet or mitre. In his
long robes and strange headdress he looked extraordinarily tall and
pale, and his features had the glassy-eyed fixity of an ancient mask. He
was followed by his two attendants, the Oriental carrying a frame-work
of polished metal, not unlike a low narrow bed, which he set down in the
middle of the room; while the Georgian lad, who had exchanged his
fustanella and embroidered jacket for a flowing white robe, bore in his
hands a crystal globe set in a gold stand. Having reverently placed it
on a small table, the boy, at a signal from his master, drew forth a
phial and dropped its contents into a bronze vat or brazier which stood
at the far end of the room. Instantly clouds of perfumed vapour filled
the air, and as these dispersed it was seen that the black hangings of
the walls had vanished with them, and the spectators found themselves
seated in a kind of open temple through which the eye travelled down
colonnaded vistas set with statues and fountains. This magical prospect
was bathed in sunlight, and Odo observed that, though the lamps had gone
out, the same brightness suffused the room and illuminated the wondering
faces of the audience. The little prince uttered a cry of delight, and
the magician stepped forward, raising a long white wand in his hand.
"This," said he, in measured accents, "is an evocation of the Temple of
Health, into whose blissful precincts the wisdom of the ancients was
able to lead the sufferer who put his trust in them. This deceptio
visus, or product of rhabdomancy, easily effected by an adept of the
Egyptian mysteries, is designed but to prefigure the reality which
awaits those who seek health through the ministry of the disciples of
Iamblichus. It is no longer denied among men of learning that those who
have been instructed in the secret doctrine of the ancients are able, by
certain correspondences of nature, revealed only to the initiated, to
act on the inanimate world about them, and on the animal economy, by
means beyond the common capabilities of man." He paused a moment, and
then, turning with a low bow to the Duke, enquired whether his Highness
desired the rites to proceed.
The Duke signed his assent, and Heiligenstern, raising his wand, evoked
another volume of mist. This time it was shot through with green flames,
and as the wild light subsided the room was once more revealed with its
black hangings, and the lamps flickered into life again.
After another pause, doubtless intended to increase the tension of the
spectators, the magician bade his servant place the crystal before him.
He then raised his hands as if in prayer, speaking in a strange chanting
jargon, in which Odo detected fragments of Greek and Latin, and the
recurring names of the Judaic demons and angels. As this ceased
Heiligenstern beckoned to the Georgian boy, who approached him with
bowed head and reverently folded hands.
"Your Highness," said Heiligenstern, "and this distinguished company,
are doubtless familiar with the magic crystal of the ancients, in which
the future may be deciphered by the pure in heart. This lad, whom I
rescued from slavery and have bred to my service in the solemn rites of
the priesthood of Isis, is as clear in spirit as the crystal which
stands before you. The future lies open to him in this translucent
sphere and he is prepared to disclose it at your bidding."
There was a moment's silence; but on the magician's repeating his
enquiry the Duke said: "Let the boy tell me what he sees."
Heiligenstern at once laid his hands on his acolyte's head and murmured
a few words over him; then the boy advanced and bent devoutly above the
crystal. Almost immediately the globe was seen to cloud, as though
suffused with milk; the cloud gradually faded and the boy began to speak
in a low hesitating tone.
"I see," he said, "I see a face...a fair face..." He faltered and
glanced up almost apprehensively at Heiligenstern, whose gaze remained
impenetrable. The boy began to tremble. "I see nothing," he said in a
whisper. "There is one here purer than I...the crystal will not speak
for me in that other's presence..."
"Who is that other?" Heiligenstern asked.
The boy fixed his eyes on the little prince. An excited murmur ran
through the company and Heiligenstern again advanced to the Duke. "Will
your Highness," he asked, "permit the prince to look into the sacred
sphere?"
Odo saw the Duchess extend her hand impulsively toward the child; but at
a signal from the Duke the little prince's chair was carried to the
table on which the crystal stood. Instantly the former phenomenon was
repeated, the globe clouding and then clearing itself like a pool after
rain.
"Speak, my son," said the Duke. "Tell us what the heavenly powers reveal
to you."
The little prince continued to pore over the globe without speaking.
Suddenly his thin face reddened and he clung more closely to his
companion's arm.
"I see a beautiful place," he began, his small fluting voice rising like
a bird's pipe in the stillness, "a place a thousand times more beautiful
than this...like a garden...full of golden-haired children...with
beautiful strange toys in their hands...they have wings like
birds...they ARE birds...ah! they are flying away from me...I see them
no more...they vanish through the trees..." He broke off sadly.
Heiligenstern smiled. "That, your Highness, is a vision of the prince's
own future, when, restored to health, he is able to disport himself with
his playmates in the gardens of the palace."
"But they were not the gardens of the palace!" the little boy exclaimed.
"They were much more beautiful than our gardens."
Heiligenstern bowed. "They appeared so to your Highness," he
deferentially suggested, "because all the world seems more beautiful to
those who have regained their health."
"Enough, my son!" exclaimed the Duchess with a shaken voice. "Why will
you weary the child?" she continued, turning to the Duke; and the
latter, with evident reluctance, signed to Heiligenstern to cover the
crystal. To the general surprise, however, Prince Ferrante pushed back
the black velvet covering which the Georgian boy was preparing to throw
over it.
"No, no," he exclaimed, in the high obstinate voice of the spoiled
child, "let me look again...let me see some more beautiful things...I
have never seen anything so beautiful, even in my sleep!" It was the
plaintive cry of the child whose happiest hours are those spent in
unconsciousness.
"Look again, then," said the Duke, "and ask the heavenly powers what
more they have to show you."
The boy gazed in silence; then he broke out: "Ah, now we are in the
palace...I see your Highness's cabinet...no, it is the bedchamber...it
is night...and I see your Highness lying asleep...very still...very
still...your Highness wears the scapular received last Easter from his
Holiness...It is very dark...Oh, now a light begins to shine...where
does it come from? Through the door? No, there is no door on that side
of the room...It shines through the wall at the foot of the bed...ah! I
see"--his voice mounted to a cry--"The old picture at the foot of the
bed...the picture with the wicked people burning in it...has opened like
a door...the light is shining through it...and now a lady steps out from
the wall behind the picture...oh, so beautiful...she has yellow hair, as
yellow as my mother's...but longer...oh, much longer...she carries a
rose in her hand...and there are white doves flying about her
shoulders...she is naked, quite naked, poor lady! but she does not seem
to mind...she seems to be laughing about it...and your Highness..."
The Duke started up violently. "Enough--enough!" he stammered. "The
fever is on the child...this agitation is...most pernicious...Cover the
crystal, I say!"
He sank back, his forehead damp with perspiration. In an instant the
crystal had been removed, and Prince Ferrante carried back to his
mother's side. The boy seemed in nowise affected by his father's
commotion. His eyes burned with excitement, and he sat up eagerly, as
though not to miss a detail of what was going forward. Maria Clementina
leaned over and clasped his hand, but he hardly noticed her. "I want to
see some more beautiful things!" he insisted.
The Duke sat speechless, a fallen heap in his chair, and the courtiers
looked at each other, their faces shifting spectrally in the faint
light, like phantom travellers waiting to be ferried across some
mysterious river. At length Heiligenstern advanced and with every mark
of deference addressed himself to the Duke.
"Your Highness," said he quietly, "need be under no apprehension as to
the effect produced upon the prince. The magic crystal, as your Highness
is aware, is under the protection of the blessed spirits, and its
revelations cannot harm those who are pure-minded enough to receive
them. But the chief purpose of this assemblage was to witness the
communication of vital force to the prince, by means of the electrical
current. The crystal, by revealing its secrets to the prince, has
testified to his perfect purity of mind, and thus declared him to be in
a peculiarly fit state to receive what may be designated as the
Sacrament of the new faith."
A murmur ran through the room, but Heiligenstern continued without
wavering: "I mean thereby to describe that natural religion which, by
instructing its adepts in the use of the hidden potencies of earth and
air, testifies afresh to the power of the unseen Maker of the Universe."
The murmur subsided, and the Duke, regaining his voice, said with an
assumption of authority: "Let the treatment begin."
Heiligenstern immediately spoke a word to the Oriental, who bent over
the metal bed which had been set up in the middle of the room. As he did
so the air again darkened and the figures of the magician and his
assistants were discernible only as flitting shades in the obscurity.
Suddenly a soft pure light overflowed the room, the perfume of flowers
filled the air, and music seemed to steal out of the very walls.
Heiligenstern whispered to the governor and between them they lifted the
little prince from his chair and laid him gently on the bed. The
magician then leaned over the boy with a slow weaving motion of the
hands.
"If your Highness will be pleased to sleep," he said, "I promise your
Highness the most beautiful dreams."
The boy smiled back at him and he continued to bend above the bed with
flitting hands. Suddenly the little prince began to laugh.
"What does your Highness feel?" the magician asked.
"A prickling...such a soft warm prickling...as if my blood were sunshine
with motes dancing in it...or as if that sparkling wine of France were
running all over my body."
"It is an agreeable sensation, your Highness?"
The boy nodded.
"It is well with your Highness?"
"Very well."
Heiligenstern began a loud rhythmic chant, and gradually the air
darkened, but with the mild dimness of a summer twilight, through which
sparks could be seen flickering like fire-flies about the reclining
prince. The hush grew deeper; but in the stillness Odo became aware of
some unseen influence that seemed to envelope him in waves of exquisite
sensation. It was as though the vast silence of the night had poured
into the room and, like a dark tepid sea, was lapping about his body and
rising to his lips. His thoughts, dissolved into emotion, seemed to
waver and float on the stillness like sea-weed on the lift of the tide.
He stood spell-bound, lulled, yielding himself to a blissful
dissolution.
Suddenly he became aware that the hush was too intense, too complete;
and a moment later, as though stretched to the cracking-point, it burst
terrifically into sound. A huge uproar shook the room, crashing through
it like a tangible mass. The sparks whirled in a menacing dance round
the little prince's body, and, abruptly blotted, left a deeper darkness,
in which the confused herding movements of startled figures were
indistinguishably merged. A flash of silence followed; then the
liberated forces of the night broke in rain and thunder on the rocking
walls of the room.
"Light--light!" some one stammered; and at the same moment a door was
flung open, admitting a burst of candle-light and a group of figures in
ecclesiastical dress, against which the white gown and black hood of
Father Ignazio detached themselves. The Dominican stepped toward the
Duke.
"Your Highness," said he in a tone of quiet resolution, "must pardon
this interruption; I act at the bidding of the Holy Office."
Even in that moment of profound disarray the name sent a deeper shudder
through his hearers. The Duke, who stood grasping the arms of his chair,
raised his head and tried to stare down the intruders; but no one heeded
his look. At a signal from the Dominican a servant had brought in a pair
of candelabra, and in their commonplace light the cabalistic hangings,
the magician's appliances and his fantastically-dressed attendants
looked as tawdry as the paraphernalia of a village quack. Heiligenstern
alone survived the test. Erect, at bay as it were, his black robe
falling in hieratic folds, the white wand raised in his hands, he might
have personified the Prince of Darkness drawn up undaunted against the
hosts of the Lord. Some one had snatched the little prince from his
stretcher, and Maria Clementina, holding him to her breast, sat palely
confronting the sorcerer. She alone seemed to measure her strength
against his in some mysterious conflict of the will. But meanwhile the
Duke had regained his voice.
"My father," said he, "on what information does the Holy Office act?"
The Dominican drew a parchment from his breast. "On that of the
Inquisitor General, your Highness," he replied, handing the paper to the
Duke, who unfolded it with trembling hands but was plainly unable to
master its contents. Father Ignazio beckoned to an ecclesiastic who had
entered the room in his train.
"This, your Highness," said he, "is the abate de Crucis of Innsbruck,
who was lately commissioned by the Holy Office to enquire into the
practises and doctrine of the order of the Illuminati, that corrupt and
atheistical sect which has been the cause of so much scandal among the
German principalities. In the course of his investigations he became
aware that the order had secretly established a lodge in Pianura; and
hastening hither from Rome to advise your Highness of the fact, has
discovered in the so-called Count Heiligenstern one of the most
notorious apostles of the order." He turned to the priest. "Signor
abate," he said, "you confirm these facts?"
The abate de Crucis quietly advanced. He was a slight pale man of about
thirty, with a thoughtful and indulgent cast of countenance.
"In every particular," said he, bowing profoundly to the Duke, and
speaking in a low voice of singular sweetness. "It has been my duty to
track this man's career from its ignoble beginning to its infamous
culmination, and I have been able to place in the hands of the Holy
Office the most complete proofs of his guilt. The so-called Count
Heiligenstern is the son of a tailor in a small village of Pomerania.
After passing through various vicissitudes with which I need not trouble
your Highness, he obtained the confidence of the notorious Dr.
Weishaupt, the founder of the German order of the Illuminati, and
together this precious couple have indefatigably propagated their
obscene and blasphemous doctrines. That they preach atheism and
tyrannicide I need not tell your Highness; but it is less generally
known that they have made these infamous doctrines the cloak of private
vices from which even paganism would have recoiled. The man now before
me, among other open offences against society, is known to have seduced
a young girl of noble family in Ratisbon and to have murdered her child.
His own wife and children he long since abandoned and disowned; and the
youth yonder, whom he describes as a Georgian slave rescued from the
Grand Signior's galleys, is in fact the wife of a Greek juggler of
Ravenna, and has forsaken her husband to live in criminal intercourse
with an atheist and assassin."
This indictment, pronounced with an absence of emotion which made each
word cut the air like the separate stroke of a lash, was followed by a
prolonged silence; then one of the Duchess's ladies cried out suddenly
and burst into tears. This was the signal for a general outbreak. The
room was filled with a confusion of voices, and among the groups surging
about him Odo noticed a number of the Duke's sbirri making their way
quietly through the crowd. The notary of the Holy Office advanced toward
Heiligenstern, who had placed himself against the wall, with one arm
flung about his trembling acolyte. The Duchess, her boy still clasped
against her, remained proudly seated; but her eyes met Odo's in a glance
of terrified entreaty, and at the same instant he felt a clutch on his
sleeve and heard Cantapresto's whisper.
"Cavaliere, a boat waits at the landing below the tanners' lane. The
shortest way to it is through the gardens and your excellency will find
the gate beyond the Chinese pavilion unlocked."
He had vanished before Odo could look round. The latter still wavered;
but as he did so he caught Trescorre's face through the crowd. The
minister's eye was fixed on him; and the discovery was enough to make
him plunge through the narrow wake left by Cantapresto's retreat.
Odo made his way unhindered to the ante-room, which was also thronged,
ecclesiastics, servants and even beggars from the courtyard jostling
each other in their struggle to see what was going forward. The
confusion favoured his escape, and a moment later he was hastening down
the tapestry gallery and through the vacant corridors of the palace. He
was familiar with half-a-dozen short-cuts across this network of
passages; but in his bewilderment he pressed on down the great stairs
and across the echoing guard-room that opened on the terrace. A drowsy
sentinel challenged him; and on Odo's explaining that he sought to
leave, and not to enter, the palace, replied that he had his Highness's
orders to let no one out that night. For a moment Odo was at a loss;
then he remembered his passport. It seemed to him an interminable time
before the sentinel had scrutinised it by the light of a guttering
candle, and to his surprise he found himself in a cold sweat of fear.
The rattle of the storm simulated footsteps at his heels and he felt the
blind rage of a man within shot of invisible foes.
The passport restored, he plunged out into the night. It was pitch-black
in the gardens and the rain drove down with the guttural rush of a
midsummer storm. So fierce was its fall that it seemed to suck up the
earth in its black eddies, and he felt himself swept along over a
heaving hissing surface, with wet boughs lashing out at him as he fled.
From one terrace to another he dropped to lower depths of buffeting
dripping darkness, till he found his hand on the gate-latch and swung to
the black lane below the wall. Thence on a run he wound to the tanners'
quarter by the river: a district commonly as foul-tongued as it was
ill-favoured, but tonight clean-purged of both evils by the vehement
sweep of the storm. Here he groped his way among slippery places and
past huddled out-buildings to the piles of the wharf. The rain was now
subdued to a noiseless vertical descent, through which he could hear the
tap of the river against the piles. Scarce knowing what he fled or
whither he was flying, he let himself down the steps and found the flat
of a boat's bottom underfoot. A boatman, distinguishable only as a black
bulk in the stern, steadied his descent with outstretched hand; then the
bow swung round, and after a labouring stroke or two they caught the
current and were swept down through the rushing darkness.
BOOK III.
THE CHOICE.
The Vision touched him on the lips and said:
Hereafter thou shalt eat me in thy bread,
Drink me in all thy kisses, feel my hand
Steal 'twixt thy palm and Joy's, and see me stand
Watchful at every crossing of the ways,
The insatiate lover of thy nights and days.
3.1.
It was at Naples, some two years later, that the circumstances of his
flight were recalled to Odo Valsecca by the sound of a voice which at
once mysteriously connected itself with the incidents of that wild
night.
He was seated with a party of gentlemen in the saloon of Sir William
Hamilton's famous villa of Posilipo, where they were sipping the
ambassador's iced sherbet and examining certain engraved gems and
burial-urns recently taken from the excavations. The scene was such as
always appealed to Odo's fancy: the spacious room, luxuriously fitted
with carpets and curtains in the English style, and opening on a
prospect of classical beauty and antique renown; in his hands the rarest
specimens of that buried art which, like some belated golden harvest,
was now everywhere thrusting itself through the Neapolitan soil; and
about him men of taste and understanding, discussing the historic or
mythological meaning of the objects before them, and quoting Homer or
Horace in corroboration of their guesses.
Several visitors had joined the party since Odo's entrance; and it was
from a group of these later arrivals that the voice had reached him. He
looked round and saw a man of refined and scholarly appearance, dressed
en abbe, as was the general habit in Rome and Naples, and holding in one
hand the celebrated blue vase cut in cameo which Sir William had
recently purchased from the Barberini family.
"These reliefs," the stranger was saying, "whether cut in the substance
itself, or afterward affixed to the glass, certainly belong to the
Grecian period of cameo-work, and recall by the purity of their design
the finest carvings of Dioskorides." His beautifully-modulated Italian
was tinged by a slight foreign accent, which seemed to connect him still
more definitely with the episode his voice recalled. Odo turned to a
gentleman at his side and asked the speaker's name.
"That," was the reply, "is the abate de Crucis, a scholar and
cognoscente, as you perceive, and at present attached to the household
of the Papal Nuncio."
Instantly Odo beheld the tumultuous scene in the Duke's apartments, and
heard the indictment of Heiligenstern falling in tranquil accents from
the very lips which were now, in the same tone, discussing the date of a
Greek cameo vase. Even in that moment of disorder he had been struck by
the voice and aspect of the agent of the Holy Office, and by a singular
distinction that seemed to set the man himself above the coil of
passions in which his action was involved. To Odo's spontaneous yet
reflective temper there was something peculiarly impressive in the kind
of detachment which implies, not obtuseness or indifference, but a
higher sensitiveness disciplined by choice. Now he felt a renewed pang
of regret that such qualities should be found in the service of the
opposition; but the feeling was not incompatible with a wish to be more
nearly acquainted with their possessor.
The two years elapsing since Odo's departure from Pianura had widened if
they had not lifted his outlook. If he had lost something of his early
enthusiasm he had exchanged it for a larger experience of cities and
men, and for the self-command born of varied intercourse. He had reached
a point where he was able to survey his past dispassionately and to
disentangle the threads of the intrigue in which he had so nearly lost
his footing. The actual circumstances of his escape were still wrapped
in mystery: he could only conjecture that the Duchess, foreseeing the
course events would take, had planned with Cantapresto to save him in
spite of himself. His nocturnal flight down the river had carried him to
Ponte di Po, the point where the Piana flows into the Po, the latter
river forming for a few miles the southern frontier of the duchy. Here
his passport had taken him safely past the customs-officer, and
following the indications of the boatman, he had found, outside the
miserable village clustered about the customs, a travelling-chaise which
brought him before the next night-fall to Monte Alloro.
Of the real danger from which this timely retreat had removed him,
Gamba's subsequent letters had brought ample proof. It was indeed mainly
against himself that both parties, perhaps jointly, had directed their
attack; designing to take him in the toils ostensibly prepared for the
Illuminati. His evasion known, the Holy Office had contented itself with
imprisoning Heiligenstern in one of the Papal fortresses near the
Adriatic, while his mistress, though bred in the Greek confession, was
confined in a convent of the Sepolte Vive and his Oriental servant sent
to the Duke's galleys. As to those suspected of affiliations with the
forbidden sect, fines and penances were imposed on a few of the least
conspicuous, while the chief offenders, either from motives of policy or
thanks to their superior adroitness, were suffered to escape without a
reprimand. After this, Gamba's letters reported, the duchy had lapsed
into its former state of quiescence. Prince Ferrante had been seriously
ailing since the night of the electrical treatment, but the Pope having
sent his private physician to Pianura, the boy had rallied under the
latter's care. The Duke, as was natural, had suffered an acute relapse
of piety, spending his time in expiatory pilgrimages to the various
votive churches of the duchy, and declining to transact any public
business till he should have compiled with his own hand a calendar of
the lives of the saints, with the initial letters painted in miniature,
which he designed to present to his Holiness at Easter.
Meanwhile Odo, at Monte Alloro, found himself in surroundings so
different from those he had left that it seemed incredible they should
exist in the same world. The Duke of Monte Alloro was that rare survival
of a stronger age, a cynic. In a period of sentimental optimism, of
fervid enthusiasms and tearful philanthropy, he represented the
pleasure-loving prince of the Renaissance, crushing his people with
taxes but dazzling them with festivities; infuriating them by his
disregard of the public welfare, but fascinating them by his good looks,
his tolerance of old abuses, his ridicule of the monks, and by the
careless libertinage which had founded the fortunes of more than one
middle-class husband and father--for the Duke always paid well for what
he appropriated. He had grown old in his pleasant sins, and these, as
such raiment will, had grown old and dingy with him; but if no longer
splendid he was still splendour-loving, and drew to his court the most
brilliant adventurers of Italy. Spite of his preference for such
company, he had a nobler side, the ruins of a fine but uncultivated
intelligence, and a taste for all that was young, generous and high in
looks and courage. He was at once drawn to Odo, who instinctively
addressed himself to these qualities, and whose conversation and manners
threw into relief the vulgarity of the old Duke's cronies. The latter
was the shrewd enough to enjoy the contrast at the expense of his
sycophants' vanity; and the cavaliere Valsecca was for a while the
reigning favourite. It would have been hard to say whether his patron
was most tickled by his zeal for economic reforms, or by his faith in
the perfectibility of man. Both these articles of Odo's creed drew tears
of enjoyment from the old Duke's puffy eyes; and he was never tired of
declaring that only his hatred for his nephew of Pianura induced him to
accord his protection to so dangerous an enemy of society.
Odo at first fancied that it was in response to a mere whim of the
Duke's that he had been despatched to Monte Alloro; but he soon
perceived that the invitation had been inspired by Maria Clementina's
wish. Some three months after Odo's arrival, Cantapresto suddenly
appeared with a packet of letters from the Duchess. Among them her
Highness had included a few lines to Odo, whom she briefly adjured not
to return to Pianura, but to comply in all things with her uncle's
desires. Soon after this the old Duke sent for Odo, and asked him how
his present mode of life agreed with his tastes. Odo, who had learned
that frankness was the surest way to the Duke's favour, replied that,
while nothing could be more agreeable than the circumstances of his
sojourn at Monte Alloro, he must own to a wish to travel when the
occasion offered.
"Why, this is as I fancied," replied the Duke, who held in his hand an
open letter on which Odo recognised Maria Clementina's seal. "We have
always," he continued, "spoken plainly with each other, and I will not
conceal from you that it is for your best interests that you should
remain away from Pianura for the present. The Duke, as you doubtless
divine, is anxious for your return, and her Highness, for that very
reason, is urgent that you should prolong your absence. It is notorious
that the Duke soon wearies of those about him, and that your best chance
of regaining his favour is to keep out of his reach and let your enemies
hang themselves in the noose they have prepared for you. For my part, I
am always glad to do an ill-turn to that snivelling friar, my nephew,
and the more so when I can seriously oblige a friend; and, as you have
perhaps guessed, the Duke dares not ask for your return while I show a
fancy for your company. But this," added he with an ironical twinkle,
"is a tame place for a young man of your missionary temper, and I have a
mind to send you on a visit to that arch-tyrant Ferdinand of Naples, in
whose dominions a man may yet burn for heresy or be drawn and quartered
for poaching on a nobleman's preserves. I am advised that some rare
treasures have lately been taken from the excavations there and I should
be glad if you would oblige me by acquiring a few for my gallery. I will
give you letters to a cognoscente of my acquaintance, who will put his
experience at the disposal of your excellent taste, and the funds at
your service will, I hope, enable you to outbid the English brigands
who, as the Romans say, would carry off the Colosseum if it were
portable."
In all this Odo discerned Maria Clementina's hand, and an instinctive
resistance made him hang back upon his patron's proposal. But the only
alternative was to return to Pianura; and every letter from Gamba urged
on him (for the very reasons the Duke had given) the duty of keeping out
of reach as the surest means of saving himself and the cause to which he
was pledged. Nothing remained but a graceful acquiescence; and early the
next spring he started for Naples.
His first impulse had been to send Cantapresto back to the Duchess. He
knew that he owed his escape me grave difficulties to the soprano's
prompt action on the night of Heiligenstern's arrest; but he was equally
sure that such action might not always be as favourable to his plans. It
was plain that Cantapresto was paid to spy on him, and that whenever
Odo's intentions clashed with those of his would-be protectors the
soprano would side with the latter. But there was something in the air
of Monte Alloro which dispelled such considerations, or at least
weakened the impulse to act on them. Cantapresto as usual had attracted
notice at court. His glibness and versatility amused the Duke, and to
Odo he was as difficult to put off as a bad habit. He had become so
accomplished a servant that he seemed a sixth sense of his master's; and
when the latter prepared to start on his travels Cantapresto took his
usual seat in the chaise.
To a traveller of Odo's temper there could be few more agreeable
journeys than the one on which he was setting out, and the Duke being in
no haste to have his commission executed, his messenger had full leisure
to enjoy every stage of the way. He profited by this to visit several of
the small principalities north of the Apennines before turning toward
Genoa, whence he was to take ship for the South. When he left Monte
Alloro the land had worn the bleached face of February, and it was
amazing to his northern-bred eyes to find himself, on the sea-coast, in
the full exuberance of summer. Seated by this halcyon shore, Genoa, in
its carved and frescoed splendour, just then celebrating with the
customary gorgeous ritual the accession of a new Doge, seemed to Odo
like the richly-inlaid frame of some Renaissance "triumph." But the
splendid houses with their marble peristyles, and the painted villas in
their orange-groves along the shore, housed a dull and narrow-minded
society, content to amass wealth and play biribi under the eyes of their
ancestral Vandykes, without any concern as to the questions agitating
the world. A kind of fat commercial dulness, a lack of that personal
distinction which justifies magnificence, seemed to Odo the prevailing
note of the place; nor was he sorry when his packet set sail for Naples.
Here indeed he found all the vivacity that Genoa lacked. Few cities
could at first acquaintance be more engaging to the stranger. Dull and
brown as it appeared after the rich tints of Genoa, yet so gloriously
did sea and land embrace it, so lavishly the sun gild and the moon
silver it, that it seemed steeped in the surrounding hues of nature. And
what a nature to eyes subdued to the sober tints of the north! Its
spectacular quality--that studied sequence of effects ranging from the
translucent outline of Capri and the fantastically blue mountains of the
coast, to Vesuvius lifting its torch above the plain--this prodigal
response to fancy's claims suggested the boundless invention of some
great scenic artist, some Olympian Veronese with sea and sky for a
palette. And then the city itself, huddled between bay and mountains,
and seething and bubbling like a Titan's cauldron! Here was life at its
source, not checked, directed, utilised, but gushing forth
uncontrollably through every fissure of the brown walls and reeking
streets--love and hatred, mirth and folly, impudence and greed, going
naked and unashamed as the lazzaroni on the quays. The variegated
surface of it all was fascinating to Odo. It set free his powers of
purely physical enjoyment, keeping all deeper sensations in abeyance.
These, however, presently found satisfaction in that other hidden beauty
of which city and plain were but the sumptuous drapery. It is hardly too
much to say that to the trained eyes of the day the visible Naples
hardly existed, so absorbed were they in the perusal of her buried past.
The fever of excavation was on every one. No social or political problem
could find a hearing while the subject of the last coin or bas-relief
from Pompeii or Herculanaeum remained undecided. Odo, at first an amused
spectator, gradually found himself engrossed in the fierce quarrels
raging over the date of an intaglio or the myth represented on an
amphora. The intrinsic beauty of the objects, and the light they shed on
one of the most brilliant phases of human history, were in fact
sufficient to justify the prevailing ardour; and the reconstructive
habit he had acquired from Crescenti lent a living interest to the
driest discussion between rival collectors.
Gradually other influences reasserted themselves. At the house of Sir
William Hamilton, then the centre of the most polished society in
Naples, he met not only artists and archeologists, but men of letters
and of affairs. Among these, he was peculiarly drawn to the two
distinguished economists, the abate Galiani and the cavaliere
Filangieri, in whose company he enjoyed for the first time sound
learning unhampered by pedantry. The lively Galiani proved that social
tastes and a broad wit are not incompatible with more serious interests;
and Filangieri threw the charm of a graceful personality over any topic
he discussed. In the latter, indeed, courtly, young and romantic, a
thinker whose intellectual acuteness was steeped in moral emotion, Odo
beheld the type of the new chivalry, an ideal leader of the campaign
against social injustice. Filangieri represented the extremest optimism
of the day. His sense of existing abuses was only equalled by his faith
in their speedy amendment. Love was to cure all evils: the love of man
for man, the effusive all-embracing sympathy of the school of the
Vicaire Savoyard, was to purge the emotions by tenderness and pity. In
Gamba, the victim of the conditions he denounced, the sense of present
hardship prevailed over the faith in future improvement; while
Filangieri's social superiority mitigated his view of the evils and
magnified the efficacy of the proposed remedies. Odo's days passed
agreeably in such intercourse, or in the excitement of excursions to the
ruined cities; and as the court and the higher society of Naples offered
little to engage him, he gradually restricted himself to the small
circle of chosen spirits gathered at the villa Hamilton. To these he
fancied the abate de Crucis might prove an interesting addition; and the
desire to learn something of this problematic person induced him to quit
the villa at the moment when the abate took leave.
They found themselves together on the threshold; and Odo, recalling to
the other the circumstances of their first meeting, proposed that they
should dismiss their carriages and regain the city on foot. De Crucis
readily consented; and they were soon descending the hill of Posilipo.
Here and there a turn in the road brought them to an open space whence
they commanded the bay from Procida to Sorrento, with Capri afloat in
liquid gold and the long blue shadow of Vesuvius stretching like a
menace toward the city. The spectacle was one of which Odo never
wearied; but today it barely diverted him from the charms of his
companion's talk. The abate de Crucis had that quality of repressed
enthusiasm, of an intellectual sensibility tempered by self-possession,
which exercises the strongest attraction over a mind not yet master of
itself. Though all he said had a personal note he seemed to withhold
himself even in the moment of greatest expansion: like some prince who
should enrich his favourites from the public treasury but keep his
private fortune unimpaired. In the course of their conversation Odo
learned that though of Austrian birth his companion was of mingled
English and Florentine parentage: a fact perhaps explaining the mixture
of urbanity and reserve that lent such charm to his manner. He told Odo
that his connection with the Holy Office had been only temporary, and
that, having contracted a severe cold the previous winter in Germany, he
had accepted a secretaryship in the service of the Papal Nuncio in order
to enjoy the benefits of a mild climate. "By profession," he added, "I
am a pedagogue, and shall soon travel to Rome, where I have been called
by Prince Bracciano to act as governor to his son; and meanwhile I am
taking advantage of my residence here to indulge my taste for
antiquarian studies."
He went on to praise the company they had just left, declaring that he
knew no better way for a young man to form his mind than by frequenting
the society of men of conflicting views and equal capacity. "Nothing,"
said he, "is more injurious to the growth of character than to be
secluded from argument and opposition; as nothing is healthier than to
be obliged to find good reasons for one's beliefs on pain of
surrendering them."
"But," said Odo, struck with this declaration, "to a man of your cloth
there is one belief which never surrenders to reason."
The other smiled. "True," he agreed; "but I often marvel to see how
little our opponents know of that belief. The wisest of them seem in the
case of those children at our country fairs who gape at the incredible
things depicted on the curtains of the booths, without asking themselves
whether the reality matches its presentment. The weakness of human
nature has compelled us to paint the outer curtain of the sanctuary in
gaudy colours, and the malicious fancy of our enemies has given a
monstrous outline to these pictures; but what are such vanities to one
who has passed beyond, and beheld the beauty of the King's daughter, all
glorious within?"
As though unwilling to linger on such grave topics, he turned the talk
to the scene at their feet, questioning Odo as to the impression Naples
had made on him. He listened courteously to the young man's comments on
the wretched state of the peasantry, the extravagances of the court and
nobility and the judicial corruption which made the lower classes submit
to any injustice rather than seek redress through the courts. De Crucis
agreed with him in the main, admitting that the monopoly of corn, the
maintenance of feudal rights and the King's indifference to the graver
duties of his rank placed the kingdom of Naples far below such states as
Tuscany or Venetia; "though," he added, "I think our economists, in
praising one state at the expense of another, too often overlook those
differences of character and climate that must ever make it impossible
to govern different races in the same manner. Our peasants have a blunt
saying: Cut off the dog's tail and he is still a dog; and so I suspect
the most enlightened rule would hardly bring this prompt and choleric
people, living on a volcanic soil amid a teeming vegetation, into any
resemblance with the clear-headed Tuscan or the gentle and dignified
Roman."
As he spoke they emerged upon the Chiaia, where at that hour the quality
took the air in their carriages, while the lower classes thronged the
footway. A more vivacious scene no city of Europe could present. The
gilt coaches drawn by six or eight of the lively Neapolitan horses,
decked with plumes and artificial flowers and preceded by running
footmen who beat the foot-passengers aside with long staves; the
richly-dressed ladies seated in this never-ending file of carriages,
bejewelled like miraculous images and languidly bowing to their friends;
the throngs of citizens and their wives in holiday dress; the sellers of
sherbet, ices and pastry bearing their trays and barrels through the
crowd with strange cries and the jingling of bells; the friars of every
order in their various habits, the street-musicians, the half-naked
lazzaroni, cripples and beggars, who fringed the throng like the line of
scum edging a fair lake;--this medley of sound and colour, which in fact
resembled some sudden growth of the fiery soil, was an expressive
comment on the abate's words.
"Look," he continued, as he and Odo drew aside to escape the mud from an
emblazoned chariot, "at the gold-leaf on the panels of that coach and
the gold-lace on the liveries of those lacqueys. Is there any other city
in the world where gold is so prodigally used? Where the monks gild
their relics, the nobility their servants, the apothecaries their pills,
the very butchers their mutton? One might fancy their bright sun had set
them the example! And how cold and grey all soberer tints must seem to
these children of Apollo! Well--so it is with their religion and their
daily life. I wager half those naked wretches yonder would rather attend
a fine religious service, with abundance of gilt candles, music from
gilt organ-pipes, and incense from gilt censers, than eat a good meal or
sleep in a decent bed; as they would rather starve under a handsome
merry King that has the name of being the best billiard-player in Europe
than go full under one of your solemn reforming Austrian Archdukes!"
The words recalled to Odo Crescenti's theory of the influence of
character and climate on the course of history; and this subject soon
engrossing both speakers, they wandered on, inattentive to their
surroundings, till they found themselves in the thickest concourse of
the Toledo. Here for a moment the dense crowd hemmed them in; and as
they stood observing the humours of the scene, Odo's eye fell on the
thick-set figure of a man in doctor's dress, who was being led through
the press by two agents of the Inquisition. The sight was too common to
have fixed his attention, had he not recognised with a start the
irascible red-faced professor who, on his first visit to Vivaldi, had
defended the Diluvial theory of creation. The sight raised a host of
memories from which Odo would gladly have beaten a retreat; but the
crowd held him in check and a moment later he saw that the doctor's eyes
were fixed on him with an air of recognition. A movement of pity
succeeded his first impulse, and turning to de Crucis he exclaimed:--"I
see yonder an old acquaintance who seems in an unlucky plight and with
whom I should be glad to speak."
The other, following his glance, beckoned to one of the sbirri, who made
his way through the throng with the alacrity of one summoned by a
superior. De Crucis exchanged a few words with him, and then signed to
him to return to his charge, who presently vanished in some fresh
shifting of the crowd.
"Your friend," said de Crucis, "has been summoned before the Holy Office
to answer a charge of heresy preferred by the authorities. He has lately
been appointed to the chair of physical sciences in the University here,
and has doubtless allowed himself to publish openly views that were
better expounded in the closet. His offence, however, appears to be a
mild one, and I make no doubt he will be set free in a few days."
This, however, did not satisfy Odo; and he asked de Crucis if there were
no way of speaking with the doctor at once.
His companion hesitated. "It can easily be arranged," said he;
"but--pardon me, cavaliere--are you well-advised in mixing yourself in
such matters?"
"I am well-advised in seeking to serve a friend!" Odo somewhat hotly
returned; and de Crucis, with a faint smile of approval, replied
quietly: "In that case I will obtain permission for you to visit your
friend in the morning."
He was true to his word; and the next forenoon Odo, accompanied by an
officer of police, was taken to the prison of the Inquisition. Here he
found his old acquaintance seated in a clean commodious room and reading
Aristotle's "History of Animals," the only volume of his library that he
had been permitted to carry with him. He welcomed Odo heartily, and on
the latter's enquiring what had brought him to this plight, replied with
some dignity that he had been led there in the fulfilment of his duty.
"Some months ago," he continued, "I was summoned hither to profess the
natural sciences in the University; a summons I readily accepted, since
I hoped, by the study of a volcanic soil, to enlarge my knowledge of the
globe's formation. Such in fact was the case, but to my surprise my
researches led me to adopt the views I had formerly combated, and I now
find myself in the ranks of the Vulcanists, or believers in the
secondary origin of the earth: a view you may remember I once opposed
with all the zeal of inexperience. Having firmly established every point
in my argument according to the Baconian method of investigation, I felt
it my duty to enlighten my scholars; and in the course of my last
lecture I announced the result of my investigations. I was of course
aware of the inevitable result; but the servants of Truth have no choice
but to follow where she calls, and many have joyfully traversed stonier
places than I am likely to travel."
Nothing could exceed the respect with which Odo heard this simple
confession of faith. It was as though the speaker had unconsciously
convicted him of remissness, of cowardice even; so vain and windy his
theorising seemed, judged by the other's deliberate act! Yet placed as
he was, what could he do, how advance their common end, but by passively
waiting on events? At least, he reflected, he could perform the trivial
service of trying to better his friend's case; and this he eagerly
offered to attempt. The doctor thanked him, but without any great
appearance of emotion: Odo was struck by the change which had
transformed a heady and intemperate speaker into a model of philosophic
calm. The doctor, indeed, seemed far more concerned for the safety of
his library and his cabinet of minerals than for his own. "Happily,"
said he, "I am not a man of family, and can therefore sacrifice my
liberty with a clear conscience: a fact I am the more thankful for when
I recall the moral distress of our poor friend Vivaldi, when compelled
to desert his post rather than be separated from his daughter."
The name brought the colour to Odo's brow, and with an embarrassed air
he asked what news the doctor had of their friend.
"Alas," said the other, "the last was of his death, which happened two
years since in Pavia. The Sardinian government had, as you probably
know, confiscated his small property on his leaving the state, and I am
told he died in great poverty, and in sore anxiety for his daughter's
future." He added that these events had taken place before his own
departure from Turin, and that since then he had learned nothing of
Fulvia's fate, save that she was said to have made her home with an aunt
who lived in a town of the Veneto.
Odo listened in silence. The lapse of time, and the absence of any links
of association, had dimmed the girl's image in his breast; but at the
mere sound of her name it lived again, and he felt her interwoven with
his deepest fibres. The picture of her father's death and of her own
need filled him with an ineffectual pity, and for a moment he thought of
seeking her out; but the other could recall neither the name of the town
she had removed to nor that of the relative who had given her a home.
To aid the good doctor was a simpler business. The intervention of de
Crucis and Odo's own influence sufficed to effect his release, and on
the payment of a heavy fine (in which Odo privately assisted him) he was
reinstated in his chair. The only promise exacted by the Holy Office was
that he should in future avoid propounding his own views on questions
already decided by Scripture, and to this he readily agreed, since, as
he shrewdly remarked to Odo, his opinions were now well-known, and any
who wished farther instruction had only to apply to him privately.
The old Duke having invited Odo to return to Monte Alloro with such
treasures as he had collected for the ducal galleries, the young man
resolved to visit Rome on his way to the North. His acquaintance with de
Crucis had grown into something like friendship since their joint effort
in behalf of the imprisoned sage, and the abate preparing to set out
about the same time, the two agreed to travel together. The road leading
from Naples to Rome was at that time one of the worst in Italy, and was
besides so ill-provided with inns that there was no inducement to linger
on the way. De Crucis, however, succeeded in enlivening even this
tedious journey. He was a good linguist and a sound classical scholar,
besides having, as he had told Odo, a pronounced taste for antiquarian
research. In addition to this, he performed agreeably on the violin, and
was well-acquainted with the history of music. His chief distinction,
however, lay in the ease with which he wore his accomplishments, and in
a breadth of view that made it possible to discuss with him many
subjects distasteful to most men of his cloth. The sceptical or
licentious ecclesiastic was common enough; but Odo had never before met
a priest who united serious piety with this indulgent temper, or who had
learning enough to do justice to the arguments of his opponents.
On his venturing one evening to compliment de Crucis on these qualities,
the latter replied with a smile: "Whatever has been lately advanced
against the Jesuits, it can hardly be denied that they were good
school-masters; and it is to them I owe the talents you have been
pleased to admire. Indeed," he continued, quietly fingering his violin,
"I was myself bred in the order: a fact I do not often make known in the
present heated state of public opinion, but which I never conceal when
commended for any quality that I owe to the Society rather than to my
own merit."
Surprise for the moment silenced Odo; for though it was known that Italy
was full of former Jesuits who had been permitted to remain in the
country as secular priests, and even to act as tutors or professors in
private families, he had never thought of de Crucis in this connection.
The latter, seeing his surprise, went on: "Once a Jesuit, always a
Jesuit, I suppose. I at least owe the Society too much not to own my
debt when the occasion offers. Nor could I ever see the force of the
charge so often brought against us: that we sacrifice everything to the
glory of the order. For what is the glory of the order? Our own motto
has declared it: Ad majorem Dei gloriam--who works for the Society works
for its Master. If our zeal has been sometimes misdirected, our blood
has a thousand times witnessed to its sincerity. In the Indies, in
America, in England during the great persecution, and lately on our own
unnatural coasts, the Jesuits have died for Christ as joyfully as His
first disciples died for Him. Yet these are but a small number in
comparison with the countless servants of the order who, labouring in
far countries among savage peoples, or surrounded by the heretical
enemies of our faith, have died the far bitterer death of moral
isolation: setting themselves to their task with the knowledge that
their lives were but so much indistinguishable dust to be added to the
sum of human effort. What association founded on human interests has
ever commanded such devotion? And what merely human authority could
count on such unquestioning obedience, not in a mob of poor illiterate
monks, but in men chosen for their capacity and trained to the exercise
of their highest faculties? Yet there have never lacked such men to
serve the Order; and as one of our enemies has said--our noblest enemy,
the great Pascal--'je crois volontiers aux histoires dont les temoins se
font egorger.'"
He did not again revert to his connection with the Jesuits; but in the
farther course of their acquaintance Odo was often struck by the
firmness with which he testified to the faith that was in him, without
using the jargon of piety, or seeming, by his own attitude, to cast a
reflection on that of others. He was indeed master of that worldly
science which the Jesuits excelled in imparting, and which, though it
might sink to hypocrisy in smaller natures, became in a finely-tempered
spirit, the very flower of Christian courtesy.
Odo had often spoken to de Crucis of the luxurious lives led by many of
the monastic orders in Naples. It might be true enough that the monks
themselves, and even their abbots, fared on fish and vegetables, and
gave their time to charitable and educational work; but it was
impossible to visit the famous monastery of San Martino, or that of the
Carthusians at Camaldoli, without observing that the anchoret's cell had
expanded into a delightful apartment, with bedchamber, library and
private chapel, and his cabbage-plot into a princely garden. De Crucis
admitted the truth of the charge, explaining it in part by the character
of the Neapolitan people, and by the tendency of the northern traveller
to forget that such apparent luxuries as spacious rooms, shady groves
and the like are regarded as necessities in a hot climate. He urged,
moreover, that the monastic life should not be judged by a few isolated
instances; and on the way to Rome he proposed that Odo, by way of seeing
the other side of the question, should visit the ancient foundation of
the Benedictines on Monte Cassino.
The venerable monastery, raised on its height over the busy vale of
Garigliano, like some contemplative spirit above the conflicting
problems of life, might well be held to represent the nobler side of
Christian celibacy. For nearly a thousand years its fortified walls had
been the stronghold of the humanities, and generations of students had
cherished and added to the treasures of the famous library. But the
Benedictine rule was as famous for good works as for learning, and its
comparative abstention from dogmatic controversy and from the mechanical
devotion of some of the other orders had drawn to it men of superior
mind, who sought in the monastic life the free exercise of the noblest
activities rather than a sanctified refuge from action. This was
especially true of the monastery of Monte Cassino, whither many scholars
had been attracted and where the fathers had long had the highest name
for learning and beneficence. The monastery, moreover, in addition to
its charitable and educational work among the poor, maintained a school
of theology to which students came from all parts of Italy; and their
presence lent an unwonted life to the great labyrinth of courts and
cloisters.
The abbot, with whom de Crucis was well-acquainted, welcomed the
travellers warmly, making them free of the library and the archives and
pressing them to prolong their visit. Under the spell of these
influences they lingered on from day to day; and to Odo they were the
pleasantest days he had known. To be waked before dawn by the bell
ringing for lauds--to rise from the narrow bed in his white-washed cell,
and opening his casement look forth over the haze-enveloped valley, the
dark hills of the Abruzzi and the remote gleam of sea touched into being
by the sunrise--to hasten through hushed echoing corridors to the
church, where in a grey resurrection-light the fathers were intoning the
solemn office of renewal--this morning ablution of the spirit, so like
the bodily plunge into clear cold water, seemed to attune the mind to
the fullest enjoyment of what was to follow: the hours of study, the
talks with the monks, the strolls through cloister or garden, all
punctuated by the recurring summons to devotion. Yet for all its latent
significance it remained to him a purely sensuous impression, the vision
of a golden leisure: not a solution of life's perplexities, but at best
an honourable escape from them.
3.2.
"To know Rome is to have assisted at the councils of destiny!" This cry
of a more famous traveller must have struggled for expression in Odo's
breast as the great city, the city of cities, laid her irresistible hold
upon him. His first impression, as he drove in the clear evening light
from the Porta del Popolo to his lodgings in the Via Sistina, was of a
prodigious accumulation of architectural effects, a crowding of century
on century, all fused in the crucible of the Roman sun, so that each
style seemed linked to the other by some subtle affinity of colour.
Nowhere else, surely, is the traveller's first sight so crowded with
surprises, with conflicting challenges to eye and brain. Here, as he
passed, was a fragment of the ancient Servian wall, there a new stucco
shrine embedded in the bricks of a medieval palace; on one hand a lofty
terrace crowned by a row of mouldering busts, on the other a tower with
machicolated parapet, its flanks encrusted with bits of Roman sculpture
and the escutcheons of seventeenth-century Popes. Opposite, perhaps, one
of Fuga's golden-brown churches, with windy saints blowing out of their
niches, overlooked the nereids of a barocco fountain, or an old house
propped itself like a palsied beggar against a row of Corinthian
columns; while everywhere flights of steps led up and down to hanging
gardens or under archways, and each turn revealed some distant glimpse
of convent-walls on the slope of a vineyard or of red-brown ruins
profiled against the dim sea-like reaches of the Campagna.
Afterward, as order was born out of chaos, and he began to thread his
way among the centuries, this first vision lost something of its
intensity; yet it was always, to the last, through the eye that Rome
possessed him. Her life, indeed, as though in obedience to such a
setting, was an external, a spectacular business, from the wild
animation of the cattle-market in the Forum or the hucksters' traffic
among the fountains of the Piazza Navona, to the pompous entertainments
in the cardinals' palaces and the ever-recurring religious ceremonies
and processions. Pius VI., in the reaction from Ganganelli's democratic
ways, had restored the pomp and ceremonial of the Vatican with the
religious discipline of the Holy Office; and never perhaps had Rome been
more splendid on the surface or more silent and empty within. Odo, at
times, as he moved through some assemblage of cardinals and nobles, had
the sensation of walking through a huge reverberating palace, decked out
with all the splendours of art but long since abandoned of men. The
superficial animation, the taste for music and antiquities, all the
dilettantisms of an idle and irresponsible society, seemed to him to
shrivel to dust in the glare of that great past that lit up every corner
of the present.
Through his own connections, and the influence of de Crucis, he saw all
that was best not only among the nobility, but in that ecclesiastical
life now more than ever predominant in Rome. Here at last he was face to
face with the mighty Sphinx, and with the bleaching bones of those who
had tried to guess her riddle. Wherever he went these "lost adventurers"
walked the streets with him, gliding between the Princes of the Church
in the ceremonies of Saint Peter's and the Lateran, or mingling in the
company that ascended the state staircase at some cardinal's levee.
He met indeed many accomplished and amiable ecclesiastics, but it seemed
to him that the more thoughtful among them had either acquired their
peace of mind at the cost of a certain sensitiveness, or had taken
refuge in a study of the past, as the early hermits fled to the desert
from the disorders of Antioch and Alexandria. None seemed disposed to
face the actual problems of life, and this attitude of caution or
indifference had produced a stagnation of thought that contrasted
strongly with the animation of Sir William Hamilton's circle in Naples.
The result in Odo's case was a reaction toward the pleasures of his age;
and of these Rome had but few to offer. He spent some months in the
study of the antique, purchasing a few good examples of sculpture for
the Duke, and then, without great reluctance, set out for Monte Alloro.
Here he found a changed atmosphere. The Duke welcomed him handsomely,
and bestowed the highest praise on the rarities he had collected; but
for the moment the court was ruled by a new favourite, to whom Odo's
coming was obviously unwelcome. This adroit adventurer, whose name was
soon to become notorious throughout Europe, had taken the old prince by
his darling weaknesses, and Odo, having no mind to share in the excesses
of the precious couple, seized the first occasion to set out again on
his travels.
His course had now become one of aimless wandering; for prudence still
forbade his return to Pianura, and his patron's indifference left him
free to come and go as he chose. He had brought from Rome--that albergo
d'ira--a settled melancholy of spirit, which sought refuge in such
distractions as the moment offered. In such a mood change of scene was a
necessity, and he resolved to employ the next months in visiting several
of the mid-Italian cities. Toward Florence he was specially drawn by the
fact that Alfieri now lived there; but, as often happens after such
separations, the reunion was a disappointment. Alfieri, indeed, warmly
welcomed his friend; but he was engrossed in his dawning passion for the
Countess of Albany, and that lady's pitiable situation excluded all
other interests from his mind. To Odo, to whom the years had brought an
increasing detachment, this self-absorption seemed an arrest in growth;
for Alfieri's early worship of liberty had not yet found its destined
channel of expression, and for the moment his enthusiasms had shrunk to
the compass of a romantic adventure. The friends parted after a few days
of unsatisfying intercourse; and it was under the influence of this
final disenchantment that Odo set out for Venice.
It was the vintage season, and the travellers descended from the
Apennines on a landscape diversified by the picturesque incidents of the
grape-gathering. On every slope stood some villa with awnings spread,
and merry parties were picnicking among the vines or watching the
peasants at their work. Cantapresto, who had shown great reluctance at
leaving Monte Alloro, where, as he declared, he found himself as snug as
an eel in a pasty, was now all eagerness to press forward; and Odo was
in the mood to allow any influence to decide his course. He had an
invaluable courier in Cantapresto, whose enormous pretensions generally
assured him the best lodging and the fastest conveyance to be obtained,
and who was never happier than when outwitting a rival emissary, or
bribing a landlord to serve up on Odo's table the repast ordered in
advance for some distinguished traveller. His impatience to reach
Venice, which he described as the scene of all conceivable delights, had
on this occasion tripled his zeal, and they travelled rapidly to Padua,
where he had engaged a burchiello for the passage down the Brenta. Here,
however, he found he had been outdone at his own game; for the servant
of an English Duke had captured the burchiello and embarked his noble
party before Cantapresto reached the wharf. This being the season of the
villeggiatura, when the Venetian nobility were exchanging visits on the
mainland, every conveyance was in motion and no other boat to be had for
a week; while as for the "bucentaur" or public bark, which was just then
getting under way, it was already packed to the gunwale with Jews,
pedlars and such vermin, and the captain swore by the three thousand
relics of Saint Justina that he had no room on board for so much as a
hungry flea.
Odo, who had accompanied Cantapresto to the water-side, was listening to
these assurances and to the soprano's vain invectives, when a
well-dressed young man stepped up to the group. This gentleman, whose
accent and dress showed him to be a Frenchman of quality, told Odo that
he was come from Vicenza, whither he had gone to engage a company of
actors for his friend the Procuratore Bra, who was entertaining a
distinguished company at his villa on the Brenta; that he was now
returning with his players, and that he would be glad to convey Odo so
far on his road to Venice. His friend's seat, he added, was near Oriago,
but a few miles above Fusina, where a public conveyance might always be
found; so that Odo would doubtless be able to proceed the same night to
Venice.
This civil offer Odo at once accepted, and the Frenchman thereupon
suggested that, as the party was to set out the next day at sunrise, the
two should sup together and pass the intervening hours in such
diversions as the city offered. They returned to the inn, where the
actors were also lodged, and Odo's host having ordered a handsome
supper, proposed, with his guest's permission, to invite the leading
members of the company to partake of it. He departed on this errand; and
great was Odo's wonder, when the door reopened, to discover, among the
party it admitted, his old acquaintance of Vercelli, the Count of
Castelrovinato. The latter, whose dress and person had been refurbished,
and who now wore an air of rakish prosperity, greeted him with evident
pleasure, and, while their entertainer was engaged in seating the ladies
of the company, gave him a brief account of the situation.
The young French gentleman (whom he named as the Marquis de
Coeur-Volant) had come to Italy some months previously on the grand
tour, and having fallen a victim to the charms of Venice, had declared
that, instead of continuing on his travels, he meant to complete his
education in that famous school of pleasure. Being master of his own
fortune, he had hired a palace on the Grand Canal, had dispatched his
governor (a simple archaeologist) on a mission of exploration to Sicily
and Greece, and had devoted himself to an assiduous study of Venetian
manners. Among those contributing to his instruction was Mirandolina of
Chioggia, who had just completed a successful engagement at the theatre
of San Moise in Venice. Wishing to detain her in the neighbourhood, her
adorer had prevailed on his friend the Procuratore to give a series of
comedies at his villa of Bellocchio and had engaged to provide him with
a good company of performers. Miranda was of course selected as prima
amorosa; and the Marquess, under Castelrovinato's guidance, had then set
out to collect the rest of the company. This he had succeeded in doing,
and was now returning to Bellocchio, where Miranda was to meet them. Odo
was the more diverted at the hazard which had brought him into such
company, as the Procuratore Bra was one of the noblemen to whom the old
Duke had specially recommended him. On learning this, the Marquess urged
him to present his letter of introduction on arriving at Bellocchio,
where the Procuratore, who was noted for hospitality to strangers, would
doubtless insist on his joining the assembled party. This Odo declined
to do; but his curiosity to see Mirandolina made him hope that chance
would soon throw him in the Procuratore's way.
Meanwhile supper was succeeded by music and dancing, and the company
broke up only in time to proceed to the landing-place where their barge
awaited them. This was a private burchiello of the Procuratore's with a
commodious antechamber for the servants, and a cabin cushioned in
damask. Into this agreeable retreat the actresses were packed with all
their bags and band-boxes; and their travelling-cloaks being rolled into
pillows, they were soon asleep in a huddle of tumbled finery.
Odo and his host preferred to take the air on deck. The sun was rising
above the willow-clad banks of the Brenta, and it was pleasant to glide
in the clear early light past sleeping gardens and villas, and vineyards
where the peasants were already at work. The wind setting from the sea,
they travelled slowly and had full leisure to view the succession of
splendid seats interspersed with gardens, the thriving villages, and the
poplar-groves festooned with vines. Coeur-Volant spoke eloquently of the
pleasures to be enjoyed in this delightful season of the villeggiatura.
"Nowhere," said he, "do people take their pleasures so easily and
naturally as in Venice. My countrymen claim a superiority in this art,
and it may be they possessed it a generation ago. But what a morose
place is France become since philosophy has dethroned enjoyment! If you
go on a visit to one of our noblemen's seats, what do you find there, I
ask? Cards, comedies, music, the opportunity for an agreeable intrigue
in the society of your equals? No--but a hostess engaged in suckling and
bathing her brats, or in studying chemistry and optics with some dirty
school-master, who is given the seat of honour at table and a pavilion
in the park to which he may retire when weary of the homage of the
great; while as for the host, he is busy discussing education or
political economy with his unfortunate guests, if, indeed, he is not
dragging them through leagues of mud and dust to inspect his latest
experiments in forestry and agriculture, or to hear a pack of snuffling
school-children singing hymns to the God of Nature! And what," he
continued, "is the result of it all? The peasants are starving, the
taxes are increasing, the virtuous landlords are ruining themselves in
farming on scientific principles, the tradespeople are grumbling because
the nobility do not spend their money in Paris, the court is dull, the
clergy are furious, the Queen mopes, the King is frightened, and the
whole French people are yawning themselves to death from Normandy to
Provence."
"Yes," said Castelrovinato with his melancholy smile, "the test of
success is to have had one's money's worth; but experience, which is
dried pleasure, is at best a dusty diet, as we know. Yonder, in a fold
of those hills," he added, pointing to the cluster of Euganean mountains
just faintly pencilled above the plain, "lies the little fief from which
I take my name. Acre by acre, tree by tree, it has gone to pay for my
experiments, not in agriculture but in pleasure; and whenever I look
over at it from Venice and reflect on what each rood of ground or trunk
of tree has purchased, I wonder to see my life as bare as ever for all
that I have spent on it."
The young Marquess shrugged his shoulders. "And would your life," he
exclaimed, "have been a whit less bare had you passed it in your
ancestral keep among those windy hills, in the company of swineherds and
charcoal-burners, with a milk-maid for your mistress and the village
priest for your partner at picquet?"
"Perhaps not," the other agreed. "There is a tale of a man who spent his
life in wishing he had lived differently; and when he died he was
surrounded by a throng of spectral shapes, each one exactly like the
other, who, on his asking what they were, replied: 'We are all the
different lives you might have lived.'"
"If you are going to tell ghost-stories," cried Coeur-Volant, "I will
call for a bottle of Canary!"
"And I," rejoined the Count good-humouredly, "will try to coax the
ladies forth with a song;" and picking up his lute, which always lay
within reach, he began to sing in the Venetian dialect:--
There's a villa on the Brenta
Where the statues, white as snow,
All along the water-terrace
Perch like sea-gulls in a row.
There's a garden on the Brenta
Where the fairest ladies meet,
Picking roses from the trellis
For the gallants at their feet.
There's an arbour on the Brenta
Made of yews that screen the light,
Where I kiss my girl at midday
Close as lovers kiss at night.
The players soon emerged at this call and presently the deck resounded
with song and laughter. All the company were familiar with the Venetian
bacaroles, and Castelrovinato's lute was passed from hand to hand, as
one after another, incited by the Marquess's Canary, tried to recall
some favourite measure--"La biondina in gondoleta" or "Guarda, che bella
luna."
Meanwhile life was stirring in the villages and gardens, and groups of
people appearing on the terraces overhanging the water. Never had Odo
beheld a livelier scene. The pillared houses with their rows of statues
and vases, the flights of marble steps descending to the gilded
river-gates, where boats bobbed against the landings and boatmen gasped
in the shade of their awnings; the marble trellises hung with grapes,
the gardens where parterres of flowers and parti-coloured gravel
alternated with the dusk of tunnelled yew-walks; the company playing at
bowls in the long alleys, or drinking chocolate in gazebos above the
river; the boats darting hither and thither on the stream itself, the
travelling-chaises, market-waggons and pannier-asses crowding the
causeway along the bank--all were unrolled before him with as little
effect of reality as the episodes woven in some gaily-tinted tapestry.
Even the peasants in the vineyards seemed as merry and thoughtless as
the quality in their gardens. The vintage-time is the holiday of the
rural year and the day's work was interspersed with frequent intervals
of relaxation. At the villages where the burchiello touched for
refreshments, handsome young women in scarlet bodices came on board with
baskets of melons, grapes, figs and peaches; and under the trellises on
the landings, lads and girls with flowers in their hair were dancing the
monferrina to the rattle of tambourines or the chant of some wandering
ballad-singer. These scenes were so engaging to the comedians that they
could not be restrained from going ashore and mingling in the village
diversions; and the Marquess, though impatient to rejoin his divinity,
was too volatile not to be drawn into the adventure. The whole party
accordingly disembarked, and were presently giving an exhibition of
their talents to the assembled idlers, the Pantaloon, Harlequin and
Doctor enacting a comical intermezzo which Cantapresto had that morning
composed for them, while Scaramouch and Columbine joined the dancers,
and the rest of the company, seizing on a train of donkeys laden with
vegetables for the Venetian market, stripped these patient animals of
their panniers, and mounting them bareback started a Corso around the
village square amid the invectives of the drivers and the applause of
the crowd.
Day was declining when the Marquess at last succeeded in driving his
flock to their fold, and the moon sent a quiver of brightness across the
water as the burchiello touched at the landing of a villa set amid
close-massed foliage high above the river. Gardens peopled with statues
descended from the portico of the villa to the marble platform on the
water's edge, where a throng of boatmen in the Procuratore's livery
hurried forward to receive the Marquess and his companions. The
comedians, sobered by the magnificence of their surroundings, followed
their leader like awe-struck children. Light and music streamed from the
long facade overhead, but the lower gardens lay hushed and dark, the air
fragrant with unseen flowers, the late moon just burnishing the edges of
the laurel-thickets from which, now and again, a nightingale's song
gushed in a fountain of sound. Odo, spellbound, followed the others
without a thought of his own share in the adventure. Never before had
beauty so ministered to every sense. He felt himself lost in his
surroundings, absorbed in the scent and murmur of the night.
3.3.
On the upper terrace a dozen lacqueys with wax lights hastened out to
receive the travellers. A laughing group followed, headed by a tall
vivacious woman covered with jewels, whom Odo guessed to be the
Procuratessa Bra. The Marquess, hastening forward, kissed the lady's
hand, and turned to summon the actors, who hung back at the farther end
of the terrace. The light from the windows and from the lacquey's tapers
fell full on the motley band, and Odo, roused to the singularity of his
position, was about to seek shelter behind the Pantaloon when he heard a
cry of recognition, and Mirandolina, darting out of the Procuratessa's
circle, fell at that lady's feet with a whispered word.
The Procuratessa at once advanced with a smile of surprise and bade the
Cavaliere Valsecca welcome. Seeing Odo's embarrassment, she added that
his Highness of Monte Alloro had already apprised her of the cavaliere's
coming, and that she and her husband had the day before despatched a
messenger to Venice to enquire if he were already there to invite him to
the villa. At the same moment a middle-aged man with an air of careless
kindly strength emerged from the house and greeted Odo.
"I am happy," said he bowing, "to receive at Bellocchio a member of the
princely house of Pianura; and your excellency will no doubt be as
well-pleased as ourselves that accident enables us to make acquaintance
without the formalities of an introduction."
This, then, was the famous Procuratore Bra, whose house had given three
Doges to Venice, and who was himself regarded as the most powerful if
not the most scrupulous noble of his day. Odo had heard many tales of
his singularities, for in a generation of elegant triflers his figure
stood out with the ruggedness of a granite boulder in a clipped and
gravelled garden. To hereditary wealth and influence he added a love of
power seconded by great political sagacity and an inflexible will. If
his means were not always above suspicion they at least tended to
statesmanlike ends, and in his public capacity he was faithful to the
highest interests of the state. Reports differed as to his private use
of his authority. He was noted for his lavish way of living, and for a
hospitality which distinguished him from the majority of his class, who,
however showy in their establishments, seldom received strangers, and
entertained each other only on the most ceremonious occasions. The
Procuratore kept open house both in Venice and on the Brenta, and in his
drawing-rooms the foreign traveller was welcomed as freely as in Paris
or London. Here, too, were to be met the wits, musicians and literati
whom a traditional morgue still excluded from many aristocratic houses.
Yet in spite of his hospitality (or perhaps because of it) the
Procuratore, as Odo knew, was the butt of the very poets he entertained,
and the worst satirised man in Venice. It was his misfortune to be in
love with his wife; and this state of mind (in itself sufficiently
ridiculous) and the shifts and compromises to which it reduced him, were
a source of endless amusement to the humorists. Nor were graver rumours
wanting; for it was known that the Procuratore, so proof against other
persuasions, was helpless in his wife's hands, and that honest men had
been undone and scoundrels exalted at a nod of the beautiful
Procuratessa. That lady, as famous in her way as her husband, was noted
for quite different qualities; so that, according to one satirist, her
hospitality began where his ended, and the Albergo Bra (the nickname
their palace went by) was advertised in the lampoons of the day as
furnishing both bed and board. In some respects, however, the tastes of
the noble couple agreed, both delighting in music, wit, good company,
and all the adornments of life; while, with regard to their private
conduct, it doubtless suffered by being viewed through the eyes of a
narrow and trivial nobility, apt to look with suspicion on any deviation
from the customs of their class. Such was the household in which Odo
found himself unexpectedly included. He learned that his hosts were in
the act of entertaining the English Duke who had captured his burchiello
that morning; and having exchanged his travelling-dress for a more
suitable toilet he was presently conducted to the private theatre where
the company had gathered to witness an improvised performance by
Mirandolina and the newly-arrived actors.
The Procuratessa at once beckoned him to the row of gilt armchairs where
she sat with the noble Duke and several ladies of distinction. The
little theatre sparkled with wax-lights reflected in the facets of glass
chandeliers and in the jewels of the richly-habited company, and Odo was
struck by the refined brilliancy of the scene. Before he had time to
look about him the curtains of the stage were drawn back, and
Mirandolina flashed into view, daring and radiant as ever, and dressed
with an elegance which spoke well for the liberality of her new
protector. She was as much at her ease as before the vulgar audience of
Vercelli, and spite of the distinguished eyes fixed upon her, her smiles
and sallies were pointedly addressed to Odo. This made him the object of
the Procuratessa's banter, but had an opposite effect on the Marquess,
who fixed him with an irritated eye and fidgeted restlessly in his seat
as the performance went on.
When the curtain fell the Procuratessa led the company to the circular
saloon which, as in most villas of the Venetian mainland, formed the
central point of the house. If Odo had been charmed by the graceful
decorations of the theatre, he was dazzled by the airy splendour of this
apartment. Dance-music was pouring from the arched recesses above the
doorways, and chandeliers of coloured Murano glass diffused a soft
brightness over the pilasters of the stuccoed walls, and the floor of
inlaid marbles on which couples were rapidly forming for the
contradance. His eye, however, was soon drawn from these to the ceiling
which overarched the dancers with what seemed like an Olympian revel
reflected in sunset clouds. Over the gilt balustrade surmounting the
cornice lolled the figures of fauns, bacchantes, nereids and tritons,
hovered over by a cloud of amorini blown like rose-leaves across a rosy
sky, while in the centre of the dome Apollo burst in his chariot through
the mists of dawn, escorted by a fantastic procession of the human
races. These alien subjects of the sun--a fur-clad Laplander, a turbaned
figure on a dromedary, a blackamoor and a plumed American Indian--were
in turn surrounded by a rout of Maenads and Silenuses, whose flushed
advance was checked by the breaking of cool green waves, through which
boys wreathed with coral and seaweed disported themselves among shoals
of flashing dolphins. It was as though the genius of Pleasure had poured
all the riches of his inexhaustible realm on the heads of the revellers
below.
The Procuratessa brought Odo to earth by remarking that it was a
master-piece of the divine Tiepolo he was admiring. She added that at
Bellocchio all formalities were dispensed with, and begged him to
observe that, in the rooms opening into the saloon, recreations were
provided for every taste. In one of these apartments silver trays were
set out with sherbets, cakes, and fruit cooled in snow, while in another
stood gaming-tables around which the greater number of the company were
already gathering for tresette. A third room was devoted to music; and
hither Mirandolina, who was evidently allowed a familiarity of
intercourse not accorded to the other comedians, had withdrawn with the
pacified Marquess, and perched on the arm of a high gilt chair was
pinching the strings of a guitar and humming the first notes of a
boatman's song...
After completing the circuit of the rooms Odo stepped out on the
terrace, which was now bathed in the whiteness of a soaring moon. The
colonnades detached against silver-misted foliage, the gardens
spectrally outspread, seemed to enclose him in a magic circle of
loveliness which the first ray of daylight must dispel. He wandered on,
drawn to the depths of shade on the lower terraces. The hush grew
deeper, the murmur of the river more mysterious. A yew-arbour invited
him and he seated himself on the bench niched in its inmost dusk. Seen
through the black arch of the arbour the moonlight lay like snow on
parterres and statues. He thought of Maria Clementina, and of the
delight she would have felt in such a scene as he had just left. Then
the remembrance of Mirandolina's blandishments stole over him and spite
of himself he smiled at the Marquess's discomfiture. Though he was in no
humour for an intrigue his fancy was not proof against the romance of
his surroundings, and it seemed to him that Miranda's eyes had never
been so bright or her smile so full of provocation. No wonder Frattanto
followed her like a lost soul and the Marquess abandoned Rome and
Baalbec to sit at the feet of such a teacher! Had not that light
philosopher after all chosen the true way and guessed the Sphinx's
riddle? Why should today always be jilted for tomorrow, sensation
sacrificed to thought?
As he sat revolving these questions the yew-branches seemed to stir, and
from some deeper recess of shade a figure stole to his side. He started,
but a hand was laid on his lips and he was gently forced back into his
seat. Dazzled by the outer moonlight he could just guess the outline of
the figure pressed against his own. He sat speechless, yielding to the
charm of the moment, till suddenly he felt a rapid kiss and the visitor
vanished as mysteriously as she had come. He sprang up to follow, but
inclination failed with his first step. Let the spell of mystery remain
unbroken! He sank down on the seat again lulled by dreamy musings...
When he looked up the moonlight had faded and he felt a chill in the
air. He walked out on the terrace. The moon hung low and the tree-tops
were beginning to tremble. The villa-front was grey, with oblongs of
yellow light marking the windows of the ball-room. As he looked up at
it, the dance-music ceased and not a sound was heard but the stir of the
foliage and the murmur of the river against its banks. Then, from a
loggia above the central portico, a woman's clear contralto notes took
flight:
Before the yellow dawn is up,
With pomp of shield and shaft,
Drink we of Night's fast-ebbing cup
One last delicious draught.
The shadowy wine of Night is sweet,
With subtle slumbrous fumes
Crushed by the Hours' melodious feet
From bloodless elder-blooms...
The days at Bellocchio passed in a series of festivities. The mornings
were spent in drinking chocolate, strolling in the gardens and visiting
the fish-ponds, meanders and other wonders of the villa; thence the
greater number of guests were soon drawn to the card-tables, from which
they rose only to dine; and after an elaborate dinner prepared by a
French cook the whole company set out to explore the country or to
exchange visits with the hosts of the adjoining villas. Each evening
brought some fresh diversion: a comedy or an operetta in the miniature
theatre, an al fresco banquet on the terrace or a ball attended by the
principal families of the neighbourhood. Odo soon contrived to reassure
the Marquess as to his designs upon Miranda, and when Coeur-Volant was
not at cards the two young men spent much of their time together. The
Marquess was never tired of extolling the taste and ingenuity with which
the Venetians planned and carried out their recreations. "Nature
herself," said he, "seems the accomplice of their merry-making, and in
no other surroundings could man's natural craving for diversion find so
graceful and poetic an expression."
The scene on which they looked out seemed to confirm his words. It was
the last evening of their stay at Bellocchio, and the Procuratessa had
planned a musical festival on the river. Festoons of coloured lanterns
wound from the portico to the water; and opposite the landing lay the
Procuratore's Bucentaur, a great barge hung with crimson velvet. In the
prow were stationed the comedians, in airy mythological dress, and as
the guests stepped on board they were received by Miranda, a rosy Venus
who, escorted by Mars and Adonis, recited an ode composed by Cantapresto
in the Procuratessa's honour. A banquet was spread in the deck-house,
which was hung with silk arras and Venetian mirrors, and, while the
guests feasted, dozens of little boats hung with lights and filled with
musicians flitted about the Bucentaur like a swarm of musical
fireflies...
The next day Odo accompanied the Procuratessa to Venice. Had he been a
traveller from beyond the Alps he could hardly have been more unprepared
for the spectacle that awaited him. In aspect and customs Venice
differed almost as much from other Italian cities as from those of the
rest of Europe. From the fanciful stone embroidery of her churches and
palaces to a hundred singularities in dress and manners--the
full-bottomed wigs and long gowns of the nobles, the black mantles and
head-draperies of the ladies, the white masks worn abroad by both sexes,
the publicity of social life under the arcades of the Piazza, the
extraordinary freedom of intercourse in the casini, gaming-rooms and
theatres--the city proclaimed, in every detail of life and architecture,
her independence of any tradition but her own. This was the more
singular as Saint Mark's square had for centuries been the meeting-place
of East and West, and the goal of artists, scholars and pleasure-seekers
from all parts of the world. Indeed, as Coeur-Volant pointed out, the
Venetian customs almost appeared to have been devised for the
convenience of strangers. The privilege of going masked at almost all
seasons and the enforced uniformity of dress, which in itself provided a
kind of incognito, made the place singularly favourable to every kind of
intrigue and amusement; while the mild temper of the people and the
watchfulness of the police prevented the public disorders that such
license might have occasioned. These seeming anomalies abounded on every
side. From the gaming-table where a tinker might set a ducat against a
prince it was but a few steps to the Broglio, or arcade under the ducal
palace, into which no plebeian might intrude while the nobility walked
there. The great ladies, who were subject to strict sumptuary laws, and
might not display their jewels or try the new French fashions but on the
sly, were yet privileged at all hours to go abroad alone in their
gondolas. No society was more haughty and exclusive in its traditions,
yet the mask leveled all classes and permitted, during the greater part
of the year, an equality of intercourse undreamed of in other cities;
while the nobles, though more magnificently housed than in any other
capital of Europe, generally sought amusement at the public casini or
assembly-rooms instead of receiving company in their own palaces. Such
were but a few of the contradictions in a city where the theatres were
named after the neighbouring churches, where there were innumerable
religious foundations but scarce an ecclesiastic to be met in company,
and where the ladies of the laity dressed like nuns, while the nuns in
the aristocratic convents went in gala habits and with uncovered heads.
No wonder that to the bewildered stranger the Venetians seemed to keep
perpetual carnival and Venice herself to be as it were the mere stage of
some huge comic interlude.
To Odo the setting was even more astonishing than the performance. Never
had he seen pleasure and grace so happily allied, all the arts of life
so combined in the single effort after enjoyment. Here was not a mere
tendency to linger on the surface, but the essence of superficiality
itself; not an ignoring of what lies beneath, but an elimination of it;
as though all human experience should be beaten thin and spread out
before the eye like some brilliant tenuous plaque of Etruscan gold. And
in this science of pleasure--mere jeweller's work though it were--the
greatest artists had collaborated, each contributing his page to the
philosophy of enjoyment in the form of some radiant allegory flowering
from palace wall or ceiling like the enlarged reflection of the life
beneath it. Nowhere was the mind arrested by a question or an idea.
Thought slunk away like an unmasked guest at the ridotto. Sensation
ruled supreme, and each moment was an iridescent bubble fresh-blown from
the lips of fancy.
Odo brought to the spectacle the humour best fitted for its enjoyment.
His weariness and discouragement sought refuge in the emotional
satisfaction of the hour. Here at least the old problem of living had
been solved, and from the patrician taking the air in his gondola to the
gondolier himself, gambling and singing on the water-steps of his
master's palace, all seemed equally satisfied with the solution. Now if
ever was the time to cry "halt!" to the present, to forget the travelled
road and take no thought for the morrow...
The months passed rapidly and agreeably. The Procuratessa was the most
amiable of guides, and in her company Odo enjoyed the best that Venice
had to offer, from the matchless music of the churches and hospitals to
the petits soupers in the private casini of the nobility; while
Coeur-Volant and Castelrovinato introduced him to scenes where even a
lady of the Procuratessa's intrepidity might not venture.
Such a life left little time for thoughtful pleasures; nor did Odo find
in the society about him any sympathy with his more personal tastes. At
first he yielded willingly enough to the pressure of his surroundings,
glad to escape from thoughts of the past and speculations about the
future; but it was impossible for him to lose his footing in such an
element, and at times he felt the lack of such companionship as de
Crucis had given him. There was no society in Venice corresponding with
the polished circles of Milan or Naples, or with the academic class in
such University towns as Padua and Pavia. The few Venetians destined to
be remembered among those who had contributed to the intellectual
advancement of Italy vegetated in obscurity, suffering not so much from
religious persecution--for the Inquisition had little power in
Venice--as from the incorrigible indifference of a society which ignored
all who did not contribute to its amusement. Odo indeed might have
sought out these unhonoured prophets, but that all the influences about
him set the other way, and that he was falling more and more into the
habit of running with the tide. Now and then, however, a vague ennui
drove him to one of the bookshops which, throughout Italy were the chief
meeting-places of students and authors. On one of these occasions the
dealer invited him into a private room where he kept some rare volumes,
and here Odo was surprised to meet Andreoni, the liberal bookseller of
Pianura.
Andreoni at first seemed somewhat disconcerted by the meeting; but
presently recovering his confidence, he told Odo that he had been
recently banished from Pianura, the cause of his banishment being the
publication of a book on taxation that was supposed to reflect on the
fiscal system of the duchy. Though he did not name the author, Odo at
once suspected Gamba; but on his enquiring if the latter had also been
banished, Andreoni merely replied that he had been dismissed from his
post, and had left Pianura. The bookseller went on to say that he had
come to Venice with the idea of setting up his press either there or in
Padua, where his wife's family lived. Odo was eager to hear more; but
Andreoni courteously declined to wait on him at his lodgings, on the
plea that it might harm them both to be seen together. They agreed,
however, to meet in San Zaccaria after low mass the next morning, and
here Andreoni gave Odo a fuller report of recent events in the duchy.
It appeared that in the incessant see-saw of party influences the Church
had once more gained on the liberals. Trescorre was out of favour, the
Dominican had begun to show his hand more openly, and the Duke, more
than ever apprehensive about his health, was seeking to conciliate
heaven by his renewed persecution of the reformers. In the general
upheaval even Crescenti had nearly lost his place; and it was rumoured
that he kept it only through the intervention of the Pope, who had
represented to the Duke that the persecution of a scholar already famous
throughout Europe would reflect little credit on the Church.
As for Gamba, Andreoni, though unwilling to admit a knowledge of his
exact whereabouts, assured Odo that he was well and had not lost
courage. At court matters remained much as usual. The Duchess,
surrounded by her familiars, had entered on a new phase of mad
expenditure, draining the exchequer to indulge her private whims,
filling her apartments with mountebanks and players, and borrowing from
courtiers and servants to keep her creditors from the door. Trescorre
was no longer able to check her extravagance, and his influence with the
Duke being on the wane, the court was once more the scene of unseemly
scandals and disorders.
The only new figure to appear there since Odo's departure was that of
the little prince's governor, who had come from Rome a few months
previously to superintend the heir's education, which was found to have
been grievously neglected under his former masters. This was an
ecclesiastic, an ex-Jesuit as some said, but without doubt a man of
parts, and apparently of more tolerant views than the other churchmen
about the court.
"But," Andreoni added, "your excellency may chance to recall him; for he
is the same abate de Crucis who was sent to Pianura by the Holy Office
to arrest the German astrologer."
Odo heard him with surprise. He had had no news of de Crucis since their
parting in Rome, where, as he supposed, the latter was to remain for
some years in the service of Prince Bracciano. Odo was at a loss to
conceive how or why the Jesuit had come to Pianura; but, whatever his
reasons for being there, it was certain that his influence must make
itself felt far beyond the range of his immediate duties. Whether this
influence would be exerted for good or ill it was impossible to
forecast; but much as Odo admired de Crucis, he could not forget that
the Jesuit, by his own avowal, was still the servant of the greatest
organised opposition to moral and intellectual freedom that the world
had ever known. That this opposition was not always actively manifested
Odo was well aware. He knew that the Jesuit spirit moved in many
directions and that its action was often more beneficial than that of
its opponents; but it remained an incalculable element in the
composition of human affairs, and one the more to be feared since, in
ceasing to have a material existence, it had acquired the dread
pervasiveness of an idea.
With the Epiphany the wild carnival-season set in. Nothing could surpass
the excesses of this mad time. All classes seemed bitten by the
tarantula of mirth, every gondola hid an intrigue, the patrician's
tabarro concealed a noble lady, the feminine hood and cloak a young
spark bent on mystification, the friar's habit a man of pleasure and the
nun's veil a lady of the town. The Piazza swarmed with merry-makers of
all degrees. The square itself was taken up by the booths of hucksters,
rope-dancers and astrologers, while promenaders in travesty thronged the
arcades, and the ladies of the nobility, in their white masks and black
zendaletti, surveyed the scene from the windows of the assembly-rooms in
the Procuratie, or, threading the crowd on the arms of their gallants,
visited the various peep-shows and flocked about the rhinoceros
exhibited in a great canvas tent in the Piazzetta. The characteristic
contrasts of Venetian life seemed to be emphasised by the vagaries of
the carnival, and Odo never ceased to be diverted by the sight of a long
line of masqueraders in every kind of comic disguise kneeling devoutly
before the brilliantly-lit shrine of the Virgin under the arches of the
Procuratie, while the friar who led their devotions interrupted his
litany whenever the quack on an adjoining platform began to bawl through
a tin trumpet the praise of his miraculous pills.
The mounting madness culminated on Giovedi Grasso, the last Thursday
before Lent, when the Piazzetta became the scene of ceremonies in which
the Doge himself took part. These opened with the decapitation of three
bulls: a rite said to commemorate some long-forgotten dispute between
the inveterate enemies, Venice and Aquileia. The bulls, preceded by
halberdiers and trumpeters, and surrounded by armed attendants, were led
in state before the ducal palace, and the executioner, practised in his
bloody work, struck off each head with a single stroke of his huge
sword. This slaughter was succeeded by pleasanter sights, such as the
famous Vola, or flight of a boy from the bell-tower of Saint Mark's to a
window of the palace, where he presented a nosegay to his Serenity and
was caught up again to his airy vaulting-ground. After this ingenious
feat came another called the "Force of Hercules," given by a band of
youths who, building themselves into a kind of pyramid, shifted their
postures with inexhaustible agility, while bursts of fireworks wove
yellow arches through the midday light. Meanwhile the crowds in the
streets fled this way and that as a throng of uproarious young fellows
drove before them the bulls that were to be baited in the open squares;
and wherever a recessed doorway or the angle of a building afforded
shelter from the rout, some posture-maker or ballad-singer had gathered
a crowd about his carpet.
Ash Wednesday brought about a dramatic transformation. Every travesty
laid aside, every tent and stall swept away, the people again gathered
in the Piazza to receive the ashes of penitence on their heads, the
churches now became the chief centres of interest. Venice was noted for
her sacred music and for the lavish illumination of her favourite
shrines and chapels; and few religious spectacles were more impressive
than the Forty Hours' devotion in the wealthier churches of the city.
All the magic of music, painting and sculpture were combined in the
service of religion, and Odo's sense of the dramatic quality of the
Catholic rites found gratification in the moving scenes where, amid the
imperishable splendours of his own creation, man owned himself but dust.
Never before had he been so alive to the symbolism of the penitential
season, so awed by the beauty and symmetry of that great structure of
the Liturgical Year that leads the soul up, step by step, to the awful
heights of Calvary. The very carelessness of those about him seemed to
deepen the solemnity of the scenes enacted--as though the Church, after
all her centuries of dominion, were still, as in those early days, but a
voice crying in the wilderness.
The Easter bells ushered in the reign of another spirit. If the carnival
folly was spent, the joy of returning life replaced it. After the winter
diversions of cards, concerts and theatres, came the excursions to the
island-gardens of the lagoon and the evening promenade of the fresca on
the Grand Canal. Now the palace-windows were hung with awnings, the
oleanders in the balconies grew rosy against the sea-worn marble, and
yellow snap-dragons blossomed from the crumbling walls. The market-boats
brought early fruits and vegetables from the Brenta and roses and
gilly-flowers from the Paduan gardens; and when the wind set from shore
it carried with it the scent of lime-blossoms and flowering fields. Now
also was the season when the great civic and religious processions took
place, dyeing the water with sunset hues as they swept from the steps of
the Piazzetta to San Giorgio, the Redentore or the Salute. In the
fashionable convents the nuns celebrated the festivals of their patron
saints with musical and dramatic entertainments to which secular
visitors were invited. These entertainments were a noted feature of
Venetian life, and the subject of much scandalous comment among visitors
from beyond the Alps. The nuns of the stricter orders were as closely
cloistered as elsewhere; but in the convents of Santa Croce, Santa
Chiara, and a few others, mostly filled by the daughters of the
nobility, an unusual liberty prevailed. It was known that the inmates
had taken the veil for family reasons, and to the indulgent Venetian
temper it seemed natural that their seclusion should be made as little
irksome as possible. As a rule the privileges accorded to the nuns
consisted merely in their being allowed to receive visits in the
presence of a lay-sister, and to perform in concerts on the feast-days
of the order; but some few convents had a name for far greater license,
and it was a common thing for the noble libertine returned from Italy to
boast of his intrigue with a Venetian nun.
Odo, in the Procuratessa's train, had of course visited many of the
principal convents. Whether it were owing to the malicious pleasure of
contrasting their own state with that of their cloistered sisters, or to
the discreet shelter which the parlour afforded to their private
intrigues, the Venetian ladies were exceedingly partial to these visits.
The Procuratessa was no exception to the rule, and as was natural to one
of her complexion, she preferred the convents where the greatest freedom
prevailed. Odo, however, had hitherto found little to tempt him in these
glimpses of forbidden fruit. The nuns, though often young and pretty,
had the insipidity of women secluded from the passions and sorrows of
life without being raised above them; and he preferred the frank
coarseness of the Procuratessa's circle to the simpering graces of the
cloister.
Even Coeur-Volant's mysterious boast of a conquest he had made among the
sisters failed to excite his friend's curiosity. The Marquess, though
still devoted to Miranda, was too much the child of his race not to seek
variety in his emotions; indeed he often declared that the one fault of
the Italian character was its unimaginative fidelity in love-affairs.
"Does a man," he asked, "dine off one dish at a gourmet's banquet? And
why should I restrict myself to one course at the most richly-spread
table in Europe? One must love at least two women to appreciate either;
and, did the silly creatures but know it, a rival becomes them like a
patch."
Sister Mary of the Crucifix, he went on to explain, possessed the very
qualities that Miranda lacked. The daughter of a rich nobleman of
Treviso, she was skilled in music, drawing and all the operations of the
needle, and was early promised in marriage to a young man whose estates
adjoined her father's. The jealousy of a younger sister, who was
secretly in love with the suitor, caused her to accuse Coeur-Volant's
mistress of misconduct and thus broke off the marriage; and the unhappy
girl, repudiated by her bridegroom, was at once despatched to a convent
in Venice. Enraged at her fate, she had repeatedly appealed to the
authorities to release her; but her father's wealth and influence
prevailed against all her efforts. The abbess, however, felt such pity
for her that she was allowed more freedom than the other nuns, with whom
her wit and beauty made her a favourite in spite of her exceptional
privileges. These, as Coeur-Volant hinted, included the liberty of
leaving the convent after night-fall to visit her friends; and he
professed to be one of those whom she had thus honoured. Always eager to
have his good taste ratified by the envy of his friends, he was urgent
with Odo to make the lady's acquaintance, and it was agreed that, on the
first favourable occasion, a meeting should take place at Coeur-Volant's
casino. The weeks elapsed, however, without Odo's hearing further of the
matter, and it had nearly passed from his mind when one August day he
received word that the Marquess hoped for his company that evening.
He was in that mood of careless acquiescence when any novelty invites,
and the heavy warmth of the summer night seemed the accomplice of his
humour. Cloaked and masked, he stepped into his gondola and was swept
rapidly along the Grand Canal and through winding channels to the
Giudecca. It was close on midnight and all Venice was abroad. Gondolas
laden with musicians and hung with coloured lamps lay beneath the palace
windows or drifted out on the oily reaches of the lagoon. There was no
moon, and the side-canals were dark and noiseless but for the hundreds
of caged nightingales that made every byway musical. As his prow slipped
past garden walls and under the blackness of low-ached bridges Odo felt
the fathomless mystery of the Venetian night: not the open night of the
lagoons, but the secret dusk of nameless waterways between blind windows
and complaisant gates.
At one of these his gondola presently touched. The gate was cautiously
unbarred and Odo found himself in a strip of garden preceding a low
pavilion in which not a light was visible. A woman-servant led him
indoors and the Marquess greeted him on the threshold.
"You are late!" he exclaimed. "I began to fear you would not be here to
receive our guests with me."
"Your guests?" Odo repeated. "I had fancied there was but one."
The Marquess smiled. "My dear Mary of the Crucifix," he said, "is too
well-born to venture out alone at this late hour, and has prevailed on
her bosom friend to accompany her.--Besides," he added with his
deprecating shrug, "I own I have had too recent an experience of your
success to trust you alone with my enchantress; and she has promised to
bring the most fascinating nun in the convent to protect her from your
wiles."
As he spoke he led Odo into a room furnished in the luxurious style of a
French boudoir. A Savonnerie carpet covered the floor, the lounges and
easy-chairs were heaped with cushions, and the panels hung with pastel
drawings of a lively or sentimental character. The windows toward the
garden were close-shuttered, but those on the farther side of the room
stood open on a starlit terrace whence the eye looked out over the
lagoon to the outer line of islands.
"Confess," cried Coeur-Volant, pointing to a table set with delicacies
and flanked by silver wine-coolers, "that I have spared no pains to do
my goddess honour and that this interior must present an agreeable
contrast to the whitewashed cells and dismal refectory of her convent!
No passion," he continued, with his quaint didactic air, "is so
susceptible as love to the influence of its surroundings; and principles
which might have held out against a horse-hair sofa and soupe a l'oignon
have before now been known to succumb to silk cushions and champagne."
He received with perfect good-humour the retort that if he failed in his
designs his cook and his upholsterer would not be to blame; and the
young men were still engaged in such banter when the servant returned to
say that a gondola was at the water-gate. The Marquess hastened out and
presently reappeared with two masked and hooded figures. The first of
these, whom he led by the hand, entered with the air of one not
unaccustomed to her surroundings; but the other hung back, and on the
Marquess's inviting them to unmask, hurriedly signed to her friend to
refuse.
"Very well, fair strangers," said Coeur-Volant with a laugh; "if you
insist on prolonging our suspense we shall avenge ourselves by
prolonging yours, and neither my friend nor I will unmask till you are
pleased to set us the example."
The first lady echoed his laugh. "Shall I own," she cried, "that I
suspect in this unflattering compliance a pretext to conceal your
friend's features from me as long as possible? For my part," she
continued, throwing back her hood, "the mask of hypocrisy I am compelled
to wear in the convent makes me hate every form of disguise, and with
all my defects I prefer to be known as I am." And with that she detached
her mask and dropped the cloak from her shoulders.
The gesture revealed a beauty of the laughing sensuous type best suited
to such surroundings. Sister Mary of the Crucifix, in her sumptuous gown
of shot-silk, with pearls wound through her reddish hair and hanging on
her bare shoulders, might have stepped from some festal canvas of
Bonifazio's. She had laid aside even the light gauze veil worn by the
nuns in gala habit, and no vestige of her calling showed itself in dress
or bearing.
"Do you accept my challenge, cavaliere?" she exclaimed, turning on Odo a
glance confident of victory.
The Marquess meanwhile had approached the other nun with the intention
of inducing her to unmask; but as Sister Mary of the Crucifix advanced
to perform the same service for his friend, his irrepressible jealousy
made him step hastily between them.
"Come cavaliere," he cried, drawing Odo gaily toward the unknown nun,
"since you have induced one of our fair guests to unmask perhaps you may
be equally successful with the other, who appears provokingly
indifferent to my advances."
The masked nun had in fact retreated to a corner of the room and stood
there, drawing her cloak about her, rather in the attitude of a
frightened child than in that of a lady bent on a gallant adventure.
Sister Mary of the Crucifix approached her playfully. "My dear Sister
Veronica," said she, throwing her arm about the other's neck, "hesitates
to reveal charms which she knows must cast mine in the shade; but I am
not to be outdone in generosity, and if the Marquess will unmask his
friend I will do the same by mine."
As she spoke she deftly pinioned the nun's hands and snatched off her
mask with a malicious laugh. The Marquess, entering into her humour,
removed Odo's at the same instant, and the latter, turning with a laugh,
found himself face to face with Fulvia Vivaldi. He grew white, and Mary
of the Crucifix sprang forward to catch her friend.
"Good God! What is this?" gasped the Marquess, staring from one to the
other.
A glance of entreaty from Fulvia checked the answer on Odo's lips, and
for a moment there was silence in the room; then Fulvia, breaking away
from her companion, fled out on the terrace. The other was about to
follow; but Odo, controlling himself, stepped between them.
"Madam," said he in a low voice, "I recognise in your companion a friend
of whom I have long had no word. Will you pardon me if I speak with her
alone?"
Sister Mary drew back with a meaning sparkle in her handsome eyes. "Why,
this," she cried, not without a touch of resentment, "is the prettiest
ending imaginable; but what a sly creature, to be sure, to make me think
it was her first assignation!"
Odo, without answering, hastened out on the terrace. It was so dark
after the brightly lit room that for a moment he did not distinguish the
figure which had sprung to the low parapet above the water; and he
stumbled forward just in time to snatch Fulvia back to safety.
"This is madness!" he cried, as she hung upon him trembling.
"The boat," she stammered in a strange sobbing voice--"the boat should
be somewhere below--"
"The boat lies at the water-gate on the other side," he answered.
She drew away from him with a gesture of despair. The struggle with
Sister Mary had disordered her hair and it fell on her white neck in
loosened strands. "My cloak--my mask--" she faltered vaguely, clasping
her hands across her bosom; then suddenly dropped to a seat and burst
into tears. Once before--but in how different a case!--he had seen her
thus thrilled with weeping. Then fate had thrown him humbled at her
feet, now it was she who cried him mercy in every line of her bowed head
and shaken breast; and the thought of that other meeting flooded his
heart with pity.
He knelt before her, seeking her hands. "Fulvia, why do you shrink from
me?" he whispered. But she shook her head and wept on.
At last her sobs subsided and she rose to her feet. "I must go back,"
said she in a low tone, and would have passed him.
"Back? To the convent?"
"To the convent," she said after him; but she made no farther effort to
move.
The question that tortured him sprang forth. "You have taken the vows?"
"A month since," she answered.
He hid his face in his hands and for a moment both were silent. "And you
have no other word for me--none?" he faltered at last.
She fixed him with a hard bright stare. "Yes--one," she cried; "keep a
place for me among your gallant recollections."
"Fulvia!" he said with sudden strength, and caught her by the arm.
"Let me pass!" she cried.
"No, by heaven!" he retorted; "not till you listen to me--not till you
tell me how it is that I come upon you here!--Ah, child," he broke out,
"do you fancy I don't see how little you belong in such scenes? That I
don't know you are here through some dreadful error? Fulvia," he
pleaded, "will you never trust me?" And at the word he burned with
blushes in the darkness.
His voice, perhaps, rather than what he said, seemed to have struck a
yielding fibre. He felt her arm tremble in his hold; but after a moment
she said with cruel distinctness: "There was no error. I came knowingly.
It was the company and not the place I was deceived in."
Odo drew back with a start; then, as if in spite of himself, he broke
into a laugh. "By the saints," said he, almost joyously, "I am sorry to
be where I am not wanted; but since no better company offers, will you
not make the best of mine and suffer me to hand you in to supper with
our friends?" And with a low bow he offered her his arm.
The effect was instantaneous. He saw her catch at the balustrade for
support.
"Sancta simplicitas!" he exulted, "and did you think to play the part at
such short notice?" He fell at her feet and covered her hands with
kisses. "My Fulvia! My poor child! come with me, come away from here,"
he entreated. "I know not what mad hazard has brought us thus together,
but I thank God on my knees for the encounter. You shall tell me all or
nothing, as you please--you shall presently dismiss me at your
convent-gate, and never see me again if you so will it--but till then, I
swear, you are in my charge, and no human power shall come between us!"
As he ended the Marquess's voice called gaily through the open window:
"Friends, the burgundy is uncorked! Will you not join us in a glass of
good French wine?"
Fulvia flung herself upon Odo. "Yes--yes; away--take me away from here!"
she cried, clinging to him. She had gathered her cloak about her and
drawn the hood over her disordered hair. "Away! Away!" she repeated. "I
cannot see them again. Good God, is there no other way out?"
With a gesture he warned her to be silent and drew her along the terrace
in the shadow of the house. The gravel creaked beneath their feet, and
she shook at the least sound; but her hand lay in his like a child's and
he felt himself her master. At the farther end of the terrace a flight
of steps led to a narrow strip of shore. He helped her down and after
listening a moment gave a whistle. Presently they heard a low plash of
oars and saw the prow of a gondola cautiously rounding the angle of the
terrace. The water was shallow and the boatmen proceeded slowly and at
length paused a few yards from the land.
"We can come no nearer," one of them called; "what is it?"
"Your mistress is unwell and wishes to return," Odo answered; and
catching Fulvia in his arms he waded out with her to the gondola and
lifted her over the side. "To Santa Chiara!" he ordered, as he laid her
on the cushions beneath the felze; and the boatmen, recognising her as
one of their late fares, without more ado began to row rapidly toward
the city.
3.4.
In the pitying darkness of the gondola she lay beyond speech, her hand
in his, her breath coming fitfully. Odo waited in suspense, not daring
to question her, yet sure that if she did not speak then she would never
do so. All doubt and perplexity of spirit had vanished in the simple
sense of her nearness. The throb of her hand in his was like the
heart-beat of hope. He felt himself no longer a drifting spectator of
life but a sharer in its gifts and renunciations. Which this meeting
would bring he dared not yet surmise: it was enough that he was with
Fulvia and that love had freed his spirit.
At length she began to speak. Her agitation was so great that he had
difficulty in piecing together the fragments of her story; but for the
moment he was more concerned in regaining her confidence than in seeking
to obtain a clear picture of the past. Before she could end, the gondola
rounded the corner of the narrow canal skirting the garden-wall of Santa
Chiara. Alarmed lest he should lose her again he passionately urged her
to receive him on the morrow; and after some hesitation she consented. A
moment later their prow touched the postern and the boatman gave a low
call which proved him no novice at the business. Fulvia signed to Odo
not to speak or move; and they sat listening intently for the opening of
the gate. As soon as it was unbarred she sprang ashore and vanished in
the darkness of the garden; and with a cold sense of failure Odo heard
the bolt slipping back and the stealthy fall of the oars as the gondola
slid away under the shadow of the convent-wall. Whither was he being
carried and would that bolt ever be drawn for him again? In the sultry
dawn the convent loomed forbiddingly as a prison, and he could hardly
believe that a few hours earlier the very doors now closed against him
had stood open to all the world. They would open again; but whether to
him, who could conjecture? He was resolved to see Fulvia again, but he
shrank from the thought of forcing himself upon her. She had promised to
receive him; but what revulsion of feeling might not the morrow bring?
Unable to sleep, he bade the boatmen carry him to the Lido. The sun was
just rising above the Friulian Alps and the lagoon lay dull and smooth
as a breathed-on mirror. As he paced the lonely sands he tried to
reconstruct Fulvia's broken story, supplementing it with such details as
his experience of Venetian life suggested. It appeared that after her
father's death she had found herself possessed of a small sum of money
which he had painfully accumulated for her during the two years they had
spent in Pavia. Her only thought was to employ this inheritance in
publishing the great work on the origin of civilisation which Vivaldi
had completed a few days before his last seizure. Through one of the
professors of the University, who had been her father's friend, she
negotiated with a printer of Amsterdam for the production of the book,
and the terms being agreed on, despatched the money and the manuscript
thither by a sure hand. Both were duly delivered and the publisher had
advanced so far in his work as to send Fulvia the proof-sheets of the
first chapters, when he took alarm at the renewed activity of the Holy
Office in France and Italy, declared there would be no market for the
book in the present state of affairs, and refused either to continue
printing it, or to restore the money, which he said had barely covered
the setting-up of the type. Fulvia then attempted to recover the
manuscript; but the publisher refusing to surrender it, she found
herself doubly beggared at a stroke.
In this extremity she turned to a sister of her father's, who lived near
Treviso; and this excellent woman, though persuaded that her brother's
heretical views had doomed him to everlasting torment, did not scruple
to offer his child a home. Here Fulvia had lived for two years when her
aunt's sudden death left her destitute; for the good lady, to atone for
having given shelter to a niece of doubtful orthodoxy, had left the
whole of her small property to the Church.
Fulvia's only other relations were certain distant cousins of her
mother's, members of the Venetian nobility, but of the indigent class
called Barnabotti, who lived on the bounty of the state. While in
Treviso she had made the acquaintance of one of these cousins, a
stirring noisy fellow involved in all the political agitations of the
state. It was among the Barnabotti, the class most indebted to the
government, that these seditious movements generally arose; and Fulvia's
cousin was one of the most notorious malcontents of his order. She had
mistaken his revolutionary bluster for philosophic enlightenment; and,
persuaded that he shared in her views, she rashly appealed to him for
help. With the most eloquent expressions of sympathy he offered her a
home under his own roof; but on reaching Venice she was but ill-received
by his wife and family, who made no scruple of declaring that, being but
pensioners themselves, they were in no state to nourish their pauper
relatives. Fulvia could not but own that they were right; for they lived
in the garret of a half-ruined house, pawning their very beds to pay for
ices in the Piazza and sitting at home all the week in dirty shifts and
night-caps that they might go to mass in silk and powder on a Sunday.
After two months of wretchedness with these unfriendly hosts, whom she
vainly tried to conciliate by a hundred little services and attentions
the poor girl resolved to return to Milan, where she hoped to obtain
some menial position in the household of one of her father's friends.
Her cousins, at this, made a great outcry, protesting that none of their
blood should so demean herself, and that they would spare no efforts to
find some better way of providing for her. Their noble connections gave
Fulvia the hope that they might obtain a small pension for her, and she
unsuspiciously yielded to their wishes; but to her dismay she learned a
few weeks later, that, thanks to their exertions, she was to be admitted
as a novice to the convent of Santa Chiara. Though it was the common way
of disposing of portionless girls, the liberal views of her cousins had
reassured Fulvia, and she woke to her fate too late to escape it. She
was to enter on her novitiate on the morrow; but even had delay been
possible she knew that both the civil and religious authorities would
sustain her family in their course.
Her cousins, knowing her independent spirit, and perhaps fearing an
outcry if they sequestered her too closely, had thought to soften her
resistance by placing her in a convent noted for its leniencies; but to
Fulvia such surroundings were more repugnant than the strictest monastic
discipline. The corruption of the religious orders was a favourite topic
with her father's friends, and the Venetian nuns were noted throughout
Italy for their frivolous and dissipated lives; but nothing that Fulvia
had heard or imagined approached the realities that awaited her. At
first the mere sense of imprisonment, of being cut off forever from the
world of free thought and action which had been her native element,
overwhelmed every other feeling, and she lay numb in the clutch of fate.
But she was too young for this merciful torpor to last, and with the
returning consciousness of her situation came the instinctive effort to
amend it. How she longed then to have been buried in some strict order,
where she might have spent her days in solitary work and meditation! How
she loathed the petty gossip of the nuns, their furtive reaching after
forbidden pleasures! The blindest bigotry would have been less
insufferable than this clandestine commerce with the world, the
strictest sequestration than this open parody of the monastic calling.
She sought in vain among her companions for an answering mind. Many,
like herself, were in open rebellion against their lot; but for reasons
so different that the feeling was an added estrangement. At last the
longing to escape over-mastered every other sensation. It became a fixed
idea, a devouring passion. She did not trust herself to think of what
must follow, but centred every faculty on the effort of evasion.
At this point in her story her growing distress had made it hard for Odo
to gather more than a general hint of her meaning. It was clear,
however, that she had found her sole hope of escape lay in gaining the
friendship of one of the more favoured nuns. Her own position in the
community was of the humblest, for she had neither rank nor wealth to
commend her; but her skill on the harpsichord had attracted the notice
of the music-mistress and she had been enrolled in the convent orchestra
before her novitiate was over. This had brought her into contact with a
few of the more favoured sisters, and among them she had recognised in
Sister Mary of the Crucifix the daughter of the nobleman who had been
her aunt's landlord at Treviso. Fulvia's name was not unknown to the
handsome nun, and the coincidence was enough to draw them together in a
community where such trivial affinities must replace the ties of nature.
Fulvia soon learned that Mary of the Crucifix was the spoiled darling of
the convent. Her beauty and spirit, as much perhaps as her family
connections, had given her this predominance; and no scruples interfered
with her use of it. Finding herself, as she declared, on the wrong side
of the grate, she determined to gather in all the pleasures she could
reach through it; and her reach was certainly prodigious. Here Odo had
been obliged to fall back on his knowledge of Venetian customs to
conjecture the incidents leading up to the scene of the previous night.
He divined that Fulvia, maddened by having had to pronounce the
irrevocable vows, had resolved to fly at all hazards; that Sister Mary,
unconscious of her designs, had proposed to take her on a party of
pleasure, and that the rash girl, blind to every risk but that of delay,
had seized on this desperate means of escape. What must have followed
had she not chanced on Odo, she had clearly neither the courage nor the
experience to picture; but she seemed to have had some confused idea of
throwing herself on the mercy of the foreign nobleman she believed she
was to meet.
So much Odo had gathered; and her voice, her gesture, the disorder of
her spirit, supplied what her words omitted. Not for a moment, either in
listening to her or in the soberer period of revision, did he question
the exact truth of her narrative. It was the second time that they had
met under strange circumstances; yet now as before the sense of her
candour was his ruling thought. He concluded that, whatever plight she
found herself in, she would be its immediate justification; and felt
sure he must have reached this conclusion though love had not had a
stake in the verdict. This perhaps but proved him the more deeply taken;
for it is when passion tightens the net that reason flaps her wings most
loudly.
Day was high when he returned to his lodgings, impatient for a word from
Fulvia. None had come; and as the hours passed he yielded to the most
disheartening fancies. His wretchedness was increased by the thought
that he had once inflicted on her such suspense he was now enduring; and
he went so far as to wonder if this were her revenge for Vercelli. But
if the past was intolerable to consider the future was all baffling
fears. His immediate study was how to see her; and this her continued
silence seemed to refuse him. The extremity of her plight was his best
ally; yet here again anxiety suggested that his having been the witness
of her humiliation must insensibly turn her against him. Never perhaps
does a man show less knowledge of human nature than in speculating on
the conduct of his beloved; and every step in the labyrinth of his
conjectures carried Odo farther from the truth. This rose on him at
nightfall, in the shape of a letter slipped in his hand by a lay-sister
as he crossed the square before his lodgings. He stepped to the light of
the nearest shrine and read the few words in a tumult. "This being
Friday, no visitors are admitted to the convent; but I entreat you to
come to me tomorrow an hour before benediction." A postcript added: "It
is the hour when visitors are most frequent."
He saw her meaning in a flash: his best chance of speaking with her was
in a crowd, and his heart bounded at the significance of her admission.
Now indeed he felt himself lord of the future. Nothing counted but that
he was to see her. His horizon was narrowed to the bars through which
her hand would greet him; yet never had the world appeared so vast.
Long before the hour appointed he was at the gate of Santa Chiara. He
asked to speak with Sister Veronica and the portress led him to the
parlour. Several nuns were already behind the grate, chatting with a
group of fashionable ladies and their gallants; but Fulvia was not among
them. In a few moments the portress returned and informed Odo that
Sister Veronica was indisposed and unable to leave her cell. His heart
sank, and he asked if she had sent no message. The portress answered in
the negative, but added that the abbess begged him to come to her
parlour; and at this his hopes took wing again.
The abbess's parlour was preceded by a handsome antechamber, where Odo
was bidden to wait. It was doubtless the Reverend Mother's hour for
receiving company, for through the door beyond he heard laughter and
music and the sound of lively talk. Presently this door opened and Mary
of the Crucifix entered. In her monastic habit she looked coarse and
overblown: the severe lines and sober tints of the dress did not become
her. Odo felt an insurmountable repugnance at seeing her. He could not
conceive why Fulvia had chosen such an intermediary, and for the first
time a stealing doubt tainted his thoughts of her.
Sister Mary seemed to read his mind. "You bear me a grudge," said she
gaily; "but I think you will live to own that I do not return it. Come
with me if you wish to speak with Sister Veronica."
Odo flushed with surprise. "She is not too unwell to receive me?"
Sister Mary raised her eyebrows in astonishment. "To receive her cousin?
Her nearest male relative, come from Treviso purposely to visit her? The
saints forbid!" she cried. "The poor child is indeed dying--but only to
see her cousin!" And with that she seized his hand and hurried him down
the corridor to a door on which she tapped three times. It opened at
once, and catching Odo by the shoulder she pushed him laughingly over
the threshold and cried out as she vanished: "Be careful not to agitate
the sufferer!"
Odo found himself in a neat plain cell; but he had no eyes for his
surroundings. All that he saw was Fulvia, dressed in her nun's habit and
seated near the window, through which the afternoon light fell softly on
her white coif and the austere folds of her dress. She rose and greeted
him with a smile.
"You are not ill, then?" he cried, stupidly, and the colour rose to her
pale face.
"No," she said, "I am not ill, and at first I was reluctant to make use
of such a subterfuge; but to feign an indisposition was the only way of
speaking with you privately, and, alas, in this school one soon becomes
a proficient in deceit." She paused a moment and then added with an
effort: "Even this favour I could not have obtained save through Sister
Mary of the Crucifix; but she now understands that you are an old friend
of my father's, and that my motive for wishing to see you is not what
she at first supposed."
This was said with such noble simplicity and so direct a glance, that
Odo, confused by the sense of his own doubts, could only murmur as he
bent over her hand: "Fuoco di quest' incendio non v' assale."
She drew back gently and signed him to a seat. "I trust not," she said,
answering his citation; "but I think the flame through which Beatrice
walked must have been less contaminating than this morass in which I
flounder."
She was silent a moment and he had leisure to steal a closer look at
her. It was the first time since their meeting that he had really seen
her face; and he was struck by the touch of awe that had come upon her
beauty. Perhaps her recent suffering had spiritualised a countenance
already pure and lofty; for as he looked at her it seemed to him that
she was transformed into a being beyond earthly contact, and his heart
sank with the sense of her remoteness. Presently she began to speak and
his consciousness of the distance between them was increased by the
composure of her manner. All signs of confusion and distress had
vanished. She faced him with the same innocent freedom as under her
father's roof, and all that had since passed between them seemed to have
slipped from her without a trace.
She began by thanking him for coming, and then at once reverted to her
desperate situation and to her determination to escape.
"I am alone and friendless," she said, "and though the length of our
past acquaintance" (and here indeed she blushed) "scarce warrants such a
presumption, yet I believe that in my father's name I may appeal to you.
It may be that with the best will to help me you can discover no way of
doing so, but at least I shall have the benefit of your advice. I now
see," she added, again deeply blushing, but keeping her eyes on his,
"the madness of my late attempt, and the depth of the abyss from which
you rescued me. Death were indeed preferable to such chances; but I do
not mean to die while life holds out a hope of liberation."
As she spoke there flashed on Odo the reason of her remoteness and
composure. He had come to her as a lover: she received him as a friend.
His longing to aid her was inspired by passion: she saw in it only the
natural impulse of benevolence. So mortifying was the discovery that he
hardly followed her words. All his thoughts were engaged in reviewing
the past; and he now saw that if, as she said, their acquaintance scarce
warranted her appealing to him as a friend, it still less justified his
addressing her as a lover. Only once before had he spoken to her of
love, and that under circumstances which almost forbade a return to the
subject, or at least compelled an added prudence in approaching it. Once
again he found himself the prisoner of his folly, and stood aghast at
the ingenuity of the punishment. To play the part she ascribed to him
was his only portion; and he resolved at least to play it like a man.
With what composure he might, he assured Fulvia of his desire to serve
her, and asked if she had no hope of obtaining her release from the Holy
See. She answered: none, since enquiry must reveal that she was the
daughter of a man who had been prosecuted for heresy, and that after his
death she had devoted the small sum he had left her to the publication
of his writings. She added that his Holiness, resolved to counteract the
effects of the late Pope's leniency, had greatly enlarged the powers of
the Inquisition, and had taken special measures to prevent those who
entered the religious life from renouncing their calling.
"Since I have been here," she said, "three nuns have tried to obtain
their release, and one has conclusively proved that she was forced to
take the vows by fraud; but their pleas have been rejected, and mine
would meet the same fate. Indeed, the only result would be to deprive me
of what little liberty I am allowed; for the three nuns I speak of are
now the most closely watched in the convent."
She went on to explain that, thanks to the connivance of Sister Mary of
the Crucifix, her actual escape might be effected without much
difficulty; but that she was now awake to the madness of taking so
desperate a step without knowing whither it would lead her.
"To be safe," she said, "I must cross the borders of Switzerland. If I
could reach Geneva I should be beyond the arm of the Holy Office, and at
the University there I should find friends of my father who would surely
take pity on my situation and help me to a living. But the journey is
long and difficult, and not to be safely attempted without some
assurance of shelter on the way."
It was on Odo's lips to declare that he would provide her with shelter
and escort; but at this moment three warning taps announced the return
of Sister Mary of the Crucifix.
She entered merrily and at once laid one hand on Fulvia's brow and
caught her wrist in the other. "The patient's pulse has risen," she
declared, "and rest and a lowering treatment are essential. I must ask
the cavaliere to withdraw."
Fulvia, with an air of constraint, held out her hand to Odo.
"I shall see you soon again?" he whispered; and Sister Mary, as though
she had guessed his words, cried out, "I think your excellency may count
on a recurrence of the seizure two days hence at the same hour!"
3.5.
With this Odo was forced to be content; and he passed the intervening
time in devising the means of Fulvia's rescue. He was resolved to let no
rashness or negligence hinder the attempt, and to prove, by the
discretion of his course, that he was no longer the light fool who had
once hazarded her safety. He went about his preparations as one that had
no private stake in the venture; but he was therefore the more
punctilious to show himself worthy of her trust and sensible of the
charge it laid upon him.
At their next meeting he found her in the same open and friendly mood,
and she listened gratefully as he set forth his plan. This was that she
should first write to a doctor of the University in Geneva, who had been
her father's friend, stating her plight and asking if he could help her
to a living should she contrive to reach Geneva. Pending the reply, Odo
was to plan the stages of the journey in such fashion that she might
count on concealment in case of pursuit; and she was not to attempt her
escape till these details were decided. Fulvia was the more ready to
acquiesce in this postponement as she did not wish to involve Sister
Mary in her adventure, but hoped to escape unassisted during an
entertainment which was to take place in the convent on the feast of
Saint Michael, some six weeks later.
To Odo the delay was still more welcome; for it gave him what he must
needs regard as his last opportunity of being in the girl's company. She
had accepted his companionship on the journey with a readiness in which
he saw only the magnanimity of pardon; but in Geneva they must part, and
what hope had he of seeing her again? The first smart of vanity allayed,
he was glad she chose to treat him as a friend. It was in this character
that he could best prove his disinterestedness, his resolve to make
amends for the past; and in this character only--as he now felt--would
it be possible for him to part from her.
On his second visit he ventured to discharge his mind of its heaviest
burden by enquiring what had befallen her and her father after he had
lost trace of them at Vercelli. She told him quite simply that, failing
to meet him at the appointed place, they at once guessed that his plan
had been winded by the abate who travelled with him; and that after a
few hours' delay her father had succeeded in securing a chaise which had
taken them safely across the border. She went on to speak of the
hardships they had suffered after reaching Milan. Even under a
comparatively liberal government it was small advantage to be marked by
the Holy Office; and though he received much kindness, and even material
aid, from those of his way of thinking, Vivaldi was unable to obtain the
professorship he had hoped for.
From Milan they went to Pavia; but in this University, the most liberal
in Italy, the chairs were so sought after that there was no hope of his
receiving a charge worthy of his talents. Here, however, his spirit
breathed its natural air, and reluctant to lose the privileges of such
intercourse he decided to accept the post of librarian to an eccentric
nobleman of the town. If his pay was modest his duties left him leisure
for the work which was his chief concern; for his patron, who had houses
in Milan and Brescia, came seldom to Pavia, and Fulvia and her father
had the vast palace to themselves. They lodged in a corner adjoining the
library, spending their days in studious seclusion, their evenings in
conversation with some of the first scholars of Europe: the learned
botanist Scopoli, Spallanzani, Volta, and Father Fontana, the famous
mathematician. In such surroundings Vivaldi might have pursued his task
contentedly enough, but for the thought of Fulvia's future. This, his
daughter said, continually preyed on him, driving him to labours beyond
his strength; for he hoped by the publication of his book to make good,
at least in part, the loss of the small property which the Sardinian
government had confiscated. All her entreaties could not dissuade him
from over-exertion; and in addition to his regular duties he took on
himself (as she afterward learned) the tedious work of revising proofs
and copying manuscripts for the professors. This drudgery, combined with
severe intellectual effort, exceeded his flagging powers; and the book
was hardly completed when his patron, apprised of its contents, abruptly
removed him from his post. From that day Vivaldi sank in health; but he
ended as became a sage, content to have discharged the task for which he
had given up home and substance, and dying with the great Stoic's words
upon his lips:--
Lex non poena mors.
Vivaldi's friends in Milan came generously to Fulvia's aid, and she
would gladly have remained among them; but after the loss of her small
inheritance and of her father's manuscript she was without means of
repaying their kindness, and nothing remained but to turn to her own
kin.
As Odo sat in the quiet cell, listening to her story, and hearing again
the great names his youth had reverenced, he felt himself an exile
returning to his own, mounting the familiar heights and breathing the
air that was his birthright. Looking back from this recovered standpoint
he saw how far behind his early hopes had been left. Since his departure
from Naples there had been nothing to remind him of that vast noiseless
labour of the spirit going on everywhere beneath the social surface:
that baffled but undiscouraged endeavour in which he had once so
impatiently claimed his share. Now every word of Fulvia's smote the
bones of some dead purpose, till his bosom seemed a very valley of
Ezekiel. Her own trials had fanned her love of freedom, and the near
hope of release lent an exaltation to her words. Of bitterness, of
resentment she gave no sign; and he was awed by the same serenity of
spirit which had struck him in the imprisoned doctor. But perhaps the
strongest impression she produced was that of increasing his points of
contact with life. His other sentimental ties had been a barrier between
himself and the outer world; but the feeling which drew him to Fulvia
had the effect of levelling the bounds of egoism, of letting into the
circle of his nearest emotions that great tide of human longing and
effort that had always faintly sounded on the shores of self. Perhaps it
was her power of evoking this wider life that gave a sense of
permanence, of security almost, to the stolen moments of their
intercourse, lulling the lover's impatience of actual conditions with
the sense of something that must survive the accidents of fortune. Only
in some such way could he explain, in looking back, the completeness of
each moment spent with her. He was conscious even at the time of a
suspension of the emotional laws, a charmed surrender to the limitations
of his fate. When he was away his impatience reasserted itself; but her
presence was like a soothing hand on his spirit, and he knew that his
quiet hours with her would count among those intervals between the
crises of life that flower in memory when the crises themselves have
faded.
It was natural that in the course of these visits she in turn should
question him; and as his past rearranged itself beneath her scrutiny he
seemed once more to trace the thread of purpose on which its fragments
hung. He told her of his connection with the liberals of Pianura, of the
situation at court, and of the reason for his prolonged travels. As he
talked her eyes conveyed the exquisite sense of her complete
comprehension. She saw, before he could justify himself, how the
uncertainty of his future, and his inability to act, had cast him adrift
upon a life of superficial enjoyment; and how his latent dissatisfaction
with this life had inevitably resulted in self-distrust and vacillation.
"You wait your hour," she said of him; and he seized on the phrase as a
justification of his inactivity and, when chance should offer, a spur to
fresh endeavour. Her interest in the liberal cause had been intensified
and exalted by her father's death--his martyrdom, as she described it.
Like most women possessed of an abstract idea she had unconsciously
personified the idea and made a religion of it; but it was a religion of
charity and not of vindictiveness. "I should like my father's death
avenged by love and not by hate," she said; "I would have it bring
peace, not a sword."
On one point only she remained, if not hostile yet unresponsive. This
was when he spoke of de Crucis. Her manner hardened instantly, and he
perceived that, though he dwelt on the Jesuit's tolerant view and
cultivated tastes, she beheld only the priest and not the man. She had
been eager to hear of Crescenti, whom she knew by name as a student of
European repute, and to the praise of whose parochial charities she
listened with outspoken sympathy; but the Jesuits stood for the Holy
Office, and she had suffered too deeply at the hands of the Holy Office
to regard with an open mind any who might be supposed to represent its
principles. It was impossible for Odo to make her understand how
distinctly, in de Crucis's case, the man predominated over the order;
and conscious of the painfulness of the subject, he gave up the attempt
to interest her in his friend.
Three or four times he was permitted to visit her in her cell: after
that they met almost daily in the parlour, where, about the hour of
benediction, they could talk almost as privately under cover of the
general chatter. In due time Fulvia received an answer from the
Calvinist professor, who assured her of a welcome in Geneva and shelter
under his roof. Odo, meanwhile, had perfected the plan of their journey;
but as Michaelmas approached he began to fear Cantapresto's observation.
He now bitterly regretted that he had not held to his purpose of sending
the soprano back to Pianura; but to do so at this point would be to
challenge observation and he resolved instead on despatching him to
Monte Alloro with a letter to the old Duke. As the way to Geneva lay in
the opposite direction this would at least give the fugitives a three
days' lead; and they had little cause to fear pursuit from any other
quarter. The convent indeed might raise a hue and cry; but the nuns of
Santa Chiara had lately given the devout so much cause for scandal that
the abbess would probably be disposed to hush up any fresh delinquency.
The time too was well-chosen; for the sisters had prevailed on the
Reverend Mother to celebrate the saint's day by a masked ball, and the
whole convent was engrossed in the invention of whimsical disguises. The
nuns indeed were not to take part in the ball; but a number of them were
to appear in an allegorical entertainment with which the evening was to
open. The new Papal Nuncio, who was lately arrived in Venice, had
promised to be present; and as he was known to be a man of pleasure
there was scarce a sister in the convent but had an eye to his conquest.
These circumstances gave to Fulvia's plans the shelter of indifference;
for in the delightful effort of surpassing the other nuns even Mary of
the Crucifix lost interest in her friend's affairs.
Odo, to preserve the secrecy of his designs, had been obliged to keep up
a pretence of his former habits, showing himself abroad with
Coeur-Volant and Castelrovinato and frequenting the Procuratessa's routs
and card-parties. This lady, though lately returned to the Brenta, had
announced her intention of coming to Venice for the ball at Santa
Chiara; and Coeur-Volant was mightily preoccupied with the
entertainment, at which he purposed his mistress should outshine all her
companions.
The evening came at last, and Odo found himself entering the gates of
Santa Chiara with a throng of merry-makers. The convent was noted for
its splendid hospitality, and unwonted preparations had been made to
honour the saint. The brightly-illuminated bridge leading to the square
of Santa Chiara was decked with a colonnade of pasteboard and stiffened
linen cunningly painted, and a classical portico masked the entrance
gate. A flourish of trumpets and hautboys, and the firing of miniature
cannon, greeted the arrival of the guests, who were escorted to the
parlour, which was hung with tapestries and glowing with lights like a
Lady Chapel. Here they were received by the abbess, who, on the arrival
of the Nuncio, led the way to the garden, where a stage had been
erected.
The nuns who were not to take part in the play had been seated directly
under the stage, divided from the rest of the company by a low screen of
foliage. Ranged beneath the footlights, which shone on their bare
shoulders and white gowns, and on the gauze veils replacing their
monastic coifs, they seemed a choir of pagan virgins grouped in the
proscenium of an antique theatre. Everything indeed combined to produce
the impression of some classic festival: the setting of motionless
foliage, the mild autumnal sky in which the stars hung near and vivid,
and the foreground thronged with a motley company lit by the shifting
brightness of torches.
As Odo, in mask and travesty, stood observing the fantastically-dressed
audience, the pasteboard theatre adorned with statuary, and the nuns
flitting across the stage, his imagination, strung to the highest pitch
by his own impending venture, was thrilled by the contrast between the
outward appearance of the scene and its underlying reality. From where
he stood he looked directly at the abbess, who was seated with the
Nuncio and his suite under the tall crucifix in the centre of the
garden. As if to emphasise the irony of the situation, the torch fixed
behind this noble group cast an enlarged shadow of the cross over the
abbess's white gown and the splendid robes of her companions, who,
though they wore the mask, had not laid aside their clerical dress. To
Odo the juxtaposition had the effect of some supernatural warning, the
shadow of the divine wrath projected on its heedless ministers; an
impression heightened by the fact that, just opposite the cross, a
lively figure of Pan, surmounting the pediment of the theatre, seemed to
fling defiance at the Galilean intruder.
The nuns, like the rest of the company, were masked; and it had been
agreed between Odo and Fulvia that the latter should wear a wreath of
myrtle above her veil. As almost all her companions had chosen
brightly-coloured flowers this dark green chaplet was easily
distinguished among the clustered heads beneath the stage, and Odo had
no doubt of being able to rejoin Fulvia in the moment of dispersal that
should follow the conclusion of the play. He knew that the sisters were
to precede their guests and be locked behind the grate before the ball
began; but as they passed through the garden and cloisters the barrier
between nuns and visitors would probably not be too strictly maintained.
As he had foreseen, the company, attracted by the graceful procession,
pressed forward regardless of the assistant mistresses' protests, and
the shadowy arcades were full of laughter and whispered snatches of talk
as the white flock was driven back to its fold.
Odo had withdrawn to the darkest angle of the cloister, close to a door
leading to the pharmacy. It was here that Fulvia had told him to wait;
and though he had lost sight of her when the audience rose, he stood
confidently watching for the reappearance of the myrtle-wreath.
Presently he saw it close at hand; and just then the line of sisters
flowed toward him, driven forward by a group of lively masqueraders,
among whom he seemed to recognise Coeur-Volant's voice and figure.
Nothing could have been more opportune, for the pressure swept the
wearer of the myrtle-wreath almost into his arms; and as the intruders
were dispersed and the nuns laughingly reformed their lines, her hand
lingered in his and he felt himself drawn toward the door.
It yielded to her touch and Odo followed her down a dark passageway to
the empty room where rows of old Faenza jars and quaintly-shaped flagons
glimmered in the dusk. Beyond the pharmacy was another door, the key of
which hung on the wall with the portress's hood and cloak. Without a
word the girl wrapped herself in the cloak and, fitting the key to the
lock, softly opened the door. All this was done with a rapidity and
assurance for which Odo was unprepared; but, reflecting that Fulvia's
whole future hung on the promptness with which each detail of her plan
was executed, he concluded that her natural force of character enabled
her to assume an ease she could hardly feel.
The door opened on the kitchen-garden, and brushing the lavender-hedges
with her flying skirts she sped on ahead of Odo to the postern which the
nuns were accustomed to use for their nocturnal escapades. Only the
thickness of an oaken gate stood between Fulvia and the outer world. To
her the opening of the gate meant the first step toward freedom, but to
Odo the passing from their enchanted weeks of fellowship to the inner
loneliness of his former life. He hung back silent while she drew the
bolt.
A moment later they had crossed the threshold and his gondola was
slipping toward them out of the shadow of the wall. Fulvia sprang on
board and he followed her under the felze. The warm darkness enclosing
them stirred impulses which their daily intercourse had subdued, and in
the sense of her nearness he lost sight of the conditions which had
brought them together. The feeling seemed to communicate itself; for as
the gondola rounded the angle of the convent-wall and swung out on the
open, she drooped toward him with the turn of the boat and their lips
met under the loosened masks.
At the same instant the light of the Virgin's shrine in the corner of
the convent-wall fell through the window of the felze on the face lifted
to Odo's; and he found himself suddenly confronted by the tender eyes
and malicious smile of Sister Mary of the Crucifix.
"By Diana," she cried as he started back, "I did but claim my pay in
advance; nor do I think that, when she knows all, Sister Veronica will
grudge me my reward!"
He continued to stare at her in speechless bewilderment, and she went on
with a kind of tender impatience: "You simpleton, can you not guess that
you were watched, and that but for me your Veronica would at this moment
be lying under lock and key in her cell? Instead of which," she
continued, speaking more slowly, and leaning back as though to enjoy the
full savour of his suspense, "instead of which she now awaits you in a
safe nook of my choosing, where, within half an hour's time, you may
atone to her with interest for the infidelity into which I have betrayed
you."
"She knows, then?" Odo faltered, not daring to say more in his ignorance
of Sister Mary's share in the secret.
Sister Mary shook her head with a tantalising laugh. "That you are
coming? Alas, no, poor angel! She fancies that she has been sent from
the convent to avoid you--as indeed she was, and by the Reverend
Mother's own order, who, it seems, had wind of the intrigue this
morning. But, the saints be praised, the excellent sister who was
ordered to attend her is in my pay and instead of conducting her to her
relatives of San Barnado, who were to keep her locked up over night,
has, if I mistake not, taken her to a good woman of my acquaintance--an
old servant, in fact--who will guard her as jealously as the family
plate till you and I come to her release."
As she spoke she put out her head and gave a whispered order to the
gondolier; and at the word the boat swung round and headed for the city.
In the violent reaction which this strange encounter produced, Odo was
for the moment incapable of taking any clear note of his surroundings.
Uncertain if he were not once more the victim of some such mischance as
seemed to attend all his efforts to succour Fulvia, he sat in silent
apprehension as the gondola shot across the Grand Canal and entered the
labyrinth of water-ways behind San Moise. Sister Mary took his silence
philosophically.
"You dare not speak to me, for fear of betraying yourself," she said,
"and I scarce wonder at your distrust; for your plans were so well laid
that I had no notion of what was on foot, and must have remained in
ignorance if Veronica had not been put in Sister Martha's charge. But
you will both live to thank me, and I hope," she added, laughing, "to
own that you would have done better to take me into your confidence from
the first."
As she spoke the gondola touched at the head of a narrow passage which
lost itself in the blackness of the overhanging houses. Sister Mary
sprang out and drew Odo after her. A few yards down the alley she
entered a plain low-storied house somewhat withdrawn behind its
neighbours. Followed by Odo she groped her way up a dark flight of
stairs and knocked at a door on the upper landing. A vague flutter
within, indicative of whispers and uncertain movements, was followed by
the slipping of the bolt, and a middle-aged woman looked out. She drew
back with an exclamation of welcome, and Sister Mary, seizing Odo by the
shoulders, pushed him across the threshold of a small dimly-lit kitchen.
Fulvia, in her nun's habit, cowered in the darkest corner; but at sight
of Odo she sprang up, and ran toward him with a happy cry.
3.6.
An hour later the two were well on their way toward Mestre, where a
travelling-chaise awaited them. Odo, having learned that Andreoni was
settled in Padua, had asked him to receive Fulvia in his house till the
next night-fall; and the bookseller, whom he had taken into his
confidence, was eager to welcome the daughter of the revered Vivaldi.
The extremes of hope and apprehension had left Fulvia too exhausted for
many words, and Odo, after she had confirmed every particular of Sister
Mary's story, refrained from questioning her farther. Thanks to her
friend's resources she had been able to exchange her nun's dress for the
plain gown and travelling-cloak of a young woman of the middle class;
and this dress painfully recalled to Odo the day when he had found her
standing beside the broken-down chaise on the road to Vercelli.
The recollection was not calculated to put him at his ease; and indeed
it was only now that he began to feel the peculiar constraint of his
position. To Andreoni his explanation of Fulvia's flight had seemed
natural enough; but on the subsequent stages of their journey she must
pass for his mistress or his wife, and he hardly knew in what spirit she
would take the misapprehensions that must inevitably arise.
At Mestre their carriage waited, and they drove rapidly toward Padua
through the waning night. Andreoni, in his concern for Fulvia's safety,
had prepared for her reception a little farm-house of his wife's, in a
vineyard beyond the town; and here at daybreak it was almost a relief to
Odo to commit his charge to the Signora Andreoni's care.
The day was spent indoors, and Andreoni having thought it more prudent
to bring no servant from Padua, his wife prepared the meals for their
guests and the bookseller drew a jar of his own wine from the cellar.
Fulvia kept to herself during the day; but at dusk she surprised Odo by
entering the room with a trayful of plates and glasses, and helping
their hostess to set out the supper-table. The few hours of rest had
restored to her not only the serenity of the convent, but a lightness of
step and glance that Odo had not seen in her since the early days of
their friendship. He marvelled to see how the first breath of freedom
had set her blood in motion and fanned her languid eye; but he could not
suppress the accompanying thought that his own presence had failed to
work such miracles.
They had planned to ride that night to a little village in the hills
beyond Vicenza, where Fulvia's foster-mother, a peasant of the
Vicentine, lived with her son, who was a vine-dresser; and supper was
hardly over when they were told that their horses waited. Their kind
hosts dared not urge them to linger; and after a hurried farewell they
rode forth into the fresh darkness of the September night.
The new moon was down and they had to thread their way slowly through
the stony lanes between the vineyards. At length they gained the open
country, and growing more accustomed to the darkness put their horses to
a trot. The change of pace, and the exhilaration of traversing an
unknown country in the hush and mystery of night, combined to free their
spirits, and Odo began to be aware that the barrier between them was
lifted. To the charm of their intercourse at Santa Chiara was added that
closer sympathy produced by the sense of isolation. They were enclosed
in their common risk as in some secret meeting-place where no
consciousness of the outer world intruded; and though their talk kept
the safe level of their immediate concerns he felt the change in every
inflection of Fulvia's voice and in the subtler emphasis of her
silences.
The way was long, and he had feared that she would be taxed beyond her
strength; but the miles seemed to fly beneath their horses' feet, and
they could scarcely believe that the dark hills which rose ahead of them
against a whitening sky marked the limit of their journey.
With some difficulty they found their way to the vine-dresser's house, a
mere hut in a remote fold of the hills. From motives of prudence they
had not warned the nurse of their coming; but they found the old woman
already at work in her melon-patch and learned from her that her son had
gone down to his day's labour in the valley. She received Fulvia with a
tender wonder, as at some supernatural presence descending into her
life, too much awed, till the first embraces were over, to risk any
conjecture as to Odo's presence. But with the returning sense of
familiarity--the fancied recovery of the nurseling's features in the
girl's definite outline--came the inevitable reaction of curiosity, and
the fugitives felt themselves coupled in the old woman's meaning smiles.
To Odo's surprise Fulvia received these innuendoes with baffling
composure, parrying the questions she seemed to answer, and finally
taking refuge in a plea for rest. But the accord of the previous night
was broken; and when the travellers set out again, starting a little
before sunset to avoid the vine-dresser's return, the constraint of the
day began to weigh upon them. In Fulvia's case physical weariness
perhaps had a share in the change; but whatever the cause, its effect
was to make this stage of the journey strangely tedious to both.
Their way lay through the country north of Vicenza, whence they hoped by
dawn to gain Peschiera on the lake of Garda, and hire a chaise which
should take them across the border. For the first hour or two they had
the new moon to light them; but as it set the sky clouded and drops of
rain began to fall. Fulvia had hitherto shown a gay indifference to the
discomforts of the journey; but she presently began to complain of the
cold and to question Odo anxiously as to the length of the way. The
hilliness of the country forced them to travel slowly, and it seemed to
Odo that hours had elapsed before they saw lights in the valley below
them. Their plan had been to avoid the towns on their way, and Fulvia,
the night before, had contented herself with a half-hour's rest by the
roadside; but a heavy rain was now falling, and she at once assented to
Odo's tentative proposal that they should take shelter till the storm
was over.
They dismounted at an inn on the outskirts of the village. The sleepy
landlord stared as he unbarred the door and led them into the kitchen;
but he offered no comment beyond remarking that it was a good night to
be under cover.
Fulvia sank down on the wooden settle near the chimney, where a fire had
been hastily kindled. She took no notice of Odo when he removed the
dripping cloak from her shoulders, but sat gazing before her in a kind
of apathy.
"I cannot eat," she said, as Odo pressed her to take her place at the
table.
The innkeeper turned to him with a confidential nod. "Your lady looks
fairly beaten," he said. "I've a notion that one of my good beds would
be more to her taste than the best supper in the land. Shall I have a
room made ready for your excellencies?"
"No, no," said Fulvia, starting up. "We must set out again as soon as we
have supped."
She approached the table and hastily emptied the glass of country wine
that Odo had poured out for her.
The innkeeper seemed a simple unsuspicious fellow, but at this he put
down the plate of cheese he was carrying and looked at her curiously.
"Start out again at this hour of the night?" he exclaimed. "By the
saints, your excellencies must be running a race with the sun! Or do you
doubt my being able to provide you with decent lodgings, that you prefer
mud and rain to my good sheets and pillows?"
"Indeed, no," Odo amicably interposed; "but we are hurrying to meet a
friend who is to rejoin us tomorrow at Peschiera."
"Ah--at Peschiera," said the other, as though the name had struck him.
He took a dish of eggs from the fire and set it before Fulvia. "Well,"
he went on with a shrug, "it is written that none of my beds shall be
slept in tonight. Not two hours since I had a gentleman here that gave
the very same excuse for hurrying forward; though his horses were so
spent that I had to provide him with another pair before he could
continue his journey." He laughed and uncorked a second bottle.
"That reminds me," he went on, pausing suddenly before Fulvia, "that the
other gentleman was travelling to meet a friend too; a lady, he said--a
young lady. He fancied she might have passed this way and questioned me
closely; but as it happened there had been no petticoat under my roof
for three days.--I wonder, now, if he could have been looking for your
excellencies?"
Fulvia flushed high at this, but a sign from Odo checked the denial on
her lips.
"Why," said he, "it is not unlikely, though I had fancied our friend
would come from another direction. What was this gentleman like?"
The landlord hesitated, evidently not so much from any reluctance to
impart what he knew as from the inability to express it. "Well," said
he, trying to supplement his words by a vaguely descriptive gesture, "he
was a handsome personable-looking man--smallish built, but with a fine
manner, and dressed not unlike your excellency."
"Ah," said Odo carelessly, "our friend is an ecclesiastic.--And which
way did this gentleman travel?" he went on, pouring himself another
glass.
The landlord assumed an air of country cunning. "There's the fishy part
of it," said he. "He gave orders to go toward Verona; but my boy, who
chased the carriage down the road, as lads will, says that at the
cross-ways below the old mill the driver took the turn for Peschiera."
Fulvia at this seemed no longer able to control herself. She came close
to Odo and said in a low urgent tone: "For heaven's sake, let us set
forward!"
Odo again signed to her to keep silent, and with an effort she resumed
her seat and made a pretence of eating. A moment later he despatched the
landlord to the stable, to see that the horses had been rubbed down; and
as soon as the door closed she broke out passionately.
"It is my fault," she cried, "it is all my fault for coming here. If I
had had the courage to keep on this would never have happened!"
"No," said Odo quietly, "and we should have gone straight to Peschiera
and landed in the arms of our pursuer--if this mysterious traveller is
in pursuit of us."
His tone seemed to steady her. "Oh," she said, and the colour flickered
out of her face.
"As it happens," he went on, "nothing could have been more fortunate
than our coming here."
"I see--I see--; but now we must go on at once," she persisted.
He looked at her gravely. "This is your wish?"
She seemed seized with a panic fear. "I cannot stay here!" she repeated.
"Which way shall we go, then? If we continue to Peschiera, and this man
is after us, we are lost."
"But if he does not find us he may return here--he will surely return
here!"
"He cannot return before morning. It is close on midnight already.
Meanwhile you can take a few hours' rest while I devise means of
reaching the lake by some mule-track across the mountain."
It cost him an effort to take this tone with her; but he saw that in her
high-strung mood any other would have been less effective. She rose
slowly, keeping her eyes on him with the look of a frightened child. "I
will do as you wish," she said.
"Let the landlord prepare a bed for you, then. I will keep watch down
here and the horses shall be saddled at daylight."
She stood silent while he went to the door to call the innkeeper; but
when the order was given, and the door closed again, she disconcerted
him by a sudden sob.
"What a burden I am!" she cried. "I had no right to accept this of you."
And she turned and fled up the dark stairs.
The night passed and toward dawn the rain ceased. Odo rose from his
dreary vigil in the kitchen, and called to the innkeeper to carry up
bread and wine to Fulvia's room. Then he went out to see that the horses
were fed and watered. He had not dared to question the landlord as to
the roads, lest his doing so should excite suspicion; but he hoped to
find an ostler who would give him the information he needed.
The stable was empty, however; and he prepared to bait the horses
himself. As he stooped to place his lantern on the floor he caught the
gleam of a small polished object at his feet. He picked it up and found
that it was a silver coat-of-arms, such as are attached to the blinders
and saddles of a carriage-harness. His curiosity was aroused, and
holding the light closer he recognised the ducal crown of Pianura
surmounting the "Humilitas" of the Valseccas.
The discovery was so startling that for some moments he stood gazing at
the small object in his hand without being able to steady his confused
ideas. Gradually they took shape, and he saw that, if the ornament had
fallen from the harness of the traveller who had just preceded them, it
was not Fulvia but he himself who was being pursued. But who was it who
sought him and to what purpose? One fact alone was clear: the traveller,
whoever he was, rode in one of the Duke's carriages, and therefore
presumably upon his sovereign's business.
Odo was still trying to thread a way through these conjectures when a
yawning ostler pushed open the stable-door.
"Your excellency is in a hurry to be gone," he said, with a surprised
glance.
Odo handed him the coat-of-arms. "Can you tell me what this is?" he
asked carelessly. "I picked it up here a moment ago."
The other turned it over and stared. "Why," said he, "that's off the
harness of the gentleman that supped here last night--the same that went
on later to Peschiera."
Odo proceeded to question him about the mule-tracks over Monte Baldo,
and having bidden him saddle the horses in half an hour, crossed the
courtyard and re-entered the inn. A grey light was already falling
through the windows, and he mounted the stairs and knocked on the door
which he thought must be Fulvia's. Her voice bade him enter and he found
her seated fully dressed beside the window. She rose with a smile and he
saw that she had regained her usual self-possession.
"Do we set out at once?" she asked.
"There is no great haste," he answered. "You must eat first, and by that
time the horses will be saddled."
"As you please," she returned, with a readiness in which he divined the
wish to make amends for her wilfulness the previous night. Her eyes and
cheeks glowed with an excitement which counterfeited the effects of a
night's rest, and he thought he had never seen her more radiant. She
approached the table on which the wine and bread had been placed, and
drew another chair beside her own.
"Will you not share with me?" she asked, filling a glass for him.
He took it from her with a smile. "I have good news for you," he said,
holding out the bit of silver which he had brought from the stable.
She examined it wonderingly. "What does this mean?" she asked, looking
up at him.
"That it is I who am being followed--and not you."
She started and the ornament slipped from her hand.
"You?" she faltered with a quick change of colour.
"This coat-of-arms," he explained, "dropped from the harness of the
traveller who left the inn just before our arrival last night."
"Well--" she said, still without understanding; "and do you know the
coat?"
Odo smiled. "It is mine," he answered; "and the crown is my cousin's.
The traveller must have been a messenger of the Duke's."
She stood leaning against the seat from which she had risen, one hand
still grasping it while the other hung inert. Her lips parted but she
did not speak. Her pallor troubled Odo and he went up to her and took
her hand.
"Do you not understand," he said gently, "that there is no farther cause
for alarm? I have no reason to think that the Duke's messenger is in
pursuit of me; but should he be so, and should he overtake us, he has no
authority over you and no reason for betraying you to your enemies."
The blood poured back to her face. "Me! My enemies!" she stammered. "It
is not of them I think." She raised her head and faced him in a glow.
For a moment he stood stupidly gazing at her; then the mist lifted and
through it he saw a great light.
* * * * *
The landlord's knock warned them that their horses waited, and they rode
out in the grey morning. The world about them still lay in shade, and as
they climbed the wooded defile above the valley Odo was reminded of the
days at Donnaz when he had ridden up the mountain in the same early
light. Never since then had he felt, as he did now, the boy's easy
kinship with the unexpected, the sense that no encounter could be too
wonderful to fit in with the mere wonder of living.
To avoid the road to Peschiera they had resolved to cross the Monte
Baldo by a mule-track which should bring them out at one of the villages
on the eastern shore of Garda; and the search for this path led them up
through steep rain-scented woods where they had to part the wet boughs
as they passed. From time to time they regained the highway and rode
abreast, almost silent at first with the weight of their new nearness,
and then breaking into talk that was the mere overflow of what they were
thinking. There was in truth more to be felt between them than to be
said; since, as each was aware, the new light that suffused the present
left the future as obscure as before. But what mattered, when the hour
was theirs? The narrow kingdom of today is better worth ruling over than
the widest past or future; but not more than once does a man hold its
fugitive sceptre. The past, however, was theirs also: a past so
transformed that he must revisit it with her, joyously confronting her
new self with the image of her that met them at each turn. Then he had
himself to trace in her memories, his transfigured likeness to linger
over in the Narcissus-mirror of her faith in him. This interchange of
recollections served them as well as any outspoken expression of
feeling, and the most commonplace allusion was charged with happy
meanings.
Arabia Petraea had been an Eden to such travellers; how much more the
happy slopes they were now descending! All the afternoon their path
wound down the western incline of Monte Baldo, first under huge olives,
then through thickets of laurel and acacia, to emerge on a lower level
of lemon and orange groves, with the blue lake showing through a diaper
of golden-fruited boughs. Fulvia, to whom this clear-cut southern
foliage was as new as the pure intensity of light that bathed it, seemed
to herself to be moving through the landscape of a dream. It was as
though nature had been remodelled, transformed almost, under the touch
of their love: as though they had found their way to the Hesperian
glades in which poets and painters placed the legendary lovers of
antiquity.
Such feelings were intensified by the strangeness of the situation. In
Italy the young girls of the middle class, though seemingly allowed a
greater freedom of intercourse than the daughters of noblemen, were in
reality as strictly guarded. Though, like Fulvia, they might converse
with the elderly merchants or scholars frequenting the family table,
they were never alone in the company of men, and the high standard of
conduct prevailing in the bourgeoisie forbade all thought of clandestine
intercourse. This was especially true of the families of men of letters,
where the liberal education of the young girls, and their habit of
associating as equals with men of serious and cultivated minds, gave
them a self-possession disconcerting to the young blood accustomed to
conquer with a glance. These girls as a rule, were married early to men
of their own standing, and though the cicisbeo was not unknown after
marriage he was not an authorised member of the household. Fulvia,
indeed, belonged to the class most inaccessible to men of Odo's rank:
the only class in Italy in which the wife's fidelity was as much
esteemed as the innocence of the girl. Such principles had long been
ridiculed by persons of quality and satirised by poets and playwrights.
From Aristophanes to Beaumarchais the cheated husband and the outwitted
guardian had been the figures on which the dramatist relied for his
comic effects. Even the miser tricked out of his savings was a shade
less ridiculous, less grotesquely deserving of his fate, than the
husband defrauded of his wife's affection. The plausible adulteress and
the adroit seducer had a recognised claim on the sympathy of the public.
But the inevitable reaction was at hand; and the new teachers to whom
Odo's contemporaries were beginning to listen had thrown a strangely
poetic light over the dull figures of the domestic virtues. Faithfulness
to the family sanctities, reverence for the marriage tie, courage to
sacrifice the loftiest passion to the most plodding duty: these were
qualities to touch the fancy of a generation sated with derision. If
love as a sentiment was the discovery of the medieval poets, love as a
moral emotion might be called that of the eighteenth-century
philosophers, who, for all their celebration of free unions and fatal
passions, were really on the side of the angels, were fighting the
battle of the spiritual against the sensual, of conscience against
appetite.
The imperceptible action of these new influences formed the real barrier
between Odo and Fulvia. The girl stood for the embodiment of the
purifying emotions that were to renew the world. Her candour, her
unapproachableness, her simple trust in him, were a part of the magic
light which the new idealism had shed over the old social structure. His
was, in short, a love large enough to include other emotions: a widening
rather than a contraction of the emotional range. Youth and propinquity
have before now broken down stronger defences; but Fulvia's situation
was an unspoken appeal to her lover's forbearance. The sense that her
safety depended on him kept his sentimental impulses in check and made
the happiness of the moment seem, in its exquisite unreality, a mere
dreamlike interlude between the facts of life.
Toward sunset they rested in an olive-orchard, tethering their horses to
the low boughs. Overhead, through the thin foliage of tarnished silver,
the sky, as the moon suffused it, melted from steel blue to a clearer
silver. A peasant-woman whose hut stood close by brought them a goat's
cheese on a vine-leaf and a jug of spring-water; and as they supped, a
little goat-herd, driving his flock down the hill, paused to watch them
with furtive woodland eyes.
Odo, questioning him, learned that at the village on the shore below
they could obtain a boat to carry them across the lake. Fulvia, for lack
of a passport, dared not set foot on Austrian soil; but the Swiss
authorities were less exacting and Odo had hopes of crossing the border
without difficulty. They set out again presently, descending through the
grey dusk of the olives till the path became too steep for riding; then
Odo lifted Fulvia from the saddle and led the two horses after her. Here
and there, between the trees, they caught a momentary glimpse of lights
on the shore and the pale gleam of the lake enclosed in black foliage.
From the village below came snatches of song and the shrill wail of a
pipe; and as the night deepened they saw, far out on the water, the wild
flare of the fish-spearers' torches, like comets in an inverted sky.
With nightfall the spirits of both had sunk. Fulvia walked ahead in
silence and Odo read a mute apprehension in her drooping outline. Every
step brought them nearer to the point they both feared to face, and
though each knew what lay in the other's thoughts neither dared break
the silence. Odo's mind turned anxiously to the incidents of the
morning, to the finding of the ducal coat-of-arms, and to all the
possibilities it suggested. What errand save one could have carried an
envoy from Pianura to that remote hamlet among the hills? He could
scarcely doubt that it was in pursuit of himself that the ducal
messenger travelled; but with what object was the journey undertaken?
Was he to be recalled in obedience to some new whim of the Duke's? Or
had some unforeseen change--he dared not let his thoughts define
it--suddenly made his presence needful in Pianura? It was more probable
that the possibility of his flight with Fulvia had been suggested to the
Duke by the ecclesiastical authorities, and that the same hand which had
parted them before was again secretly at work. In any case, it was Odo's
first business to see his companion safely across the border; and in
that endeavour he had now little fear of being thwarted. If the Duke's
messenger awaited them at Peschiera he waited in vain; and though their
flight across the lake might be known before dawn it would then be no
easy matter to overtake them.
In an hour's time, as Odo had hoped, they were putting off from the
shore in a blunt-nosed fishing-boat which was the lightest craft the
village could provide. The lake was stark calm, and the two boatmen,
silhouetted against the moonlight, drove the boat forward with even
vigorous strokes. Fulvia, shivering in the autumnal chill, had drawn her
hood close about her and sat silent, her face in shade. Measured by
their secret apprehensions the boat's progress seemed at first
indescribably slow; but gradually the sounds from the shore grew
fainter, and the fugitives felt themselves alone in a world enclosed by
the moonlit circle of the waters.
As they advanced this sense of isolation and security grew deeper and
more impressive. The motionless surface of the lake was enclosed in a
wall of mountains which the moonlight seemed to vein with marble. A sky
in which the stars were dissolved in white radiance curved high above
their heads; and not a sail flecked the lake or a cloud the sky. The
boat seemed suspended alone in some ethereal medium.
Presently one of the boatmen spoke to the other and glanced toward the
north. Then the second silently shipped his oar and hoisted the sail.
Hardly had he made it fast when a fresh of wind came down the lake and
they began to stretch across the bay with spreading canvas. The wind was
contrary, but Odo welcomed it, for he saw at once that it would be
quicker work to tack to the other shore than to depend on the oars. The
scene underwent a sudden change. The silver mirror over which they had
appeared to glide was shivered into sparkling fragments, and in the
enveloping rush and murmur of the night the boat woke to a creaking
straining activity.
The man at the rudder suddenly pointed to a huddle of lights to the
south. "Peschiera."
Odo laughed. "We shall soon show it our heels," said he.
The other boatman shrugged his shoulders. "Even an enemy's roof may
serve to keep out the storm," he observed philosophically.
"The storm? What storm?"
The man pointed to the north. Against the sky hung a little black cloud,
the merest flaw in the perfect curve of the night.
"The lake is shrewish at this season," the boatman continued. "Did your
excellencies burn a candle before starting?"
Odo sat silent, his eyes fixed on the cloud. It was growing visibly now.
With every moment its outline seemed to shift and spread, till its black
menace dilated to the zenith. The bright water still broke about them in
diamond spray; but as the shadow travelled the lake beneath it turned to
lead. Then the storm dropped on them. It fell suddenly out of
mid-heaven. Sky and water grew black and a long shudder ran through the
boat. For a moment she hung back, staggering under a white fury of
blows; then the gale seemed to lift and swing her about and she shot
forward through a long tunnel of glistening blackness, bows on for
Peschiera.
"The enemy's roof!" thought Odo. He reached for Fulvia's hand and found
it in the darkness. The rain was driving against them now and he drew
her close and wrapped his cloak about her. She lay still, without a
tremor, as though in that shelter no fears could reach her. The night
roared about them and the waters seemed to divide beneath their keel.
Through the tumult Odo shouted to the boatmen to try to make some
harbour north of Peschiera. They shouted back that they must go where
the wind willed and bless the saints if they made any harbour at all;
and Odo saw that Peschiera was their destiny.
It was past midnight when they set foot on shore. The rain still fell in
torrents and they could hardly grope their way up the steps of the
landing-stage. Odo's first concern was to avoid the inn; but the
boatmen, exhausted by their efforts and impatient to be under shelter,
could not be bribed to seek out at that hour another lodging for the
travellers. Odo dared not expose Fulvia longer to the storm, and
reluctantly they turned toward the inn, trusting that at that hour their
coming would attract little notice.
A travelling-carriage stood in the courtyard, and somewhat to Odo's
surprise the landlord was still afoot. He led them into the public
parlour, which was alight, with a good fire on the hearth. A gentleman
in travelling-dress sat near this fire, his back to the door, reading by
a shaded candle. He rose as the travellers entered, and Odo recognised
the abate de Crucis.
The latter advanced with a smile in which pleasure was more visible than
surprise. He bowed slightly to Fulvia, who had shrunk back into the
shadow of the doorway; then he turned to Odo and said: "Cavaliere, I
have travelled six days to overtake you. The Duke of Pianura is dying
and has named you regent."
3.7.
Odo heard a slight movement behind him. He turned and saw that Fulvia
had vanished. He understood her wish for concealment, but its futility
was written in the glance with which de Crucis followed her flight.
The abate continued to speak in urgent tones. "I implore you," he said,
"to lose no time in accompanying me to Pianura. The situation there is
critical and before now his Highness's death may have placed the reins
in your hands." He glanced at his watch. "If your excellency is not too
tired to set out at once, my horses can be harnessed within the half
hour."
Odo's heart sank. To have let his thoughts dwell on such a possibility
seemed to have done little to prepare him for its realisation. He hardly
understood what de Crucis was saying: he knew only that an hour before
he had fancied himself master of his fate and that now he was again in
bonds. His first clear thought was that nothing should part him from
Fulvia.
De Crucis seemed to read the thought.
"Cavaliere," he said, "at a moment when time is so valuable you will
pardon my directness. You are accompanying to Switzerland a lady who has
placed herself in your charge--"
Odo made no reply, and the other went on in the same firm but courteous
tone: "Foreseeing that it would be difficult for you to leave her so
abruptly I provided myself, in Venice, with a passport which will take
her safely across the border." He drew a paper from his coat. "This,"
said he, handing it to Odo, "is the Papal Nuncio's authorisation to the
Signorina Fulvia Vivaldi, known in religion as Sister Veronica, to
absent herself from Italy for an indefinite period. With this passport
and a good escort your companion will have no difficulty in joining her
friends."
Excess of astonishment kept Odo silent for a moment; and in that moment
he had as it were a fugitive glimpse into the workings of the great
power which still strove for predominance in Italy. A safe-conduct from
the Papal Nuncio to Fulvia Vivaldi was equivalent to her release from
her vows; and this in turn implied that, for the moment, religious
discipline had been frankly sacrificed to the pressure of political
necessities. How the invisible hands made and unmade the destinies of
those who came in their way! How boldly the Church swept aside her own
defences when they obstructed her course! He was conscious, even at the
moment, of all that men like de Crucis had to say in defence of this
higher expediency, this avowed discrimination between the factors in
each fresh combination of circumstances. He had himself felt the complex
wonder of thoughtful minds before the Church's perpetual miracle of
change disguised in immutability; but now he saw only the meaner side of
the game, its elements of cruelty and falseness; and he felt himself no
more than a frail bark on the dark and tossing seas of ecclesiastical
intrigue. For a moment his heart shuddered back from its fate.
"No passport, no safe-conduct," he said at length, "can release me from
my duty to the lady who has placed herself in my care. I shall not leave
her till she has joined her friends."
De Crucis bowed. "This is the answer I expected," he said, not without
sadness.
Odo glanced at him in surprise. The two men, hitherto, had addressed
each other as strangers; but now something in the abate's tone recalled
to Odo the familiarity of their former intercourse, their deep community
of thought, the significance of the days they had spent together in the
monastery of Monte Cassino. The association of ideas brought before him
the profound sense of responsibility with which, at that time, he had
looked forward to such an hour as this.
The abate was watching him gravely.
"Cavaliere," he said, "every instant counts, all you had once hoped to
do for Pianura is now yours to accomplish. But in your absence your
enemies are not idle. His Highness may revoke your appointment at any
hour. Of late I have had his ear, but I have now been near a week
absent, and you know the Duke is not long constant to one
purpose.--Cavaliere," he exclaimed, "I appeal to you not in the name of
the God whom you have come to doubt, but in that of your fellow-men,
whom you have wished to serve."
Odo looked at him, not without a confused sense of the irony of such an
appeal on such lips, yet with the distinct consciousness that it was
uttered in all sincerity, and that, whatever their superficial diversity
of view, he and de Crucis were at one on those deeper questions that
gave the moment its real significance.
"It is impossible," he repeated, "that I should go with you."
De Crucis was again silent, and Odo was aware of the renewed intentness
of his scrutiny. "If the lady--" broke from him once; but he checked
himself and took a turn in the room.
Meanwhile a resolve was slowly forming itself in Odo. He would not be
false to the call which, since his boyhood, had so often made itself
heard before the voice of pleasure and self-interest; but he would at
least reserve the right to obey it in his own fashion and under
conditions which left his private inclination free.
"There may be more than one way of serving one's fellows," he said
quietly. "Go back without me, abate. Tell my cousin that I resign my
rights to the succession. I shall live my own life elsewhere, not
unworthily, I hope, but as a private person."
De Crucis had turned pale. For a moment his habitual self-command seemed
about to fail him; and Odo could not but see that a sincere personal
regret was mingled with the political agent's consciousness of failure.
He himself was chiefly aware of a sense of relief, of self-recovery, as
though he had at last solved a baffling enigma and found himself once
more at one with his fate.
Suddenly he heard a step behind him. Fulvia had re-entered the room. She
had put off her drenched cloak, but the hair lay in damp strands on her
forehead, deepening her pallor and the lines of weariness under her
eyes. She moved across the room, carrying her head high and advancing
tranquilly to Odo's side. Even in that moment of confused emotions he
was struck by the nobility of her gait and gesture.
She turned to de Crucis, and Odo had the immediate intuition that she
had recognised him.
"Will you let me speak a word privately to the cavaliere Valsecca?" she
said.
The other bowed silently and turned away. The door closed on him, and
Odo and Fulvia remained alone. For a moment neither spoke; then she
said: "That was the abate de Crucis?"
He assented.
She looked at him sadly. "You still believe him to be your friend?"
"Yes," he answered frankly, "I still believe him to be my friend, and,
spite of his cloth, the friend of justice and humanity. But he is here
simply as the Duke's agent. He has been for some time the governor of
Prince Ferrante."
"I knew," she murmured, "I knew--"
He went up to her and caught her hands. "Why do we waste our time upon
him?" he exclaimed impatiently. "Nothing matters but that I am free at
last."
She drew back, gently releasing herself. "Free--?"
"My choice is made. I have resigned my right to the succession. I shall
not return to Pianura."
She continued to stare at him, leaning against the chair from which de
Crucis had risen.
"Your choice is made! Your choice is made!" she repeated. "And you have
chosen--"
"You," he said simply. "Will you go to France with me, Fulvia? Will you
be my wife and work with me at a distance for the cause that, in Italy,
we may not serve together? I have never abandoned the aims your father
taught me to strive for; they are dearer, more sacred to me than ever;
but I cannot strive for them alone. I must feel your hand in mine, I
must know that your heart beats with mine, I must hear the voice of
liberty speak to me in your voice--" He broke off suddenly and went up
to her. "All this is nothing," he said. "I love you. I cannot give you
up. That is all."
For a moment, as he spoke, her face shone with an extraordinary light.
She looked at him intently, as one who seemed to gaze beyond and through
him, at some mystic vision that his words evoked. Then the brightness
faded.
"The picture you draw is a beautiful one," she said, speaking slowly, in
sweet deliberate tones, "but it is not for me to look on. What you said
last is not true. If you love me it is because we have thought the same
thoughts, dreamed the same dream, heard the same voice--in each other's
voices, perhaps, as you say, but none the less a real voice, apart from
us and above us, and one which would speak to us as loudly if we were
apart--one which both of us must follow to the end."
He gazed at her eagerly as she spoke; and while he gazed there came to
him, perversely enough, a vision of the life he was renouncing, not as
it concerned the public welfare but in its merely personal aspect: a
vision of the power, the luxury, the sumptuous background of traditional
state and prerogative in which his artistic and intellectual tastes, as
well as his easy impulses of benevolence, would find unchecked and
immediate gratification. It was the first time that he had been aware of
such lurking influences under his most generous aspirations; but even as
Fulvia ceased to speak the vision faded, leaving only an intenser
longing to bend her will to his.
"You are right," he rejoined; "we must follow that voice to the end; but
why not together? Your father himself often questioned whether the
patriot could not serve his people better at a distance than in their
midst. In France, where the new ideas are not only tolerated but put in
practice, we shall be able to study their effects and to learn how they
may best be applied to the relief of our own unhappy people; and as a
private person, independent of party and patronage, could I not do more
than as the nominal head of a narrow priest-ridden government, where
every act and word would be used by my enemies to injure me and the
cause I represent?"
The vigour and rapidity of the attack, and the promptness with which he
converted her argument to his own use, were not without visible effect.
Odo saw his words reflected in the wavering glow of Fulvia's cheek; but
almost at once she regained control of her pulses and faced him with
that serenity which seemed to come to her at such moments.
"What you say might be true," she answered, "were your opportunities
indeed restricted to the regency. But the little prince's life is known
to hang on a thread: at any moment you may be Duke. And you will not
deny that as Duke of Pianura you can serve your people better than as an
obscure pamphleteer in Paris."
Odo made an impatient gesture. "Are you so sure?" he said. "Even as Duke
I must be the puppet of powers greater than myself--of Austria, of Rome,
nay, of the wealthy nobles who will always league themselves with their
sovereign's enemies rather than suffer a hand upon their privileges. And
even if I were fortunate enough to outwit my masters and rule indeed,
over what a toy kingdom should I reign! How small a number would be
benefited! How little the cause would be helped by my example! As an
obscure pamphleteer I might reach the hearts of thousands and speak to
great kings on their thrones; as Duke of Pianura, fighting single-handed
to reform the laws of my little state, I should rank at best with the
other petty sovereigns who are amusing themselves all over Italy with
agricultural experiments and improved methods of cheese-making."
Again the brightness shone in Fulvia's face. "How you love me!" she said
as he paused; and went on, restraining him with a gesture of the
gentlest dignity: "For it is love that speaks thus in you and not
reason; and you know as I do that the duty to which a man is born comes
before any of his own choosing. You are called to serve liberty on a
throne, I in some obscure corner of the private life. We can no more
exchange our duties than our stations; but if our lives divide, our
purpose remains one, and as pious persons recall each other in the
mystery of the Sacrament, so we shall meet in spirit in the new religion
we profess."
Her voice gained strength and measure as she spoke, and Odo felt that
all that passion could urge must spend itself in vain against such high
security of spirit.
"Go, cavaliere," she continued, "I implore you to lose no time in
reaching Pianura. Occasion is short-lived, and an hour's lingering may
cost you the regency, and with it the chance of gaining a hold on your
people. I will not expatiate, as some might, on the power and dignities
that await you. You are no adventurer plotting to steal a throne, but a
soldier pledged to his post." She moved close to him and suddenly caught
his hand and raised it to her lips. "Your excellency," said she, "has
deigned to look for a moment on a poor girl that crossed your path. Now
your eyes must be on your people, who will yet have cause to love and
bless you as she does."
She shone on him with a weeping brightness that dissolved his very soul.
"Ah," he cried, "you have indeed learned your lesson well! I admire with
what stoic calmness you pronounce my doom, with what readiness you
dispose of my future!"
"It is not mine to dispose of," she caught him up, "nor yours; but
belongs, as much as any slave's to his master, to the people you are
called to rule. Think for how many generations their unheeded
sufferings, their unrewarded toil, have paid for the pomp and pleasure
of your house! That is the debt you are called on to acquit, the wrong
you are pledged to set right."
Odo was silent. She had found the unanswerable word. Yes, he was called
on to acquit the accumulated debt of that long unrighteous rule: it was
he who must pay, if need be with the last drop of his blood, for the
savage victories of Bracciaforte, the rapacity of Guidobaldo, the
magnificence of Ascanio, the religious terrors and secret vices of the
poor Duke now nearing his end. All these passions had preyed on the
people, on the tillers and weavers and vine-dressers, obscure servants
of a wasteful greatness: theirs had been the blood that renewed the
exhausted veins of their rulers, through generation after generation of
dumb labour and privation. And the noblest passions, as well as the
basest, had been nourished at the same cost. Every flower in the ducal
gardens, every picture on the palace walls, every honour in the ancient
annals of the house, had been planted, paid for, fought for by the
people. With mute inconscient irony the two powers had faced each other
for generations: the subjects never guessing that their sovereigns were
puppets of their own making, the Dukes that all their pomp and
circumstance were but a borrowed motley. Now the evil wrought in
ignorance remained to be undone in the light of the world's new
knowledge: the discovery of that universal brotherhood which Christ had
long ago proclaimed, and which, after so many centuries, those who
denied Christ were the first to put in practice. Hour by hour, day by
day, at the cost of every personal inclination, of all that endears life
and ennobles failure, Odo must set himself to redeem the credit of his
house. He saw his way straight before him; but in that hour of insight
his heart's instinct of self-preservation made one last effort against
fate.
He turned to Fulvia.
"You are right," he said; "I have no choice. You have shown me the way;
but must I travel it alone? You ask me to give up at a stroke all that
makes life desirable: to set forth, without a backward glance, on the
very road that leads me farthest from you! Yesterday I might have
obeyed; but how can I turn today from this near view of my happiness?"
He paused a moment and she seemed about to answer; but he hurried on
without giving her time. "Fulvia, if you ask this sacrifice of me, is
there none you will make in return? If you bid me go forth and work for
my people, will you not come with me and work for them too?" He
stretched out his hands, in a gesture that seemed to sum up his infinite
need of her, and for a moment they faced each other, silenced by the
nearness of great issues.
She knew well enough what he offered. According to the code of the day
there was no dishonour in the offer and it did not occur to her to
resent it. But she looked at him sadly and he read her refusal in the
look.
"The Regent's mistress?" she said slowly. "The key to the treasury, the
back-door to preferment, the secret trafficker in titles and
appointments? That is what I should stand for--and it is not to such
services that you must even appear to owe your power. I will not say
that I have my own work to do; for the dearest service I could perform
would be to help you in yours. But to do this I must stand aside. To be
near you I must go from you. To love you I must give you up."
She looked him full in the eyes as she spoke; then she went up to him
and kissed him. It was the first kiss she had given him since she had
thrown herself in his arms in her father's garden; but now he felt her
whole being on her lips.
He would have held her fast, forgetting everything in the sweetness of
her surrender; but she drew back quickly and, before he could guess her
intention, throw open the door of the room to which de Crucis had
withdrawn.
"Signor abate!" she said.
The Jesuit came forward. Odo was dimly aware that, for an instant, the
two measured each other; then Fulvia said quietly:
"His excellency goes with you to Pianura."
What more she said, or what de Crucis answered, he could never afterward
recall. He had a confused sense of having cried out a last unavailing
protest, faintly, inarticulately, like a man struggling to make himself
heard in a dream; then the room grew dark about him, and in its stead he
saw the old chapel at Donnaz, with its dimly-gleaming shrine, and heard
the voice of the chaplain, harsh and yet strangely shaken:--"My chief
prayer for you is that, should you be raised to this eminence, it may be
at a moment when such advancement seems to thrust you in the dust."
Odo lifted his head and saw de Crucis standing alone before him.
"I am ready," he said.
BOOK IV.
THE REWARD.
Where are the portraits of those who have perished in spite of their
vows?
4.1.
One bright March day in the year 1783 the bells of Pianura began to ring
at sunrise, and with their first peal the townsfolk were abroad.
The city was already dressed for a festival. A canopy of crimson velvet,
surmounted by the ducal crown and by the "Humilitas" of the Valseccas,
concealed the columns of the Cathedral porch and fell in royal folds
about the featureless porphyry lions who had seen so many successive
rulers ascend the steps between their outstretched paws. The frieze of
ramping and running animals around the ancient baptistery was concealed
by heavy green garlands alternating with religious banners; and every
church and chapel had draped its doorway with crimson and placed above
the image of its patron saint the ducal crown of Pianura.
No less sumptuous was the adornment of the private dwellings. The great
families--the Trescorri, the Belverdi, the Pievepelaghi--had outdone
each other in the display of golden-threaded tapestries and Genoese
velvets emblazoned with armorial bearings; and even the sombre facade of
the Boscofolto palace showed a rich drapery surmounted by the
quarterings of the new Marchioness.
But it was not only the palace-fronts that had put on a holiday dress.
The contagion had spread to the poorer quarters, and in many a narrow
street and crooked lane, where surely no part of the coming pageant
might be expected to pass, the crazy balconies and unglazed windows were
decked out with scraps of finery: a yard or two of velvet filched from
the state hangings of some noble house, a torn and discoloured church
banner, even a cast-off sacque of brocade or a peasant's holiday
kerchief, skilfully draped about the rusty iron and held in place by
pots of clove-pink and sweet basil. The half-ruined palace which had
once housed Gamba and Momola showed a few shreds of colour on its sullen
front, and the abate Crescenti's modest house, wedged in a corner of the
city walls, was dressed like the altar of a Lady Chapel; while even the
tanners' quarter by the river displayed its festoons of coloured paper
and tinsel, ingeniously twisted into the semblance of a crown.
For the new Duke, who was about to enter his capital in state, was
extraordinarily popular with all classes. His popularity, as yet, was
mainly due to a general detestation of the rule he had replaced; but
such a sentiment gives to a new sovereign an impetus which, if he knows
how to use it, will carry him a long way toward success; and among those
in the Duke's confidence it was rumoured that he was qualified not only
to profit by the expectations he had raised but to fulfil them. The last
months of the late Duke's life had plunged the duchy into such political
and financial disorder that all parties were agreed in welcoming a
change. Even those that had most to lose by the accession of the new
sovereign, or most to fear from the policy he was known to favour,
preferred the possibility of new evils to a continuance of present
conditions. The expertest angler in troubled waters may find waters too
troubled for his sport; and under a government where power is passed
from hand to hand like the handkerchief in a children's game, the most
adroit time-server may find himself grasping the empty air.
It would indeed have been difficult to say who had ruled during the year
preceding the Duke's death. Prime ministers had succeeded each other
like the clowns in a harlequinade. Just as the Church seemed to have
gained the upper hand some mysterious revulsion of feeling would fling
the Duke toward Trescorre and the liberals; and when these had
attempted, by some trifling concession to popular feeling, to restore
the credit of the government, their sovereign, seized by religious
scruples, would hastily recall the clerical party. So the administration
staggered on, reeling from one policy to another, clutching now at this
support and now at that, while Austria and the Holy See hung on its
steps, awaiting the inevitable fall.
A cruel winter and a fresh outbreak of the silkworm disease had
aggravated the misery of the people, while the mounting extravagance of
the Duchess had put a last strain on the exhausted treasury. The
consequent increase of the salt-tax roused such popular fury that Father
Ignazio, who was responsible for the measure, was dismissed by the
panic-stricken Duke, and Trescorre, as usual, called in to repair his
rival's mistake. But it would have taken a greater statesman than
Trescorre to reach the root of such evils; and the new minister
succeeded neither in pacifying the people nor in reassuring his
sovereign.
Meanwhile the Duke was sinking under the mysterious disease which had
hung upon him since his birth. It was hinted that his last hours were
darkened by hallucinations, and the pious pictured him as haunted by
profligate visions, while the free-thinkers maintained that he was the
dupe of priestly jugglery. Toward the end there was the inevitable
rumour of acqua tofana, and the populace cried out that the Jesuits were
at work again. It seems more probable, however, that his Highness, who
had assisted at the annual festival of the Madonna del Monte, and had
mingled on foot with the swarm of devotees thronging thither from all
parts, had contracted a pestilent disorder from one of the pilgrims.
Certain it is that death came in a dreadful form. The Duchess, alarmed
for the health of Prince Ferrante, fled with him to the dower-house by
the Piana; and the strange nature of his Highness's distemper caused
many to follow her example. Even the Duke's servants, and the quacks
that lived on his bounty, were said to have abandoned the death-chamber;
and an English traveller passing through Pianura boasted that, by the
payment of a small fee to the palace porter, he had obtained leave to
enter his Highness's closet and peer through the doorway at the dying
man. However this may be, it would appear that the Duke's confessor--a
monk of the Barnabite order--was not to be found when his Highness
called for him; and the servant sent forth in haste to fetch a priest
returned, strangely enough, with the abate Crescenti, whose suspected
orthodoxy had so long made him the object of the Duke's detestation. He
it was who alone witnessed the end of that tormented life, and knew upon
what hopes or fears it closed.
Meanwhile it appeared that the Duchess's precautions were not unfounded;
for Prince Ferrante presently sickened of the same malady which had cut
off his father, and when the Regent, travelling post-haste, arrived in
Pianura, he had barely time to pass from the Duke's obsequies to the
death-bed of the heir.
Etiquette required that a year of mourning should elapse between the
accession of the new sovereign and his state entry into his capital; so
that if Duke Odo's character and intentions were still matter of
conjecture to his subjects, his appearance was already familiar to them.
His youth, his good looks, his open mien, his known affability of
manner, were so many arguments in his favour with an impressionable and
impulsive people; and it was perhaps natural that he should interpret as
a tribute to his principles the sympathy which his person aroused.
It is certain that he fancied himself, at that time, as well-acquainted
with his subjects as they believed themselves to be with him; and the
understanding supposed to exist was productive of equal satisfaction to
both sides. The new Duke had thrown himself with extraordinary zeal into
the task of loving and understanding his people. It had been his refuge
from a hundred doubts and uncertainties, the one clearly-defined object
in an obscure and troubled fate. And their response had, almost
immediately, turned his task into a pleasure. It was so easy to rule if
one's subjects loved one! And so easy to be loved if only one loved
enough in return! If he did not, like the Pope, describe himself to his
people as the servant of the servants of God, he at least longed to make
them feel that this new gospel of service was the base on which all
sovereignty must henceforth repose.
It was not that his first year of power had been without moments of
disillusionment. He had had more than one embittering experience of
intrigue and perfidy, more than one glimpse of the pitfalls besetting
his course; but his confidence in his own powers and his faith in his
people remained unshaken, and with two such beliefs to sustain him it
seemed as though no difficulties would prove insurmountable.
Such at least was the mood in which, on the morning of his entry into
Pianura, he prepared to face his subjects. Strangely enough, the state
entry began at Ponte di Po, the very spot where, on a stormy midnight
some seven years earlier, the new Duke had landed, a fugitive from his
future realm. Here, according to an ancient custom, the sovereign
awaited the arrival of his ministers and court; and then, taking seat in
his state barge, proceeded by water to Pianura, followed by an escort of
galleys.
A great tent hung with tapestries had been set up on the river-bank; and
here Odo awaited the approach of the barge. As it touched at the
landing-stage he stepped out, and his prime minister, Count Trescorre,
advanced toward him, accompanied by the dignitaries of the court.
Trescorre had aged in the intervening years. His delicate features had
withered like a woman's, and the fine irony of his smile had taken an
edge of cruelty. His face suggested a worn engraving, the lines of which
have been deepened by a too-incisive instrument.
The functionaries attending him were, with few exceptions, the same who
had figured in a like capacity at the late sovereign's court. With the
passing of the years they had grown heavier or thinner, more ponderous
or stiffer in their movements, and as they advanced, in their splendid
but unwieldy court dress, they seemed to Odo like superannuated
marionettes whose springs and wires have rusted from disuse.
The barge was a magnificent gilded Bucentaur, presented to the late
Duke's father by the Doge of Venice, and carved by his Serenity's most
famous sculptors in wood. Tritons and sea-goddesses encircled the prow
and throned above the stern, and the interior of the deck-house was
adorned with delicate rilievi and painted by Tiepolo with scenes from
the myth of Amphitrite. Here the new Duke seated himself, surrounded by
his household, and presently the heavy craft, rowed by sixty
galley-slaves, was moving slowly up the river toward Pianura.
In the clear spring light the old walled city, with its domes and
towers, rose pleasantly among budding orchards and fields. Close at hand
were the crenellations of Bracciaforte's keep, and just beyond, the
ornate cupola of the royal chapel, symbolising in their proximity the
successive ambitions of the ducal race; while the round-arched campanile
of the Cathedral and the square tower of the mediaeval town-hall sprang
up side by side, marking the centre of the free city which the Valseccas
had subjugated. It seemed to the new Duke, who was given to such
reflections, that he could read his race's history in that broken
skyline; but he was soon snatched from its perusal by the cheers of the
crowd who thronged the river-bank to greet his approach.
As the Bucentaur touched at the landing-stage and Odo stepped out on the
red carpet strewn with flowers, while cannon thundered from the walls
and the bells burst into renewed jubilation, he felt himself for the
first time face to face with his people. The very ceremonial which in
other cases kept them apart was now a means of closer communication; for
it was to show himself to them that he was making a public entry into
his capital, and it was to see him that the city had poured forth her
shouting throngs. The shouts rose and widened as he advanced, enveloping
him in a mounting tide of welcome, in which cannon, bells and
voices--the decreed and the spontaneous acclamations--were
indistinguishably merged. In like manner, approbation of his person was
mingled with a simple enjoyment of the show of which he formed a part;
and it must have taken a more experienced head than Odo's to distinguish
between the two currents of enthusiasm on which he felt himself swept
forward.
The pageant was indeed brilliant enough to justify the popular
transport; and the fact that the new Duke formed a worthy centre to so
much magnificence was not lost on his splendour-loving subjects. The
late sovereign had so long held himself aloof that the city was
unaccustomed to such shows, and as the procession wound into the square
before the Cathedral, where the thickest of the crowd was massed, the
very pealing of the church-bells was lost in the roar of human voices.
Don Serafino, the Bishop's nephew, and now Master of the Horse, rode
first, on a splendid charger, preceded by four trumpets and followed by
his esquires; then came the court dignitaries, attended by their pages
and staffieri in gala liveries, the marshals with their staves, the
masters of ceremony, and the clergy mounted on mules trapped with
velvet, each led by two running footmen. The Duke rode next, alone and
somewhat pale. Two pages of arms, helmeted and carrying lances, walked
at his horse's bridle; and behind him came his household and ministers,
with their gentlemen and a long train of servants, followed by the
regiment of light horse which closed the procession.
The houses surrounding the square afforded the best point of view to
those unwilling to mix with the crowd in the streets; and among the
spectators thronging the windows and balconies, and leaning over the
edge of the leads, were many who, from one motive or another, felt a
personal interest in the new Duke. The Marchioness of Boscofolto had
accepted a seat in the windows of the Pievepelaghi palace, which formed
an angle of the square, and she and her hostess--the same lady who had
been relieved of her diamond necklace by footpads suspected of wearing
the Duchess's livery--sat observing the scene behind the garlanded
balconies of the piano nobile. In the mezzanin windows of a neighbouring
wine-shop the bookseller Andreoni, with half a dozen members of the
philosophical society to which Odo had belonged, peered above the heads
of the crowd thronging the arcade, and through a dormer of the leads
Carlo Gamba, the assistant in the ducal library, looked out on the
triumph of his former patron. Among the Church dignities grouped about
his Highness was Father Ignazio, the late Duke's confessor, now Prior of
the Dominicans, and said to be withdrawn from political life. Seated on
his richly-trapped mule he observed the scene with impassive face; while
from his place in the long line of minor clergy, the abate Crescenti,
with eyes of infinite tenderness and concern, watched the young Duke
solemnly ascending the Cathedral steps.
In the porch the Bishop waited, impressive as ever in his white and gold
dalmatic, against the red robes of the chapter. Preceded by two
chamberlains Odo mounted the steps amid the sudden silence of the
people. The great bronze portals of the Cathedral, which were never
opened save on occasions of state, swung slowly inward, pouring a wave
of music and incense out upon the hushed sunlit square; then they closed
again, engulphing the brilliant procession--the Duke, the Bishop, the
clergy and the court--and leaving the populace to scatter in search of
the diversions prepared for them at every street-corner.
It was not till late that night that the new Duke found himself alone.
He had withdrawn at last from the torch-lit balcony overlooking the
square, whither the shouts of his subjects had persistently recalled
him. Silence was falling on the illuminated streets, and the dimness of
midnight upon the sky through which rocket after rocket had torn its
brilliant furrows. In the palace a profounder stillness reigned. Since
his accession Odo, out of respect for the late Duke, had lodged in one
of the wings of the great building; but tradition demanded that he
should henceforth inhabit the ducal apartments, and thither, at the
close of the day's ceremonies, his gentlemen had conducted him.
Trescorre had asked permission to wait on him before he slept; and he
knew that the prime minister would be kept late by his conference with
the secret police, whose nightly report could not be handed in till the
festivities were over. Meanwhile Odo was in no mood for sleep. He sat
alone in the closet, still hung with saints' images and jewelled
reliquaries, where his cousin had so often given him audience, and
whence, through the open door, he could see the embroidered curtains and
plumed baldachin of the state bed which was presently to receive him.
All day his heart had beat with high ambitions; but now a weight sank
upon his spirit. The reaction from the tumultuous welcome of the streets
to the closely-guarded silence of the palace made him feel how unreal
was the fancied union between himself and his people, how insuperable
the distance that tradition and habit had placed between them. In the
narrow closet where his predecessor had taken refuge from the detested
task of reigning, the new Duke felt the same moral lassitude steal over
him. How was such a puny will as his to contend against the great forces
of greed and prejudice? All the influences arrayed against
him--tradition, superstition, the lust of power, the arrogance of
race--seemed concentrated in the atmosphere of that silent room, with
its guarded threshold, its pious relics, and lying on the desk in the
embrasure of the window, the manuscript litany which the late Duke had
not lived to complete.
Oppressed by his surroundings, Odo rose and entered the bed-chamber. A
lamp burned before the image of the Madonna at the head of the bed, and
two lighted flambeaux flanked the picture of the Last Judgment on the
opposite wall. Odo remembered the look of terror which the Duke had
fixed on the picture during their first strange conversation. A
praying-stool stood beneath it, and it was said that here, rather than
before the Virgin's image, the melancholy prince performed his private
devotions. The horrors of the scene were depicted with a childish
minuteness of detail, as though the painter had sought to produce an
impression of moral anguish by the accumulation of physical sufferings;
and just such puerile images of the wrath to come may have haunted the
mysterious recesses of the Duke's imagination. Crescenti had told Odo
how the dying man's thoughts had seemed to centre upon this dreadful
subject, and how again and again, amid his ravings, he had cried out
that the picture must be burned, as though the sight of it was become
intolerable to him.
Odo's own mind, across which the events and emotions of the day still
threw the fantastic shadows of an expiring illumination, was wrought to
the highest state of impressionability. He saw in a flash all that the
picture must have symbolised to his cousin's fancy; and in his desire to
reconstruct that dying vision of fleshly retribution, he stepped close
to the diptych, resting a knee on the stool beneath it. As he did so,
the picture suddenly opened, disclosing the inner panel. Odo caught up
one of the flambeaux, and in its light, as on a sunlit wave, there
stepped forth to him the lost Venus of Giorgione.
He knew the picture in an instant. There was no mistaking the glow of
the limbs, the midsummer languor of the smile, the magical atmosphere in
which the gold of sunlight, of autumn leaves, of amber grapes, seemed
fused by some lost alchemy of the brush. As he gazed, the scene changed,
and he saw himself in a darkened room with cabalistic hangings. He saw
Heiligenstern's tall figure, towering in supernatural light, the Duke
leaning eagerly forward, the Duchess with set lips and troubled eyes,
the little prince bent wonderingly above the magic crystal...
A step in the antechamber announced Trescorre's approach. Odo returned
to the cabinet and the minister advanced with a low bow. The two men had
had time to grow accustomed to the new relation in which they stood to
one another, yet there were moments when, to Odo, the past seemed to lie
like fallen leaves beneath Trescorre's steps--Donna Laura, fond and
foolish in her weeds, Gamba, Momola, and the pure featherhead Cerveno,
dying at nineteen of a distemper because he had stood in the other's
way. The impression was strong on him now--but it was only momentary.
Habit reasserted itself, and the minister effaced the man. Odo signed to
Trescorre to seat himself and the latter silently presented his report.
He was a diligent and capable administrator, and however mixed might be
the motives which attached him to his sovereign, they did not interfere
with the exact performance of his duties. Odo knew this and was grateful
for it. He knew that Trescorre, ambitious of the regency, had intrigued
against him to the last. He knew that an intemperate love of power was
the mainspring of that seemingly dispassionate nature. But death had
crossed Trescorre's schemes; and he was too adroit an opportunist not to
see that his best chance now lay in making himself indispensable to his
new sovereign. Of all this Odo was aware; but his own motives in
appointing Trescorre did not justify his looking for great
disinterestedness in his minister. The irony of circumstances had forced
them upon each other, and each knew that the other understood the
situation and was prepared to make the best of it.
The Duke presently rose, and handed back to Trescorre the reports of the
secret police. They were the documents he most disliked to handle.
"You have acquitted yourself admirably of your disagreeable duties," he
said with a smile. "I hope I have done as well. At any rate the day is
over."
Trescorre returned the smile, with his usual tinge of irony. "Another
has already begun," said he.
"Ah," said Odo, with a touch of impatience, "are we not to sleep on our
laurels?"
Trescorre bowed. "Austria, your Highness, never sleeps."
Odo looked at him with surprise. "What do you mean?"
"That I have to remind your Highness--"
"Of what--?"
Trescorre had one of his characteristic pauses.
"That the Duke of Monte Alloro is in failing health--and that her
Highness's year of widowhood ended yesterday."
There was a silence. Odo, who had reseated himself, rose and walked to
the window. The shutters stood open and he looked out over the formless
obscurity of the gardens. Above the intervening masses of foliage the
Borromini wing raised its vague grey bulk. He saw lights in Maria
Clementina's apartments and wondered if she still waked. An hour or two
earlier she had given him her hand in the contra-dance at the state
ball. It was her first public appearance since the late Duke's death,
and with the laying off of her weeds she had regained something of her
former brilliancy. At the moment he had hardly observed her: she had
seemed a mere inanimate part of the pageant of which he formed the
throbbing centre. But now the sense of her nearness pressed upon him.
She seemed close to him, ingrown with his fate; and with the curious
duality of vision that belongs to such moments he beheld her again as
she had first shone on him--the imperious child whom he had angered by
stroking her spaniel, the radiant girl who had welcomed him on his
return to Pianura. Trescorre's voice aroused him.
"At any moment," the minister was saying, "her Highness may fall heir to
Monte Alloro. It is the moment for which Austria waits. There is always
an Archduke ready--and her Highness is still a young woman."
Odo turned slowly from the window. "I have told you that this is
impossible," he murmured.
Trescorre looked down and thoughtfully fingered the documents in his
hands.
"Your Highness," said he, "is as well-acquainted as your ministers with
the difficulties that beset us. Monte Alloro is one of the richest
states in Italy. It is a pity to alienate such revenues from Pianura."
The new Duke was silent. His minister's words were merely the audible
expression of his own thoughts. He knew that the future welfare of
Pianura depended on the annexation of Monte Alloro. He owed it to his
people to unite the two sovereignties.
At length he said: "You are building on an unwarrantable assumption."
Trescorre raised an interrogative glance.
"You assume her Highness's consent."
The minister again paused; and his pause seemed to flash an ironical
light on the poverty of the other's defences.
"I come straight from her Highness," said he quietly, "and I assume
nothing that I am not in a position to affirm."
Odo turned on him with a start. "Do I understand that you have
presumed--?"
His minister raised a deprecating hand. "Sir," said he, "the Archduke's
envoy is in Pianura."
4.2.
Odo, on his return to Pianura, had taken it for granted that de Crucis
would remain in his service.
There had been little talk between the two on the way. The one was deep
in his own wretchedness, and the other had too fine a tact to intrude on
it; but Odo felt the nearness of that penetrating sympathy which was
almost a gift of divination. He was glad to have de Crucis at his side
at a moment when any other companionship had been intolerable; and in
the egotism of his misery he imagined that he could dispose as he
pleased of his friend's future.
After the little Prince's death, however, de Crucis had at once asked
permission to leave Pianura. He was perhaps not displeased by Odo's
expressions of surprise and disappointment; but they did not alter his
decision. He reminded the new Duke that he had been called to Pianura as
governor to the late heir, and that, death having cut short his task, he
had now no farther pretext for remaining.
Odo listened with a strange sense of loneliness. The responsibilities of
his new state weighed heavily on the musing speculative side of his
nature. Face to face with the sudden summons to action, with the
necessity for prompt and not too-curious choice of means and method, he
felt a stealing apathy of the will, an inclination toward the subtle
duality of judgment that had so often weakened and diffused his
energies. At such a crisis it seemed to him that, de Crucis gone, he
remained without a friend. He urged the abate to reconsider his
decision, begging him to choose a post about his person.
De Crucis shook his head.
"The offer," said he, "is more tempting to me than your Highness can
guess; but my business here is at an end, and must be taken up
elsewhere. My calling is that of a pedagogue. When I was summoned to
take charge of Prince Ferrante's education I gave up my position in the
household of Prince Bracciano not only because I believed that I could
make myself more useful in training a future sovereign than the son of a
private nobleman, but also," he added with a smile, "because I was
curious to visit a state of which your Highness had so often spoken, and
because I believed that my residence here might enable me to be of
service to your Highness. In this I was not mistaken; and I will gladly
remain in Pianura long enough to give your Highness such counsels as my
experience suggests; but that business discharged, I must ask leave to
go."
From this position no entreaties could move him; and so fixed was his
resolve that it confirmed the idea that he was still a secret agent of
the Jesuits. Strangely enough, this did not prejudice Odo, who was more
than ever under the spell of de Crucis's personal influence. Though Odo
had been acquainted with many professed philosophers he had never met
among them a character so nearly resembling the old stoical ideal of
temperance and serenity, and he could never be long with de Crucis
without reflecting that the training which could form and nourish so
noble a nature must be other than the world conceived it.
De Crucis, however, frankly pointed out that his former connection with
the Jesuits was too well known in Pianura not to be an obstacle in the
way of his usefulness.
"I own," said he, "that before the late Duke's death I exerted such
influence as I possessed to bring about your Highness's appointment as
regent; but the very connections that favoured me with your predecessor
must stand in the way of my serving your Highness. Nothing could be more
fatal to your prospects than to have it said that you had chosen a
former Jesuit as your advisor. In the present juncture of affairs it is
needful that you should appear to be in sympathy with the liberals, and
that whatever reforms you attempt should seem the result of popular
pressure rather than of your own free choice. Such an attitude may not
flatter the sovereign's pride, and is in fact merely a higher form of
expediency; but it is one which the proudest monarchs of Europe are
finding themselves constrained to take if they would preserve their
power and use it effectually."
Soon afterward de Crucis left Pianura; but before leaving he imparted to
Odo the result of his observations while in the late Duke's service. De
Crucis's view was that of the more thoughtful men of his day who had not
broken with the Church, yet were conscious that the whole social system
of Europe was in need of renovation. The movement of ideas in France,
and their rapid transformation into legislative measures of unforeseen
importance, had as yet made little impression in Italy; and the clergy
in particular lived in serene unconsciousness of any impending change.
De Crucis, however, had been much in France, and had frequented the
French churchmen, who (save in the highest ranks of the hierarchy) were
keenly alive to the need of reform, and ready, in many instances, to
sacrifice their own privileges in the public cause. These men, living in
their provincial cures or abbeys, were necessarily in closer contact
with the people, better acquainted with their needs and more competent
to relieve them, than the city demagogues theorising in Parisian
coffee-houses on the Rights of Man and the Code of Nature. But the voice
of the demagogues carried farther than that of the clergy; and such
revolutionary notions as crossed the Alps had more to do with the
founding of future Utopias than with the remedy of present evils.
Even in France the temperate counsels of the clergy were being overruled
by the sentimental imprudences of the nobles and by the bluster of the
politicians. It was to put Odo on his guard against these two influences
that de Crucis was chiefly anxious; but the intelligent cooperation of
the clergy was sadly lacking in his administrative scheme. He knew that
Odo could not count on the support of the Church party, and that he must
make what use he could of the liberals in his attempts at reform. The
clergy of Pianura had been in power too long to believe in the necessity
of conceding anything to the new spirit; and since the banishment of the
Society of Jesus the presumption of the other orders had increased
instead of diminishing. The priests, whatever their failings, had
attached the needy by a lavish bounty; and they had a powerful auxiliary
in the Madonna of the Mountain, who drew pilgrims from all parts of
Italy and thus contributed to the material welfare of the state as well
as to its spiritual privileges. To the common people their Virgin was
not only a protection against disease and famine, but a kind of oracle,
who by divers signs and tokens gave evidence of divine approval or
displeasure; and it was naturally to the priests that the faithful
looked for a reading of these phenomena. This gave the clergy a powerful
hold on the religious sensibilities of the people; and more than once
the manifest disapproval of the Mountain Madonna had turned the scales
against some economic measure which threatened the rights of her augurs.
De Crucis understood the force of these traditional influences; but Odo,
in common with the more cultivated men of his day, had lived too long in
an atmosphere of polite scepticism to measure the profound hold of
religion on the consciousness of the people. Christ had been so long
banished from the drawing-room that it was has hard to believe that He
still ruled in field and vineyard. To men of Odo's stamp the piety of
the masses was a mere superficial growth, a kind of mental mould to be
dried off by the first beams of knowledge. He did not conceive it as a
habit of thought so old that it had become instinctive, so closely
intertwined with every sense that to hope to eradicate it was like
trying to drain all the blood from a man's body without killing him. He
knew nothing of the unwearied workings of that power, patient as a
natural force, which, to reach spirits darkened by ignorance and eyes
dulled by toil, had stooped to a thousand disguises, humble, tender and
grotesque--peopling the earth with a new race of avenging or protecting
deities, guarding the babe in the cradle and the cattle in the stalls,
blessing the good man's vineyard or blighting the crops of the
blasphemer, guiding the lonely traveller over torrents and precipices,
smoothing the sea and hushing the whirlwind, praying with the mother
over her sick child, and watching beside the dead in plague-house and
lazaret and galley--entering into every joy and grief of the obscurest
consciousness, penetrating to depths of misery which no human compassion
ever reached, and redressing by a prompt and summary justice wrongs of
which no human legislation took account.
Odo's first act after his accession had been to recall the political
offenders banished by his predecessor; and so general was the custom of
marking the opening of a new reign by an amnesty to political exiles,
that Trescorre offered no opposition to the measure. Andreoni and his
friends at once returned to Pianura, and Gamba at the same time emerged
from his mysterious hiding-place. He was the only one of the group who
struck Odo as having any administrative capacity; yet he was more likely
to be of use as a pamphleteer than as an office-holder. As to the other
philosophers, they were what their name implied: thoughtful and
high-minded men, with a generous conception of their civic duties, and a
noble readiness to fulfil them at any cost, but untrained to action, and
totally ignorant of the complex science of government.
Odo found the hunchback changed. He had withered like Trescorre, but
under the harsher blight of physical privations; and his tongue had an
added bitterness. He replied evasively to all enquiries as to what had
become of him during his absence from Pianura; but on Odo's asking for
news of Momola and the child he said coldly: "They are both dead."
"Dead?" Odo exclaimed. "Together?"
"There was scarce an hour between them," Gamba answered. "She said she
must keep alive as long as the boy needed her--after that she turned on
her side and died."
"But of what disorder? How came they to sicken at the same time?"
The hunchback stood silent, his eyes on the ground. Suddenly he raised
them and looked full at the Duke.
"Those that saw them called it the plague."
"The plague? Good God!" Odo slowly returned his stare. "Is it
possible--" he paused--"that she too was at the feast of the Madonna?"
"She was there, but it was not there that she contracted the distemper."
"Not there--?"
"No; for she dragged herself from her bed to go."
There was another silence. The hunchback had lowered his eyes. The Duke
sat motionless, resting his head on his hand. Suddenly he made a gesture
of dismissal...
Two months after his state entry into Pianura Odo married his cousin's
widow.
It surprised him, in looking back, to see how completely the thought of
Maria Clementina had passed out of his life, how wholly he had ceased to
reckon with her as one of the factors in his destiny. At her child's
death-bed he had seen in her only the stricken mother, centred in her
loss, and recalling, in an agony of tears, the little prince's prophetic
vision of the winged playmates who came to him carrying toys from
Paradise. After Prince Ferrante's death she had gone on a long visit to
her uncle of Monte Alloro; and since her return to Pianura she had lived
in the dower-house, refusing Odo's offer of a palace in the town. She
had first shown herself to the public on the day of the state entry; and
now, her year of widowhood over, she was again the consort of a reigning
Duke of Pianura.
No one was more ignorant than her husband of the motives determining her
act. As Duchess of Monte Alloro she might have enjoyed the wealth and
independence which her uncle's death had bestowed on her, but in
marrying again she resigned the right to her new possessions, which
became vested in the crown of Pianura. Was it love that had prompted the
sacrifice? As she stood beside him on the altar steps of the Cathedral,
as she rode home beside him between their shouting subjects, Odo asked
himself the question again and again. The years had dealt lightly with
her, and she had crossed the threshold of the thirties with the assured
step of a woman who has no cause to fear what awaits her. But her blood
no longer spoke her thoughts, and the transparence of youth had changed
to a brilliant density. He could not penetrate beneath the surface of
her smile: she seemed to him like a beautiful toy which might conceal a
lacerating weapon.
Meanwhile between himself and any better understanding of her stood the
remembrance of their talk in the hunting-lodge of Pontesordo. What she
had offered then he had refused to take: was she the woman to forget
such a refusal? Was it not rather to keep its memory alive that she had
married him? Or was she but the flighty girl he had once imagined her,
driven hither and thither by spasmodic impulses, and incapable of
consistent action, whether for good or ill? The barrier of their
past--of all that lay unsaid and undone between them--so completely cut
her off from him that he had, in her presence, the strange sensation of
a man who believes himself to be alone yet feels that he is
watched...The first months of their marriage were oppressed by this
sense of constraint; but gradually habit bridged the distance between
them and he found himself at once nearer to her and less acutely aware
of her. In the second year an heir was born and died; and the hopes and
grief thus shared drew them insensibly into the relation of the ordinary
husband and wife, knitted together at the roots in spite of superficial
divergencies.
In his passionate need of sympathy and counsel Odo longed to make the
most of this enforced community of interests. Already his first zeal was
flagging, his belief in his mission wavering: he needed the
encouragement of a kindred faith. He had no hope of finding in Maria
Clementina that pure passion for justice which seemed to him the noblest
ardour of the soul. He had read it in one woman's eyes, but these had
long been turned from him. Unconsciously perhaps he counted rather on
his wife's less generous qualities: the passion for dominion, the blind
arrogance of temper that, for the mere pleasure of making her power
felt, had so often drawn her into public affairs. Might not this waste
force--which implied, after all, a certain prodigality of courage--be
used for good as well as evil? Might not his influence make of the
undisciplined creature at his side an unconscious instrument in the
great work of order and reconstruction?
His first appeal to her brought the answer. At his request his ministers
had drawn up a plan of financial reorganisation, which should include
the two duchies; for Monte Alloro, though wealthier than Pianura, was in
even greater need of fiscal reform. As a first step towards replenishing
the treasury the Duke had declared himself ready to limit his private
expenditure to a fixed sum; and he now asked the Duchess to pledge
herself in the same manner. Maria Clementina, since her uncle's death,
had been in receipt of a third of the annual revenues of Monte Alloro.
This should have enabled her to pay her debts and put some dignity and
order into her establishment; but the first year's income had gone in
the building of a villa on the Piana, in imitation of the country-seats
along the Brenta; the second was spent in establishing a menagerie of
wild animals like that of the French Queen at Versailles; and rumour had
it that the Duchess carried her imitation of her royal cousin so far as
to be involved in an ugly quarrel with her jewellers about a necklace
for which she owed a thousand ducats.
All these reports had of course reached Odo; but he still hoped that an
appeal to her love of dominion might prove stronger than the habit of
self-indulgence. He said to himself that nothing had ever been done to
rouse her ambition, that hitherto, if she had meddled in politics, it
had been merely from thwarted vanity or the desire to gratify some
personal spite. Now he hoped to take her by higher passions, and by
associating her with his own schemes to utilise her dormant energies.
For the first moments she listened with the strained fixity of a child;
then her attention flickered and died out. The life-long habit of
referring every question to a personal standpoint made it difficult for
her to follow a general argument, and she leaned back with the resigned
eyelids of piety under the pulpit. Odo, resolved to be patient, and
seeing that the subject was too large for her, tried to take it apart,
putting it before her bit by bit, and at such an angle that she should
catch her own reflection in it. He thought to take her by the Austrian
side, touching on the well-known antagonism between Vienna and Rome, on
the reforms of the Tuscan Grand-Duke, on the Emperor Joseph's open
defiance of the Church's feudal claims. But she scented a personal
application.
"My cousin the Emperor should be a priest himself," she shrugged, "for
he belongs to the preaching order. He never goes to France but he gives
the poor Queen such a scolding that her eyes are red for a week. Has
Joseph been trying to set our house in order?"
Discouraged, but more than ever bent on patience, he tried the chord of
vanity, of her love of popularity. The people called her the beautiful
Duchess--why not let history name her the great? But the mention of
history was unfortunate. It reminded her of her lesson-books, and of the
stupid Greeks and Romans, whose dates she could never recall. She hoped
she should never be anything so dull as an historical personage! And
besides, greatness was for the men--it was enough for a princess to be
virtuous. And she looked as edifying as her own epitaph.
He caught this up and tried to make her distinguish between the public
and the private virtues. But the word "responsibility" slipped from him
and he felt her stiffen. This was preaching, and she hated preaching
even more than history. Her attention strayed again and he rallied his
forces in a last appeal. But he knew it was a lost battle: every
argument broke against the close front of her indifference. He was
talking a language she had never learned--it was all as remote from her
as Church Latin. A princess did not need to know Latin. She let her eye
linger suggestively on the clock. It was a fine hunting morning, and she
had meant to kill a stag in the Caccia del Vescovo.
When he began to sum up, and the question narrowed to a direct appeal,
her eyes left the clock and returned to him. Now she was listening. He
pressed on to the matter of retrenchment. Would she join him, would she
help to make the great work possible? At first she seemed hardly to
understand; but as his meaning grew clear to her--"Is the money no
longer ours?" she exclaimed.
He hesitated. "I suppose it is as much ours as ever," he said.
"And how much is that?" she asked impatiently.
"It is ours as a trust for our people."
She stared in honest wonder. These were new signs in her heaven.
"A trust? A trust? I am not sure that I know what that means. Is the
money ours or theirs?"
He hesitated. "In strict honour, it is ours only as long as we spend it
for their benefit."
She turned aside to examine an enamelled patch-box by Van Blarenberghe
which the court jeweller had newly received from Paris. When she raised
her eyes she said: "And if we do not spend it for their benefit--?"
Odo glanced about the room. He looked at the delicate adornment of the
walls, the curtains of Lyons damask, the crystal girandoles, the toys in
porcelain of Saxony and Sevres, in bronze and ivory and Chinese lacquer,
crowding the tables and cabinets of inlaid wood. Overhead floated a rosy
allegory by Luca Giordano; underfoot lay a carpet of the royal
manufactory of France; and through the open windows he heard the plash
of the garden fountains and saw the alignment of the long green alleys
set with the statues of Roman patriots.
"Then," said he--and the words sounded strangely in his own ears--"then
they may take it from us some day--and all this with it, to the very toy
you are playing with."
She rose, and from her fullest height dropped a brilliant smile on him;
then her eyes turned to the portrait of the great fighting Duke set in
the monumental stucchi of the chimney-piece.
"If you take after your ancestors you will know how to defend it," she
said.
4.3.
The new Duke sat in his closet. The walls had been stripped of their
pious relics and lined with books, and above the fireplace hung the
Venus of Giorgione, liberated at last from her long imprisonment. The
windows stood open, admitting the soft September air. Twilight had
fallen on the gardens, and through it a young moon floated above the
cypresses.
On just such an evening three years earlier he had ridden down the slope
of the Monte Baldo with Fulvia Vivaldi at his side. How often, since, he
had relived the incidents of that night! With singular precision they
succeeded each other in his thoughts. He felt the wild sweep of the
storm across the lake, the warmth of her nearness, the sense of her
complete trust in him; then their arrival at the inn, the dazzle of
light as they crossed the threshold, and de Crucis confronting them
within. He heard her voice pleading with him in every accent that pride
and tenderness and a noble loyalty could command; he felt her will
slowly dominating his, like a supernatural power forcing him into his
destined path; he felt--and with how profound an irony of spirit!--the
passion of self-dedication in which he had taken up his task.
He had known moments of happiness since; moments when he believed in
himself and in his calling, and felt himself indeed the man she thought
him. That was in the exaltation of the first months, when his
opportunities had seemed as boundless as his dreams, and he had not yet
learned that the sovereign's power may be a kind of spiritual prison to
the man. Since then, indeed, he had known another kind of happiness, had
been aware of a secret voice whispering within him that she was right
and had chosen wisely for him; but this was when he had realised that he
lived in a prison, and had begun to admire the sumptuous adornment of
its walls. For a while the mere external show of power amused him, and
his imagination was charmed by the historic dignity of his surroundings.
In such a setting, against the background of such a past, it seemed easy
to play the benefactor and friend of the people. His sensibility was
touched by the contrast, and he saw himself as a picturesque figure
linking the new dreams of liberty and equality to the feudal traditions
of a thousand years. But this masquerading soon ceased to divert him.
The round of court ceremonial wearied him, and books and art lost their
fascination. The more he varied his amusements the more monotonous they
became, the more he crowded his life with petty duties the more empty of
achievement it seemed.
At first he had hoped to bury his personal disappointments in the task
of reconstructing his little state; but on every side he felt a mute
resistance to his efforts. The philosophical faction had indeed poured
forth pamphlets celebrating his reforms, and comparing his reign to the
return of the Golden Age. But it was not for the philosophers that he
laboured; and the benefits of free speech, a free press, a secular
education did not, after all, reach those over whom his heart yearned.
It was the people he longed to serve; and the people were hungry, were
fever-stricken, were crushed with tithes and taxes. It was hopeless to
try to reach them by the diffusion of popular knowledge. They must first
be fed and clothed; and before they could be fed and clothed the chains
of feudalism must be broken.
Men like Gamba and Andreoni saw this clearly enough; but it was not from
them that help could come. The nobility and clergy must be coaxed or
coerced into sympathy with the new movement; and to accomplish this
exceeded Odo's powers. In France, the revolt from feudalism had found
some of its boldest leaders in the very class that had most to lose by
the change; but in Italy fewer causes were at work to set such
disinterested passions in motion. South of the Alps liberalism was
merely one of the new fashions from France: the men ran after the
pamphlets from Paris as the women ran after the cosmetics; and the
politics went no deeper than the powder. Even among the freest
intellects liberalism resulted in a new way of thinking rather in a new
way of living. Nowhere among the better classes was there any desire to
attack existing institutions. The Church had never troubled the Latin
consciousness. The Renaissance had taught cultivated Italians how to
live at peace with a creed in which they no longer believed; and their
easy-going scepticism was combined with a traditional conviction that
the priest knew better than any one how to deal with the poor, and that
the clergy were of distinct use in relieving the individual conscience
of its obligation to its fellows.
It was against such deep-seated habits of thought that Odo had to
struggle. Centuries of fierce individualism, or of sullen apathy under a
foreign rule, had left the Italians incapable of any concerted political
action; but suspicion, avarice and vanity, combined with a lurking fear
of the Church, united all parties in a kind of passive opposition to
reform. Thus the Duke's resolve to put the University under lay
direction had excited the enmity of the Barnabites, who had been at its
head since the suppression of the Society of Jesus; his efforts to
partition among the peasantry the Caccia del Vescovo, that great waste
domain of the see of Pianura, had roused a storm of fear among all who
laid claim to feudal rights; and his own personal attempts at
retrenchment, which necessitated the suppression of numerous court
offices, had done more than anything else to increase his unpopularity.
Even the people, in whose behalf these sacrifices were made, looked
askance at his diminished state, and showed a perverse sympathy with the
dispossessed officials who had taken so picturesque a part in the public
ceremonials of the court. All Odo's philosophy could not fortify him
against such disillusionments. He felt the lack of Fulvia's
unquestioning faith not only in the abstract beauty of the new ideals
but in their immediate adaptability to the complex conditions of life.
Only a woman's convictions, nourished on sentiment and self-sacrifice,
could burn with that clear unwavering flame: his own beliefs were at the
mercy of every wind of doubt or ingratitude that blew across his
unsheltered sensibilities.
It was more than a year since he had had news of Fulvia. For a while
they had exchanged letters, and it had been a consolation to tell her of
his struggles and experiments, of his many failures and few results. She
had encouraged him to continue the struggle, had analysed his various
plans of reform, and had given her enthusiastic support to the
partitioning of the Bishop's fief and the secularisation of the
University. Her own life, she said, was too uneventful to write of; but
she spoke of the kindness of her hosts, the Professor and his wife, of
the simple unceremonious way of living in the old Calvinist city, and of
the number of distinguished persons drawn thither by its atmosphere of
intellectual and social freedom.
Odo suspected a certain colourlessness in the life she depicted. The
tone of her letters was too uniformly cheerful not to suggest a lack of
emotional variety; and he knew that Fulvia's nature, however much she
fancied it under the rule of reason, was in reality fed by profound
currents of feeling. Something of her old ardour reappeared when she
wrote of the possibility of publishing her father's book. Her friends in
Geneva, having heard of her difficulty with the Dutch publisher, had
undertaken to vindicate her claims; and they had every hope that the
matter would be successfully concluded. The joy of renewed activity with
which this letter glowed would have communicated itself to Odo had he
received it at a different time; but it came on the day of his marriage,
and since then he had never written to her.
Now he felt a sudden longing to break the silence between them, and
seating himself at his desk he began to write. A moment later there was
a knock on the door and one of his gentlemen entered. The Count Vittorio
Alfieri, with a dozen horses and as many servants, was newly arrived at
the Golden Cross, and desired to know when he might have the honour of
waiting on his Highness.
Odo felt the sudden glow of pleasure that the news of Alfieri's coming
always brought. Here was a friend at last! He forgot the constraint of
their last meeting in Florence, and remembered only the happy
interchange of ideas and emotions that had been one of the quickening
influences of his youth.
Alfieri, in the intervening years, was grown to be one of the foremost
figures in Italy. His love for the Countess of Albany, persisting
through the vicissitudes of her tragic marriage, had rallied the
scattered forces of his nature. Ambitious to excel for her sake, to show
himself worthy of such a love, he had at last shaken off the strange
torpor of his youth, and revealed himself as the poet for whom Italy
waited. In ten months of feverish effort he had poured forth fourteen
tragedies--among them the Antigone, the Virginia, and the Conjuration of
the Pazzi. Italy started up at the sound of a new voice vibrating with
passions she had long since unlearned. Since Filicaja's thrilling appeal
to his enslaved country no poet had challenged the old Roman spirit
which Petrarch had striven to rouse. While the literati were busy
discussing Alfieri's blank verse, while the grammarians wrangled over
his syntax and ridiculed his solecisms, the public, heedless of such
niceties, was glowing with the new wine which he had poured into the old
vessels of classic story. "Liberty" was the cry that rang on the lips of
all his heroes, in accents so new and stirring that his audience never
wearied of its repetition. It was no secret that his stories of ancient
Greece and Rome were but allegories meant to teach the love of freedom;
yet the Antigone had been performed in the private theatre of the
Spanish Ambassador at Rome, the Virginia had been received with applause
on the public boards at Turin, and after the usual difficulties with the
censorship the happy author had actually succeeded in publishing his
plays at Siena. These volumes were already in Odo's hands, and a
manuscript copy of the Odes to Free America was being circulated among
the liberals in Pianura, and had been brought to his notice by Andreoni.
To those hopeful spirits who looked for the near approach of a happier
era, Alfieri was the inspired spokesman of reform, the heaven-sent
prophet who was to lead his country out of bondage. The eyes of the
Italian reformers were fixed with passionate eagerness on the course of
events in England and France. The conclusion of peace between England
and America, recently celebrated in Alfieri's fifth Ode, seemed to the
most sceptical convincing proof that the rights of man were destined to
a speedy triumph throughout the civilised world. It was not of a united
Italy that these enthusiasts dreamed. They were not so much patriots as
philanthropists; for the teachings of Rousseau and his school, while
intensifying the love of man for man, had proportionately weakened the
sense of patriotism, of the interets du clocher. The new man prided
himself on being a citizen of the world, on sympathising as warmly with
the poetic savage of Peru as with his own prosaic and narrow-minded
neighbours. Indeed, the prevalent belief that the savage's mode of life
was much nearer the truth than that of civilised Europeans, made it
appear superfluous to enter into the grievances and difficulties of what
was but a passing phase of human development. To cast off clothes and
codes, and live in a peaceful socialism "under the amiable reign of
Truth and Nature," seemed on the whole much easier than to undertake the
systematic reform of existing abuses.
To such dreamers--whose ideas were those of the majority of intelligent
men in France and Italy--Alfieri's high-sounding tirades embodied the
noblest of political creeds; and even the soberer judgment of statesmen
and men of affairs was captivated by the grandeur of his verse and the
heroic audacity of his theme. For the first time in centuries the
Italian Muse spoke with the voice of a man; and every man's heart in
Italy sprang up at the call.
In the midst of these triumphs, fate in the shape of Cardinal York had
momentarily separated Alfieri from his mistress, despatching the
too-tender Countess to a discreet retreat in Alsace, and signifying to
her turbulent adorer that he was not to follow her. Distracted by this
prohibition, Alfieri had resumed the nomadic habits of his youth, now
wandering from one Italian city to another, now pushing as far as Paris,
which he hated but was always revisiting, now dashing across the Channel
to buy thoroughbreds in England--for his passion for horses was
unabated. He was lately returned from such an expedition, having led his
cavalcade across the Alps in person, with a boyish delight in the
astonishment which this fantastic exploit excited.
The meeting between the two friends was all that Odo could have wished.
Though affecting to scorn the courts of princes, Alfieri was not averse
to showing himself there as the poet of the democracy, and to hearing
his heroes mouth their tyrannicidal speeches on the boards of royal and
ducal stages. He had lately made some stay in Milan, where he had
arrived in time to see his Antigone performed before the vice-regal
court, and to be enthusiastically acclaimed as the high-priest of
liberty by a community living placidly under the Austrian yoke. Alfieri
was not the man to be struck by such incongruities. It was his fate to
formulate creeds in which he had no faith: to recreate the political
ideals of Italy while bitterly opposed to any actual effort at reform,
and to be regarded as the mouthpiece of the Revolution while he
execrated the Revolution with the whole force of his traditional
instincts. As usual he was too deeply engrossed in his own affairs to
feel much interest in any others; but it was enough for Odo to clasp the
hand of the man who had given a voice to the highest aspirations of his
countrymen. The poet gave more than he could expect from the friend; and
he was satisfied to listen to Alfieri's account of his triumphs,
interspersed with bitter diatribes against the public whose applause he
courted, and the Pope to whom, on bended knee, he had offered a copy of
his plays.
Odo eagerly pressed Alfieri to remain in Pianura, offering to put one of
the ducal villas at his disposal, and suggesting that the Virginia
should be performed before the court on the Duchess's birthday.
"It is true," he said, "that we can offer you but an indifferent company
of actors; but it might be possible to obtain one or two of the leading
tragedians from Turin or Milan, so that the principal parts should at
least be worthily filled."
Alfieri replied with a contemptuous gesture. "Your Highness, our leading
tragedians are monkeys trained to dance to the tune of Goldoni and
Metastasio. The best are no better than the worst. We have no tragedians
in Italy because--hitherto--we have had no tragic dramatist." He drew
himself up and thrust a hand in his bosom. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "if I
could see the part of Virginia acted by the lady who recently recited,
before a small company in Milan, my Odes to Free America! There indeed
were fire, sublimity and passion! And the countenance had not lost its
freshness, the eye its lustre. But," he suddenly added, "your Highness
knows of whom I speak. The lady is Fulvia Vivaldi, the daughter of the
philosopher at whose feet we sat in our youth."
Fulvia Vivaldi! Odo raised his head with a start. She had left Geneva
then, had returned to Italy. The Alps no longer divided them--a scant
day's journey would bring him to her side! It was strange how the mere
thought seemed to fill the room with her presence. He felt her in the
quickened beat of his pulses, in the sudden lightness of the air, in a
lifting and widening of the very bounds of thought.
From Alfieri he learned that she had lived for some months in the
household of the distinguished naturalist, Count Castiglione, with whose
daughter's education she was charged. In such surroundings her wit and
learning could not fail to attract the best company of Milan, and she
was become one of the most noted figures of the capital. There had been
some talk of offering her the chair of poetry at the Brera; but the
report of her liberal views had deterred the faculty. Meanwhile the very
fact that she represented the new school of thought gave an added zest
to her conversation in a society which made up for its mild servitude
under the Austrian by much talk of liberalism and independence. The
Signorina Vivaldi became the fashion. The literati celebrated her
scholarship, the sonneteers her eloquence and beauty; and no foreigner
on the grand tour was content to leave Milan without having beheld the
fair prodigy and heard her recite Petrarch's Ode to Italy, or the latest
elegy of Pindamonte.
Odo scarce knew with what feelings he listened. He could not but
acknowledge that such a life was better suited to one of Fulvia's gifts
and ambitions than the humdrum existence of a Swiss town; yet his first
sensation was one of obscure jealousy, of reluctance to think of her as
having definitely broken with the past. He had pictured her as adrift,
like himself, on a dark sea of uncertainties; and to learn that she had
found a safe anchorage was almost to feel himself deserted.
The court was soon busy with preparations for the coming performance. A
celebrated actress from Venice was engaged to play the part of Virginia,
and the rehearsals went rapidly forward under the noble author's
supervision. At last the great day arrived, and for the first time in
the history of the little theatre, operetta and pastoral were replaced
by the buskined Muse of tragedy. The court and all the nobility were
present, and though it was no longer thought becoming for ecclesiastics
to visit the theatre, the easy-going Bishop appeared in a side-box in
company with his chaplains and the Vicar-general.
The performance was brilliantly successful. Frantic applause greeted the
tirades of the young Icilius. Every outburst against the abuse of
privileges and the insolence of the patricians was acclaimed by
ministers and courtiers, and the loudest in approval were the Marquess
Pievepelago, the recognised representative of the clericals, the
Marchioness of Boscofolto, whose harsh enforcement of her feudal rights
was among the bitterest grievances of the peasantry, and the good
Bishop, who had lately roused himself from his habitual indolence to
oppose the threatened annexation of the Caccia del Vescovo. One and all
proclaimed their ardent sympathy with the proletariat, their scorn of
tyranny and extortion in high places; and if the Marchioness, on her
return home, ordered one of her linkmen to be flogged for having trod on
her gown; if Pievepelago the next morning refused to give audience to a
poor devil of a pamphleteer that was come to ask his intercession with
the Holy Office; if the Bishop at the same moment concluded the purchase
of six able-bodied Turks from the galleys of his Serenity the Doge of
Genoa--it is probable that, like the illustrious author of the drama,
all were unconscious of any incongruity between their sentiments and
actions.
As to Odo, seated in the state box, with Maria Clementina at his side,
and the court dignitaries grouped in the background, he had not listened
to a dozen lines before all sense of his surroundings vanished and he
became the passive instrument on which the poet played his mighty
harmonies. All the incidental difficulties of life, all the vacillations
of an unsatisfied spirit, were consumed in that energising emotion which
seemed to leave every faculty stripped for action. Profounder meaning
and more subtle music he had found in the great poets of the past; but
here was an appeal to the immediate needs of the hour, uttered in notes
as thrilling as a trumpet-call, and brought home to every sense by the
vivid imagery of the stage. Once more he felt the old ardour of belief
that Fulvia's nearness had fanned in him. His convictions had flagged
rather than his courage: now they started up as at her summons, and he
heard the ring of her voice in every line.
He left the theatre still vibrating with this new inrush of life, and
jealous of any interruption that should check it. The Duchess's birthday
was being celebrated by illuminations and fireworks, and throngs of
merry-makers filled the moonlit streets; but Odo, after appearing for a
moment at his wife's side on the balcony above the public square,
withdrew quietly to his own apartments. The casement of his closet stood
wide, and he leaned against the window-frame, looking out on the silent
radiance of the gardens. As he stood there he saw two figures flit
across the farther end of one of the long alleys. The moonlight
surrendered them for a moment, the shade almost instantly reclaiming
them--strayed revellers, doubtless, escaping from the lights and music
of the Duchess's circle.
A knock roused the Duke and he remembered that he had bidden Gamba wait
on him after the performance. He had been curious to hear what
impression Alfieri's drama had produced upon the hunchback; but now any
interruption seemed unwelcome, and he turned to Gamba with a gesture of
dismissal.
The latter however remained on the threshold.
"Your Highness," he said, "the bookseller Andreoni craves the privilege
of an audience."
"Andreoni? At this hour?"
"For reasons so urgent that he makes no doubt of your Highness's
consent; and to prove his good faith, and the need of presenting himself
at so undue an hour, and in this private manner, he charged me to give
this to your Highness."
He laid in the Duke's hand a small object in blackened silver, which on
nearer inspection proved to be the ducal coat-of-arms.
Odo stood gazing fixedly at this mysterious token, which seemed to come
as an answer to his inmost thoughts. His heart beat high with confused
hopes and fears, and he could hardly control the voice in which he
answered: "Bid Andreoni come to me."
4.4.
The bookseller began by excusing himself for the liberty he had taken.
He explained that the Signorina Fulvia Vivaldi, in whose behalf he came,
was in urgent need of aid, and had begged him to wait on the Duke as
soon as the court had risen from the play.
"She is in Pianura, then?" Odo exclaimed.
"Since yesterday, your Highness. Three days since she was ordered by the
police to leave Milan within twenty-four hours, and she came at once to
Pianura, knowing that my wife and I would gladly receive her. But today
we learned that the Holy Office was advised of her presence here, and of
the reason of her banishment from Lombardy; and this fresh danger has
forced her to implore your Highness's protection."
Andreoni went on to explain that the publication of her father's book
was the immediate cause of Fulvia's persecution. The Origin of
Civilisation, which had been printed some months previously in
Amsterdam, had stirred Italy more profoundly than any book since
Beccaria's great work on Crime and Punishment. The author's historical
investigations were but a pretext for the development of his political
theories, which were set forth with singular daring and audacity, and
supported by all the arguments that his long study of the past
commanded. The temperate and judicial tone which he had succeeded in
preserving enhanced the effect of his arraignment of Church and state,
and while his immense erudition commended his work to the learned, its
directness of style gave it an immediate popularity with the general
reader. It was an age when every book or pamphlet bearing on the great
question of personal liberty was eagerly devoured by an insatiable
public; and a few weeks after Vivaldi's volume had been smuggled into
Italy it was the talk of every club and coffee-house from Calabria to
Piedmont. The inevitable result soon followed. The Holy Office got wind
of the business, and the book was at once put on the Index. In Naples
and Bologna it was publicly burned, and in Modena a professor of the
University who was found to have a copy in his possession was fined and
removed from his chair.
In Milan, where the strong liberal faction among the nobility, and the
comparative leniency of the Austrian rule, permitted a more unrestrained
discussion of political questions, the Origin of Civilisation was
received with open enthusiasm, and the story of the difficulties that
Fulvia had encountered in its publication made her the heroine of the
moment. She had never concealed her devotion to her father's doctrines,
and in the first glow of filial pride she may have yielded too openly to
the desire to propagate them. Certain it is that she began to be looked
on as having shared in the writing of the book, or as being at least an
active exponent of its principles. Even in Lombardy it was not well to
be too openly associated with the authorship of a condemned book; and
Fulvia was suddenly advised by the police that her presence in Milan was
no longer acceptable to the government.
The news excited great indignation among her friends, and Count
Castiglione and several other gentlemen of rank hastened to intervene in
her behalf; but the governor declared himself unwilling to take issue
with the Holy Office on a doctrinal point, and privately added that it
would be well for the Signorina Vivaldi to withdraw from Lombardy before
the clergy brought any direct charge against her. To ignore this hint
would have been to risk not only her own safety but that of the
gentlemen who had befriended her; and Fulvia at once set out for
Pianura, the only place in Italy where she could count on friendship and
protection.
Andreoni and his wife would gladly have given her a home; but on
learning that the Holy Office was on her track, she had refused to
compromise them by remaining under their roof, and had insisted that
Andreoni should wait on the Duke and obtain a safe-conduct for her that
very night.
Odo listened to this story with an agitation compounded of strangely
contradictory sensations. To learn that Fulvia, at the very moment when
he had pictured her as separated from him by the happiness and security
of her life, was in reality a proscribed wanderer with none but himself
to turn to, filled him with a confused sense of happiness; but the
discovery that, in his own dominions, the political refugee was not safe
from the threats of the Holy Office, excited a different emotion. All
these considerations, however, were subordinate to the thought that he
must see Fulvia at once. It was impossible to summon her to the palace
at that hour, or even to secure her safety till morning, without
compromising Andreoni by calling attention to the fact that a suspected
person was under his roof; and for a moment Odo was at a loss how to
detain her in Pianura without seeming to go counter to her wishes.
Suddenly he remembered that Gamba was fertile in expedients, and calling
in the hunchback, asked what plan he could devise. Gamba, after a
moment's reflection, drew a key from his pocket.
"May it please your Highness," he said, "this unlocks the door of the
hunting-lodge at Pontesordo. The place has been deserted these many
years, because of its bad name, and I have more than once found it a
convenient shelter when I had reasons for wishing to be private. At this
season there is no fear of poison from the marshes, and if your Highness
desires I will see that the lady finds her way there before sunrise."
The sun had hardly risen the next morning when the Duke himself set
forth. He rode alone, dressed like one of his own esquires, and gave the
word unremarked to the sleepy sentinel at the gate. As it closed behind
him and he set out down the long road that led to the chase, it seemed
to him that the morning solitude was thronged with spectral memories.
Melancholy and fanciful they flitted before him, now in the guise of
Cerveno and Momola, now of Maria Clementina and himself. Every detail of
the scene was interwoven with the fibres of early association, from the
far off years when, as a lonely child on the farm at Pontesordo, he had
gazed across the marsh at the mysterious woodlands of the chase, to the
later day when, in the deserted hunting-lodge, the Duchess had flung her
whip at the face in the Venice mirror.
He pressed forward impatiently, and presently the lodge rose before him
in its grassy solitude. The level sunbeams had not yet penetrated the
surrounding palisade of boughs, and the house lay in a chill twilight
that seemed an emanation from its mouldering walls. As Odo approached,
Gamba appeared from the shadow and took his horse; and the next moment
he had pushed open the door, and stood in Fulvia's presence.
She was seated at the farther end of the room, and as she rose to meet
him it chanced that her head, enveloped in its black travelling-hood,
was relieved for a moment against the tarnished background of the broken
mirror. The impression struck a chill to his heart; but it was replaced
by a glow of boyish happiness as their eyes met and he felt her hands in
his.
For a moment all his thoughts were lost in the mere sense of her
nearness. She seemed simply an enveloping atmosphere in which he drew
fresh breath; but gradually her outline emerged from this haze of
feeling, and he found himself looking at her with the wondering gaze of
a stranger. She had been a girl of sixteen when they first met. Twelve
years had passed since then, and she was now a woman of twenty-eight,
belonging to a race in which beauty ripens early and as soon declines.
But some happy property of nature--whether the rare mould of her
features or the gift of the spirit that informed them--had held her
loveliness intact, preserving the clear lines of youth after its bloom
was gone, and making her seem like a lover's memory of herself. So she
appeared at first, a bright imponderable presence gliding toward him out
of the past; but as her hands lay in his the warm current of life was
renewed between them, and the woman dispossessed the shade.
4.5.
Unpublished fragment from Mr. Arthur Young's diary of his travels in
Italy in the year 1789.
October 1st.
Having agreed with a vetturino to carry me to Pianura, set out this
morning from Mantua. The country mostly arable, with rows of elm and
maple pollard. Dined at Casal Maggiore, in an infamous filthy inn. At
dinner was joined by a gentleman who had taken the other seat in the
vettura as far as Pianura. We engaged in conversation and I found him a
man of lively intelligence and the most polished address. Though dressed
in the foreign style, en abbe, he spoke English with as much fluency as
myself, and but for the philosophical tone of his remarks I had taken
him for an ecclesiastic. Altogether a striking and somewhat perplexing
character: able, keen, intelligent, evidently used to the best company,
yet acquainted with the condition of the people, the methods of farming,
and other economical subjects such as are seldom thought worthy of
attention among Italians of quality.
It appeared he was newly from France, where he had been as much struck
as myself by the general state of ferment. Though owning that there was
much reason for discontent, and that the conduct of the court and
ministers was blind and infatuated beyond belief, he yet declared
himself gravely apprehensive of the future, saying that the people knew
not what they wanted, and were unwilling to listen to those that might
have proved their best advisors. Whether by this he meant the clergy I
know not; though I observed he spoke favourably of that body in France,
pointing out that, long before the recent agitations, they had defended
the civil rights of the Third Estate, and citing many cases in which the
country curates had shown themselves the truest friends of the people: a
fact my own observation hath confirmed.
I remarked to him that I was surprised to find how little talk there was
in Italy of the distracted conditions in France; and this though the
country is overrun with French refugees, or emigres, as they call
themselves, who bring with them reports that might well excite the alarm
of neighbouring governments. He said he had remarked the same
indifference, but that this was consonant with the Italian character,
which never looked to the morrow; and he added that the mild disposition
of the people, and their profound respect for religion, were sufficient
assurance against any political excess.
To this I could not forbear replying that I could not regard as excesses
the just protests of the poor against the unlawful tyranny of the
privileged classes, nor forbear to hail with joy the dawn of that light
of freedom which hath already shed so sublime an effulgence on the wilds
of the New World. The abate took this in good part, though I could see
he was not wholly of my way of thinking; but he declared that in his
opinion different races needed different laws, and that the sturdy and
temperate American colonists were fitted to enjoy a greater measure of
political freedom than the more volatile French and Italians--as though
liberty were not destined by the Creator to be equally shared by all
mankind! (Footnote: I let this passage stand, though the late unhappy
events in France have, alas! proved that my friend the abate was nearer
right than myself. June, 1794.)
In the afternoon through a poor country to Ponte di Po, a miserable
village on the borders of the duchy, where we lay, not slept, in our
clothes, at the worst inn I have yet encountered. Here our luggage was
plumbed for Pianura. The impertinence of the petty sovereigns to
travellers in Italy is often intolerable, and the customs officers show
the utmost insolence in the search for seditious pamphlets and other
contraband articles; but here I was agreeably surprised by the courtesy
of the officials and the despatch with which our luggage was examined.
On my remarking this, my companion replied that the Duke of Pianura was
a man of liberal views, anxious to encourage foreigners to visit his
state, and the last to put petty obstacles in the way of travel. I
answered, this was the report I had heard of him; and it was in the hope
of learning something more of the reforms he was said to have effected,
that I had turned aside to visit the duchy. My companion replied that
his Highness had in fact introduced some innovations in the government;
but that changes which seemed the most beneficial in one direction often
worked mischief in another, so that the wisest ruler was perhaps not he
that did the greatest amount of good, but he that was cause of the
fewest evils.
The 2nd.
From Ponte di Po to Pianura the most convenient way is by water; but the
river Piana being greatly swollen by the late rains, my friend, who
seems well-acquainted with the country, proposed driving thither: a
suggestion I readily accepted, as it gave me a good opportunity to study
the roads and farms of the duchy.
Crossing the Piana, drove near four hours over horrible roads across
waste land, thinly wooded, without houses or cultivation. On my
expressing surprise that the territory of so enlightened a prince would
lie thus neglected, the abate said this land was a fief of the see of
Pianura, and that the Duke was desirous of annexing it to the duchy. I
asked if it were true that his Highness had given his people a
constitution modelled on that of the Duke of Tuscany. He said he had
heard the report; but that for his part he must deplore any measure
tending to debar the clergy from the possession of land. Seeing my
surprise, he explained that, in Italy at least, the religious orders
were far better landlords than the great nobles or the petty sovereigns,
who, being for the most part absent from their estates, left their
peasantry to be pillaged by rapacious middlemen and stewards: an
argument I have heard advanced by other travellers, and have myself had
frequent occasion to corroborate.
On leaving the Bishop's domain, remarked an improvement in the roads.
Flat land, well irrigated, and divided as usual into small holdings. The
pernicious metayer system exists everywhere, but I am told the Duke is
opposed to it, though it is upheld not only by the landed class, but by
the numerous economists that write on agriculture from their closets,
but would doubtless be sorely puzzled to distinguish a beet-root from a
turnip.
The 3rd.
Set out early to visit Pianura. The city clean and well-kept. The Duke
has introduced street-lamps, such as are used in Turin, and the pavement
is remarkably fair and even. Few beggars are to be seen and the people
have a thriving look. Visited the Cathedral and Baptistery, in the
Gothic style, more curious than beautiful; also the Duke's picture
gallery.
Learning that the Duchess was to ride out in the afternoon, had the
curiosity to walk abroad to see her. A good view of her as she left the
palace. Though no longer in her first youth she is one of the handsomest
women I have seen. Remarked a decided likeness to the Queen of France,
though the eye and smile are less engaging. The people in the streets
received her sullenly, and I am told her debts and disorders are the
scandal of the town. She has, of course, her cicisbeo, and the Duke is
the devoted slave of a learned lady, who is said to exert an unlimited
influence over him, and to have done much to better the condition of the
people. A new part for a prince's mistress to play!
In the evening to the theatre, a handsome building, well-lit with wax,
where Cimarosa's Due Baroni was agreeably sung.
The 4th.
My lord Hervey, in Florence, having favoured me with a letter to Count
Trescorre, the Duke's prime minister, I waited on that gentleman
yesterday. His excellency received me politely and assured me that he
knew me by reputation and would do all he could to put me in the way of
investigating the agricultural conditions of the duchy. Contrary to the
Italian custom, he invited me to dine with him the next day. As a rule
these great nobles do not open their doors to foreigners, however well
recommended.
Visited, by appointment, the press of the celebrated Andreoni, who was
banished during the late Duke's reign for suspected liberal tendencies,
but is now restored to favour and placed at the head of the Royal
Typography. Signor Andreoni received me with every mark of esteem, and
after having shown me some of the finest examples of his work--such as
the Pindar, the Lucretius and the Dante--accompanied me to a
neighbouring coffee-house, where I was introduced to several lovers of
agriculture. Here I learned some particulars of the Duke's attempted
reforms. He has undertaken the work of draining the vast marsh of
Pontesordo, to the west of the city, notorious for its mal'aria; has
renounced the monopoly of corn and tobacco; has taken the University out
of the hands of the Barnabites, and introduced the teaching of the
physical sciences, formerly prohibited by the Church; has spent since
his accession near 200,000 liv. on improving the roads throughout the
duchy, and is now engaged in framing a constitution which shall deprive
the clergy of the greatest part of their privileges and confirm the
sovereign's right to annex ecclesiastical territory for the benefit of
the people.
In spite of these radical measures, his Highness is not popular with the
masses. He is accused of irreligion by the monks that he has removed
from the University, and his mistress, the daughter of a noted
free-thinker who was driven from Piedmont by the Inquisition, is said to
have an unholy influence over him. I am told these rumours are
diligently fomented by the late Duke's minister, now Prior of the
Dominican monastery, a man of bigoted views but great astuteness. The
truth is, the people are so completely under the influence of the friars
that a word is enough to turn them against their truest benefactors.
In the afternoon I was setting out to visit the Bishop's gallery when
Count Trescorre's secretary waited on me with an invitation to inspect
the estates of the Marchioness of Boscofolto: an offer I readily
accepted--for what are the masterpieces of Raphael or Cleomenes to the
sight of a good turnip field or of a well-kept dairy?
I had heard of Boscofolto, which was given by the late Duke to his
mistress, as one of the most productive estates of the duchy; but great
was my disappointment on beholding it. Fine gardens there are, to be
sure, clipt walks, leaden statues, and water-works; but as for the
farms, all is dirt, neglect, disorder. Spite of the lady's wealth, all
are let out alla meta, and farmed on principles that would disgrace a
savage. The spade used instead of the plough, the hedges neglected,
mole-casts in the pastures, good land run to waste, the peasants
starving and indebted--where, with a little thrift and humanity, all had
been smiling plenty! Learned that on the owner's death this great
property reverts to the Barnabites.
From Boscofolto to the church of the Madonna del Monte, where is one of
their wonder-working images, said to be annually visited by close on
thirty thousand pilgrims; but there is always some exaggeration in such
figures. A fine building, richly adorned, and hung with an extraordinary
number of votive offerings: silver arms, legs, hearts, wax images, and
paintings. Some of these latter are clearly the work of village artists,
and depict the miraculous escape of the peasantry from various
calamities, and the preservation of their crops from floods, drought,
lightning and so forth. These poor wretches had done more to better
their crops by spending their savings in good ploughshares and harrows
than by hanging gew-gaws on a wooden idol.
The Rector received us civilly and showed us the treasury, full of
jewels and costly plate, and the buildings where the pilgrims are
lodged. Learned that the Giubileo or centenary festival of the Madonna
is shortly to be celebrated with great pomp. The poorer classes delight
in these ceremonies, and I am told this is to surpass all previous ones,
the clergy intending to work on the superstitions of the people and thus
turn them against the new charter. It is said the Duke hopes to
counteract these designs by offering a jewelled diadem to the Virgin;
but this will no doubt do him a bad turn with the esprits libres. These
little states are as full of intrigues as a foul fruit of maggots.
The 5th.
To dinner at Count Trescorre's where, as usual, I was the
plainest-dressed man in the company. Have long since ceased to be
concerned by this: why should a mere English farmer compete in elegance
with these Monsignori and Illustrissimi? Surprised to find among the
company my travelling-companion of the other day. Learned that he is the
abate de Crucis, a personal friend of the Duke's. He greeted me
cordially, and on hearing my name, said that he was acquainted with my
works in the translation of Mons. Freville, and now understood how it
was that I had got the better of him in our farming disputations on the
way hither.
Was surprised to be told by Count Trescorre that the Duke desired me to
wait on him that evening. Though in general not ambitious of such
honours, yet in this case nothing could be more gratifying.
The 6th.
Yesterday evening to the palace, where his Highness received me with
great affability. He was in his private apartments, with the abate de
Crucis and several other learned men; among them the famous abate
Crescenti, librarian to his Highness and author of the celebrated
Chronicles of the Italian States. Happy indeed is the prince who
surrounds himself with scholars instead of courtiers! Yet I cannot say
that the impression his Highness produced on me was one of HAPPINESS.
His countenance is sad, almost careworn, though with a smile of engaging
sweetness; his manner affable without condescension, and open without
familiarity. I am told he is oppressed by the cares of his station; and
from a certain irresolution of voice and eye, that bespeaks not so much
weakness as a speculative cast of mind, I can believe him less fitted
for active government than for the meditations of the closet. He
appears, however, zealous to perform his duties; questioned me eagerly
about my impressions of Italy, and showed a flattering familiarity with
my works, and a desire to profit by what he was pleased to call my
exceptional knowledge of agriculture. I thought I perceived in him a
sincere wish to study the welfare of his people; but was disappointed to
find among his chosen associates not one practical farmer or economist,
but only the usual closet-theorists that are too busy planning Utopias
to think of planting turnips.
The 7th.
Visited his Highness's estate at Valsecca. Here he has converted a
handsome seat into a school of agriculture, tearing down an immense
orangery to plant mulberries, and replacing costly gardens and statuary
by well-tilled fields: a good example to his wealthy subjects.
Unfortunately his bailiff is not what we should call a practical farmer;
and many acres of valuable ground are given up to a botanic garden,
where exotic plants are grown at great expense, and rather for curiosity
than use: a common error of noble agriculturists.
In the afternoon with the abate de Crucis to the Benedictine monastery,
a league beyond the city. Here I saw the best farming in the duchy. The
Prior received us politely and conversed with intelligence on drainage,
crops and irrigation. I urged on him the cultivation of turnips and he
appeared struck by my arguments. The tenants on this great estate
appeared better housed and fed than any I have seen in Pianura. The
monks have a school of agriculture, less pretentious but better-managed
than the Duke's. Some of them study physics and chemistry, and there are
good chirurgeons among them, who care for the poor without pay. The aged
and infirm peasants are housed in a neat almshouse, and the sick nursed
in a clean well-built lazaret. Altogether an agreeable picture of rural
prosperity, though I had rather it had been the result of FREE LABOUR
than of MONASTIC BOUNTY.
The 8th.
By appointment, to the Duke's Egeria. This lady, the Signorina F.V.,
having heard that I was in Pianura, had desired the Signor Andreoni to
bring me to her.
I had expected a female of the loud declamatory type: something of the
Corilla Olimpica order; but in this was agreeably disappointed. The
Signorina V. is modestly lodged, lives in the frugal style of the middle
class, and refuses to accept a title, though she is thus debarred from
going to court. Were it not indiscreet to speculate on a lady's age, I
should put hers at somewhat above thirty. Though without the Duchess's
commanding elegance she has, I believe, more beauty of a quiet sort: a
countenance at once soft and animated, agreeably tinged with melancholy,
yet lit up by the incessant play of thought and emotion that succeed
each other in her talk. Better conversation I never heard; and can
heartily confirm the assurances of those who had told me that the lady
was as agreeable in discourse as learned in the closet. (Footnote: It
has before now been observed that the FREE and VOLATILE manners of
foreign ladies tend to blind the English traveller to the inferiority of
their PHYSICAL charms. Note by a Female Friend of the Author.)
On entering, found a numerous company assembled to compliment my hostess
on her recent appointment as doctor of the University. This is an honour
not uncommonly conferred in Italy, where female learning, perhaps from
its rarity, is highly esteemed; but I am told the ladies thus
distinguished seldom speak in public, though their degree entitles them
to a chair in the University. In the Signorina V.'s society I found the
most advanced reformers of the duchy: among others Signor Gamba, the
famous pamphleteer, author of a remarkable treatise on taxation, which
had nearly cost him his liberty under the late Duke's reign. He is a man
of extreme views and sarcastic tongue, with an irritability of manner
that is perhaps the result of bodily infirmities. His ideas, I am told,
have much weight with the fair doctoress; and in the lampoons of the day
the new constitution is said to be the offspring of their amours, and to
have inherited its father's deformity.
The company presently withdrawing, my hostess pressed me to remain. She
was eager for news from France, spoke admiringly of the new
constitution, and recited in a moving manner an Ode of her own
composition on the Fall of the Bastille. Though living so retired she
makes no secret of her connection with the Duke; said he had told her of
his conversation with me, and asked what I thought of his plan for
draining the marsh of Pontesordo. On my attempting to reply to this in
detail, I saw that, like some of the most accomplished of her sex, she
was impatient of minutiae, and preferred general ideas to particular
instances; but when the talk turned on the rights of the people I was
struck by the energy and justice of her remarks, and by a tone of
resolution and courage that made me to say to myself: "Here is the hand
that rules the state."
She questioned me earnestly about the state of affairs in France, begged
me to lend her what pamphlets I could procure, and while making no
secret of her republican sympathies, expressed herself with a moderation
not always found in her sex. Of the clergy alone she appeared
intolerant: a fact hardly to be wondered at, considering the persecution
to which she and her father have been subjected. She detained me near
two hours in such discourse, and on my taking leave asked with some show
of feeling what I, as a practical economist, would advise the Duke to do
for the benefit of his people; to which I replied, "Plant turnips,
madam!" and she laughed heartily, and said no doubt I was right. But I
fear all the heads here are too full of fine theories to condescend to
such simple improvements...
4.6.
Fulvia, in the twilight, sat awaiting the Duke.
The room in which she sat looked out on a stone-flagged cloister
enclosing a plot of ground planted with yews; and at the farther end of
this cloister a door communicated by a covered way with the ducal
gardens. The house had formed a part of the convent of the Perpetual
Adoration, which had been sold by the nuns when they moved to the new
buildings the late Duke had given them. A portion had been torn down to
make way for the Marquess of Cerveno's palace, and in the remaining
fragment, a low building wedged between high walls, Fulvia had found a
lodging. Her whole dwelling consisted of the Abbess's parlour, in which
she now sat, and the two or three adjoining cells. The tall presses in
the parlour had been filled with her father's books, and surmounted by
his globes and other scientific instruments. But for this the apartment
remained as unadorned as in her predecessor's day; and Fulvia, in her
austere black gown, with a lawn kerchief folded over her breast, and the
unpowdered hair drawn back from her pale face, might herself have passed
for the head of a religious community.
She cultivated with almost morbid care this severity of dress and
surroundings. There were moments when she could hardly tolerate the pale
autumnal beauty which her glass reflected, when even this phantom of
youth and radiance became a stumbling-block to her spiritual pride. She
was not ashamed of being the Duke of Pianura's mistress; but she had a
horror of being thought like the mistresses of other princes. She
loathed all that the position represented in men's minds; she had
refused all that, according to the conventions of the day, it entitled
her to claim: wealth, patronage, and the rank and estates which it was
customary for the sovereign to confer. She had taken nothing from Odo
but his love, and the little house in which he had lodged her.
Three years had passed since Fulvia's flight to Pianura. From the moment
when she and Odo had stood face to face again, it had been clear to him
that he could never give her up, to her that she could never leave him.
Fate seemed to have thrown them together in derision of their long
struggle, and both felt that lassitude of the will which is the reaction
from vain endeavour. The discovery that he needed her, that the task for
which he had given her up could after all not be accomplished without
her, served to overcome her last resistance. If the end for which both
strove could best be attained together--if he needed the aid of her
unfaltering faith as much as she needed that of his wealth and
power--why should any personal scruple stand between them? Why should
she who had given all else to the cause--ease, fortune, safety, and even
the happiness that lay in her hand--hesitate to make the final sacrifice
of a private ideal? According to the standards of her day there was no
dishonour to a woman in being the mistress of a man whose rank forbade
his marrying her: the dishonour lay in the conduct which had come to be
associated with such relations. Under the old dispensation the influence
of the prince's mistress had stood for the last excesses of moral and
political corruption; why might it not, under the new law, come to
represent as unlimited a power for good?
So love, the casuist, argued; and during those first months, when
happiness seemed at last its own justification, Fulvia lived in every
fibre. But always, even then, she was on the defensive against that
higher tribunal which her own conception of life had created. In spite
of herself she was a child of the new era, of the universal reaction
against the falseness and egotism of the old social code. A standard of
conduct regulated by the needs of the race rather than by individual
passion, a conception of each existence as a link in the great chain of
human endeavour, had slowly shaped itself out of the wild theories and
vague "codes" of the eighteenth-century moralists; and with this sense
of the sacramental nature of human ties, came a renewed reverence for
moral and physical purity.
Fulvia was of those who require that their lives shall be an affirmation
of themselves; and the lack of inner harmony drove her to seek some
outward expression of her ideals. She threw herself with renewed passion
into the political struggle. The best, the only justification of her
power, was to use it boldly, openly, for the good of the people. All the
repressed forces of her nature were poured into this single channel. She
had no desire to conceal her situation, to disguise her influence over
Odo. She wished it rather to be so visible a factor in his relations
with his people that she should come to be regarded as the ultimate
pledge of his good faith. But, like all the casuistical virtues, this
position had the rigidity of something created to fit a special case;
and the result was a fixity of attitude, which spread benumbingly over
her whole nature. She was conscious of the change, yet dared not
struggle against it, since to do so was to confess the weakness of her
case. She had chosen to be regarded as a symbol rather than a woman, and
there were moments when she felt as isolated from life as some marble
allegory in its niche above the market-place.
It was the desire to associate herself with the Duke's public life that
had induced her, after much hesitation, to accept the degree which the
University had conferred on her. She had shared eagerly in the work of
reconstructing the University, and had been the means of drawing to
Pianura several teachers of distinction from Padua and Pavia. It was her
dream to build up a seat of learning which should attract students from
all parts of Italy; and though many young men of good family had
withdrawn from the classes when the Barnabites were dispossessed, she
was confident that they would soon be replaced by scholars from other
states. She was resolved to identify herself openly with the educational
reform which seemed to her one of the most important steps toward civic
emancipation; and she had therefore acceded to the request of the
faculty that, on receiving her degree, she should sustain a thesis
before the University. This ceremony was to take place a few days hence,
on the Duke's birthday; and, as the new charter was to be proclaimed on
the same day, Fulvia had chosen as the subject of her discourse the
Constitution recently promulgated in France.
She pushed aside the bundle of political pamphlets which she had been
studying, and sat looking out at the strip of garden beyond the arches
of the cloister. The narrow horizon bounded by convent walls symbolised
fitly enough the life she had chosen to lead: a life of artificial
restraints and renunciations, passive, conventual almost, in which even
the central point of her love burned, now, with a calm devotional glow.
The door in the cloister opened and the Duke crossed the garden. He
walked slowly, with the listless step she had observed in him of late;
and as he entered she saw that he looked pale and weary.
"You have been at work again," she said. "A cabinet-meeting?"
"Yes," he answered, sinking into the Abbess's high carved chair.
He glanced musingly about the dim room, in which the shadow of the
cloister made an early dusk. Its atmosphere of monastic calm, of which
the significance did not escape him, fell soothingly on his spirit. It
simplified his relation to Fulvia by tacitly restricting it within the
bounds of a tranquil tenderness. Any other setting would have seemed
less in harmony with their fate.
Better, perhaps, than Fulvia, he knew what ailed them both. Happiness
had come to them, but it had come too late; it had come tinged with
disloyalty to their early ideals; it had come when delay and
disillusionment had imperceptibly weakened the springs of passion. For
it is the saddest thing about sorrow that it deadens the capacity for
happiness; and to Fulvia and Odo the joy they had renounced had returned
with an exile's alien face.
Seeing that he remained silent, she rose and lit the shaded lamp on the
table. He watched her as she moved across the room. Her step had lost
none of its flowing grace, of that harmonious impetus which years ago
had drawn his boyish fancy in its wake. As she bent above the lamp, the
circle of light threw her face into relief against the deepening shadows
of the room. She had changed, indeed, but as those change in whom the
springs of life are clear and abundant: it was a development rather than
a diminution. The old purity of outline remained; and deep below the
surface, but still visible sometimes to his lessening insight, the old
girlish spirit, radiant, tender and impetuous, stirred for a moment in
her eyes.
The lamplight fell on the pamphlets she had pushed aside. Odo picked one
up. "What are these?" he asked.
"They were sent to me by the English traveller whom Andreoni brought
here."
He turned a few pages. "The old story," he said. "Do you never weary of
it?"
"An old story?" she exclaimed. "I thought it had been the newest in the
world. Is it not being written, chapter by chapter, before our very
eyes?"
Odo laid the treatise aside. "Are you never afraid to turn the next
page?" he asked.
"Afraid? Afraid of what?"
"That it may be written in blood."
She uttered a quick exclamation; then her face hardened, and she said in
a low tone: "De Crucis has been with you."
He made the half-resigned, half-impatient gesture of the man who feels
himself drawn into a familiar argument from which there is no issue.
"He left yesterday for Germany."
"He was here too long!" she said, with an uncontrollable escape of
bitterness.
Odo sighed. "If you would but let me bring him to you, you would see
that his influence over me is not what you think it."
She was silent a moment; then she said: "You are tired tonight. Let us
not talk of these things."
"As you please," he answered, with an air of relief; and she rose and
went to the harpsichord.
She played softly, with a veiled touch, gliding from one crepuscular
melody to another, till the room was filled with drifts of sound that
seemed like the voice of its own shadows. There had been times when he
could have yielded himself to this languid tide of music, letting it
loosen the ties of thought till he floated out into the soothing dimness
of sensation; but now the present held him. To Fulvia, too, he knew the
music was but a forced interlude, a mechanical refuge from thought. She
had deliberately narrowed their intercourse to one central idea; and it
was her punishment that silence had come to be merely an intensified
expression of this idea.
When she turned to Odo she saw the same consciousness in his face. It
was useless for them to talk of other things. With a pang of unreasoning
regret she felt that she had become to him the embodiment of a single
thought--a formula, rather than a woman.
"Tell me what you have been doing," she said.
The question was a relief. At once he began to separation of his work.
All his thoughts, all his time, were given to the constitution which was
to define the powers of Church and state. The difficulties increased as
the work advanced; but the gravest difficulty was one of which he dared
not tell her: his own growing distrust of the ideas for which he
laboured. He was too keenly aware of the difference in their mental
operations. With Fulvia, ideas were either rejected or at once converted
into principles; with himself, they remained stored in the mind, serving
rather as commentaries on life than as incentives to action. This
perpetual accessibility to new impressions was a quality she could not
understand, or could conceive of only as a weakness. Her own mind was
like a garden in which nothing is ever transplanted. She allowed for no
intermediate stages between error and dogma, for no shifting of the
bounds of conviction; and this security gave her the singleness of
purpose in which he found himself more and more deficient.
Odo remembered that he had once thought her nearness would dispel his
hesitations. At first it had been so; but gradually the contact with her
fixed enthusiasms had set up within him an opposing sense of the claims
ignored. The element of dogmatism in her faith showed the discouraging
sameness of the human mind. He perceived that to a spirit like Fulvia's
it might become possible to shed blood in the cause of tolerance.
The rapid march of events in France had necessarily produced an opposite
effect on minds so differently constituted. To Fulvia the year had been
a year of victory, a glorious affirmation of her political creed. Step
by step she had seen, as in some old allegorical painting, error fly
before the shafts of truth. Where Odo beheld a conflagration she saw a
sunrise; and all that was bare and cold in her own life was warmed and
transfigured by that ineffable brightness.
She listened patiently while he enlarged on the difficulties of the
case. The constitution was framed in all its details, but with its
completion he felt more than ever doubtful of the wisdom of granting it.
He would have welcomed any postponement that did not seem an admission
of fear. He dreaded the inevitable break with the clergy, not so much
because of the consequent danger to his own authority, as because he was
increasingly conscious of the newness and clumsiness of the instrument
with which he proposed to replace their tried and complex system. He
mentioned to Fulvia the rumours of popular disaffection; but she swept
them aside with a smile.
"The people mistrust you," she said. "And what does that mean? That you
have given your enemies time to work on their credulity. The longer you
delay the more opposition you will encounter. Father Ignazio would
rather destroy the state than let it be saved by any hand but his."
Odo reflected. "Of all my enemies," he said, "Father Ignazio is the one
I most respect, because he is the most sincere."
"He is the most dangerous, then," she returned. "A fanatic is always
more powerful than a knave."
He was struck with her undiminished faith in the sufficiency of such
generalisations. Did she really think that to solve such a problem it
was only necessary to define it? The contact with her unfaltering
assurance would once have given him a momentary glow; but now it left
him cold.
She was speaking more urgently. "Surely," she said, "the noblest use a
man can make of his own freedom is to set others free. My father said it
was the only justification of kingship."
He glanced at her half-sadly. "Do you still fancy that kings are free? I
am bound hand and foot."
"So was my father," she flashed back at him; "but he had the Promethean
spirit."
She coloured at her own quickness, but Odo took the thrust tranquilly.
"Yes," he said, "your father had the Promethean spirit: I have not. The
flesh that is daily torn from me does not grow again."
"Your courage is as great as his," she exclaimed, her tenderness in
arms.
"No," he answered, "for his was hopeful." There was a pause, and then he
began to speak of the day's work.
All the afternoon he had been in consultation with Crescenti, whose vast
historical knowledge was of service in determining many disputed points
in the tenure of land. The librarian was in sympathy with any measures
tending to relieve the condition of the peasantry; yet he was almost as
strongly opposed as Trescorre to any reproduction of the Tuscan
constitution.
"He is afraid!" broke from Fulvia. She admired and respected Crescenti,
yet she had never fully trusted him. The taint of ecclesiasticism was on
him.
Odo smiled. "He has never been afraid of facing the charge of
Jansenism," he replied. "All his life he has stood in open opposition to
the Church party."
"It is one thing to criticise their dogmas, another to attack their
privileges. At such a time he is bound to remember that he is a
priest--that he is one of them."
"Yet, as you have often pointed out, it is to the clergy that France in
great measure owes her release from feudalism."
She smiled coldly. "France would have won her cause without the clergy!"
"This is not France, then," he said with a sigh. After a moment he began
again: "Can you not see that any reform which aims at reducing the power
of the clergy must be more easily and successfully carried out if they
can be induced to take part in it? That, in short, we need them at this
moment as we have never needed them before? The example of France ought
at least to show you that."
"The example of France shows me that, to gain a point in such a
struggle, any means must be used! In France, as you say, the clergy were
with the people--here they are against them. Where persuasion fails
coercion must be used!"
Odo smiled faintly. "You might have borrowed that from their own
armoury," he said.
She coloured at the sarcasm. "Why not?" she retorted. "Let them have a
taste of their own methods! They know the kind of pressure that makes
men yield--when they feel it they will know what to do."
He looked at her with astonishment. "This is Gamba's tone," he said. "I
have never heard you speak in this way before."
She coloured again; and now with a profound emotion. "Yes," she said,
"it is Gamba's tone. He and I speak for the same cause and with the same
voice. We are of the people and we speak for the people. Who are your
other counsellors? Priests and noblemen! It is natural enough that they
should wish to make their side of the question heard. Listen to them, if
you will--conciliate them, if you can! We need all the allies we can
win. Only do not fancy they are really speaking for the people. Do not
think it is the people's voice you hear. The people do not ask you to
weigh this claim against that, to look too curiously into the defects
and merits of every clause in their charter. All they ask is that the
charter should be given them!"
She spoke with the low-voiced passion that possessed her at such
moments. All acrimony had vanished from her tone. The expression of a
great conviction had swept aside every personal animosity, and cleared
the sources of her deepest feeling. Odo felt the pressure of her
emotion. He leaned to her and their hands met.
"It shall be given them," he said.
She lifted her face to his. It shone with a great light. Once before he
had seen it so illumined, but with how different a brightness! The
remembrance stirred in him some old habit of the senses. He bent over
and kissed her.
4.7.
Never before had Odo so keenly felt the difference between theoretical
visions of liberty and their practical application. His deepest
heart-searchings showed him as sincerely devoted as ever to the cause
which had enlisted his youth. He still longed above all things to serve
his fellows; but the conditions of such service were not what he had
dreamed. How different a calling it had been in Saint Francis's day,
when hearts inflamed with the new sense of brotherhood had but to set
forth on their simple mission of almsgiving and admonition! To love
one's neighbour had become a much more complex business, one that taxed
the intelligence as much as the heart, and in the course of which
feeling must be held in firm subjection to reason. He was discouraged by
Fulvia's inability to understand the change. Hers was the missionary
spirit; and he could not but reflect how much happier she would have
been as a nun in a charitable order, a unit in some organised system of
beneficence.
He too would have been happier to serve than to command! But it is not
given to the lovers of the Lady Poverty to choose their special rank in
her household. Don Gervaso's words came back to him with deepening
significance, and he thought how truly the old chaplain's prayer had
been fulfilled. Honour and power had come to him, and they had abased
him to the dust. The "Humilitas" of his fathers, woven, carved and
painted on every side, pursued him with an ironical reminder of his
impotence.
Fulvia had not been mistaken in attributing his depression of spirit to
de Crucis's visit. It was the first time that de Crucis had returned to
Pianura since the new Duke's accession. Odo had welcomed him eagerly,
had again pressed him to remain; but de Crucis was on his way to
Germany, bound on some business which could not be deferred. Odo, aware
of the renewed activity of the Jesuits, supposed that this business was
connected with the flight of the French refugees, many of whom were gone
to Coblentz; but on this point the abate was silent. Of the state of
affairs in France he spoke openly and despondently. The immoderate haste
with which the reforms had been granted filled him with fears for the
future. Odo knew that Crescenti shared these fears, and the judgment of
these two men, with whom he differed on fundamental principles, weighed
with him far more than the opinions of the party he was supposed to
represent. But he was in the case of many greater sovereigns of his day.
He had set free the waters of reform, and the frail bark of his
authority had been torn from its moorings and swept headlong into the
central current.
The next morning, to his surprise, the Duchess sent one of her gentlemen
to ask an audience. Odo at once replied that he would wait on her
Highness; and a few moments later he was ushered into his wife's closet.
She had just left her toilet, and was still in the morning negligee worn
during that prolonged and public ceremonial. Freshly perfumed and
powdered, her eyes bright, her lips set in a nervous smile, she
curiously recalled the arrogant child who had snatched her spaniel away
from him years ago in that same room. And was she not that child, after
all? Had she ever grown beyond the imperious instincts of her youth? It
seemed to him now that he had judged her harshly in the first months of
their marriage. He had felt a momentary impatience when he had tried to
force her roving impulses into the line of his own endeavour: it was
easier to view her leniently now that she had almost passed out of his
life.
He wondered why she had sent for him. Some dispute with her household,
doubtless; a quarrel with a servant, even--or perhaps some sordid
difficulty with her creditors. But she began in a new key.
"Your Highness," she said, "is not given to taking my advice."
Odo looked at her in surprise. "The opportunity is not often accorded
me," he replied with a smile.
Maria Clementina made an impatient gesture; then her face softened.
Contradictory emotions flitted over it like the reflections cast by a
hurrying sky. She came close to him and then drew away and seated
herself in the high-backed chair where she had throned when he first saw
her. Suddenly she blushed and began to speak.
"Once," she said in a low, almost inaudible voice, "I was able to give
your Highness warning of an impending danger--" She paused and her eyes
rested full on Odo.
He felt his colour rise as he returned her gaze. It was her first
allusion to the past. He had supposed she had forgotten. For a moment he
remained awkwardly silent.
"Do you remember?" she asked.
"I remember."
"The danger was a grave one. Your Highness may recall that but for my
warning you would not have been advised of it."
"I remember," he said again.
She paused a moment. "The danger," she repeated, "was a grave one; but
it threatened only your Highness's person. Your Highness listened to me
then; will you listen again if I advise you of a greater--a peril
threatening not only your person but your throne?"
Odo smiled. He could guess now what was coming. She had been drilled to
act as the mouthpiece of the opposition. He composed his features and
said quietly: "These are grave words, madam. I know of no such
peril--but I am always ready to listen to your Highness."
His smile had betrayed him, and a quick flame of anger passed over her
face.
"Why should you listen to me, since you never heed what I say?"
"Your Highness has just reminded me that I did so once--"
"Once!" she repeated bitterly. "You were younger then--and so was I!"
She glanced at herself in the mirror with a dissatisfied laugh.
Something in her look and movement touched the springs of compassion.
"Try me again," he said gently. "If I am older, perhaps I am also wiser,
and therefore even more willing to be guided--we all knew that." She
broke off, as though she felt her mistake and wished to make a fresh
beginning. Again her face was full of fluctuating meaning; and he saw,
beneath its shallow surface, the eddy of incoherent impulses. When she
spoke, it was with a noble gravity.
"Your Highness," she said, "does not take me into your counsels; but it
is no secret at court and in the town that you have in contemplation a
grave political measure."
"I have made no secret of it," he replied.
"No--or I should be the last to know it!" she exclaimed, with one of her
sudden lapses into petulance.
Odo made no reply. Her futility was beginning to weary him. She saw it
and again attempted an impersonal dignity of manner.
"It has been your Highness's choice," she said, "to exclude me from
public affairs. Perhaps I was not fitted by education or intelligence to
share in the cares of government. Your Highness will at least bear
witness that I have scrupulously respected your decision, and have never
attempted to intrude upon your counsels."
Odo bowed. It would have been useless to remind her that he had sought
her help and failed to obtain it.
"I have accepted my position," she continued. "I have led the life to
which it has pleased your Highness to restrict me. But I have not been
able to detach my heart as well as my thoughts from your Highness's
interests. I have not learned to be indifferent to your danger."
Odo looked up quickly. She ceased to interest him when she spoke by the
book, and he was impatient to make an end.
"You spoke of danger before," he said. "What danger?"
"That of forcing on your subjects liberties which they do not desire!"
"Ah," said he thoughtfully. That was all, then. What a poor tool she
made! He marvelled that, in all these years, Trescorre's skilful hands
should not have fashioned her to better purpose.
"Your Highness," he said, "has reminded me that since our marriage you
had lived withdrawn from public affairs. I will not pause to dispute by
whose choice this has been; I will in turn merely remind your Highness
that such a life does not afford much opportunity of gauging public
opinion."
In spite of himself a note of sarcasm had again crept into his voice;
but to his surprise she did not seem to resent it.
"Ah," she exclaimed, with more feeling than she had hitherto shown, "you
fancy that, because I am kept in ignorance of what you think, I am
ignorant also of what others think of you! Believe me," she said, with a
flash of insight that startled him, "I know more of you than if we stood
closer. But you mistake my purpose. I have not sent for you to force my
counsels on you. I have no desire to appear ridiculous. I do not ask you
to hear what _I_ think of your course, but what others think of it."
"What others?"
The question did not disconcert her. "Your subjects," she said quickly.
"My subjects are of many classes."
"All are of one class in resenting this charter. I am told you intend to
proclaim it within a few days. I entreat you at least to delay, to
reconsider your course. Oh, believe me when I say you are in danger! Of
what use to offer a crown to our Lady, when you have it in your heart to
slight her servants? But I will not speak of the clergy, since you
despise them--nor of the nobles, since you ignore their claims. I will
speak only of the people--the people, in whose interest you profess to
act. Believe me, in striking at the Church you wound the poor. It is not
their bodily welfare I mean--though Heaven knows how many sources of
bounty must now run dry! It is their faith you insult. First you turn
them against their masters, then against their God. They may acclaim you
for it now--but I tell you they will hate you for it in the end!"
She paused, flushed with the vehemence of her argument, and eager to
press it farther. But her last words had touched an unexpected fibre in
Odo. He looked at her with his unseeing visionary gaze.
"The end?" he murmured. "Who knows what the end will be?"
"Do you still need to be told?" she exclaimed. "Must you always come to
me to learn that you are in danger?"
"If the state is in danger the danger must be faced. The state exists
for the people; if they do not need it, it has ceased to serve its
purpose."
She clasped her hands in an ecstasy of wonder. "Oh, fool, madman--but it
is not of the state I speak! It is you who are in
danger--you--you--you--"
He raised his head with an impatient gesture.
"I?" he said. "I had thought you meant a graver peril."
She looked at him in silence. Her pride met his and thrilled with it;
and for a moment the two were one.
"Odo!" she cried. She sank into a chair, and he went to her and took her
hand.
"Such fears are worthy neither of us," he said gravely.
"I am not ashamed of them," she said. Her hand clung to him and she
lifted her eyes to his face. "You will listen to me?" she whispered in a
glow.
He drew back chilled. If only she had kept the feminine in abeyance! But
sex was her only weapon.
"I have listened," he said quietly. "And I thank you."
"But you will not be counselled?"
"In the last issue one must be one's own counsellor."
Her face flamed. "If you were but that!" she tossed back at him.
The taunt struck him full. He knew that he should have let it lie; but
he caught it up in spite of himself.
"Madam!" he said.
"I should have appealed to our sovereign, not to her servant!" she
cried, dashing into the breach she had made.
He stood motionless, stunned almost. For what she had said was true. He
was no longer the sovereign: the rule had passed out of his hands.
His silence frightened her. With an instinctive jealousy she saw that
her words had started a train of thought in which she had no part. She
felt herself ignored, abandoned; and all her passions rushed to the
defence of her wounded vanity.
"Oh, believe me," she cried, "I speak as your Duchess, not as your wife.
That is a name in which I should never dream of appealing to you. I have
ever stood apart from your private pleasures, as became a woman of my
house." She faced him with a flash of the Austrian insolence. "But when
I see the state drifting to ruin as the result of your caprice, when I
see your own life endangered, your people turned against you, religion
openly insulted, law and authority made the plaything of
this--this--false atheistical creature, that has robbed me--robbed me of
all--" She broke off helplessly and hid her face with a sob.
Odo stood speechless, spell-bound. He could not mistake what had
happened. The woman had surged to the surface at last--the real woman,
passionate, self-centred, undisciplined, but so piteous, after all, in
this sudden subjection to the one tenderness that survived in her. She
loved him and was jealous of her rival. That was the instinct which had
swept all others aside. At that moment she cared nothing for her safety
or his. The state might perish if they but fell together. It was the
distance between them that maddened her.
The tragic simplicity of the revelation left Odo silent. For a fantastic
moment he yielded to the vision of what that waste power might have
accomplished. Life seemed to him a confusion of roving force that met
only to crash in ruins.
His silence drew her to her feet. She repossessed herself, throbbing but
valiant.
"My fears for your Highness's safety have led my speech astray. I have
given your Highness the warning it was my duty to give. Beyond that I
had no thought of trespassing."
And still Odo was silent. A dozen answers struggled to his lips; but
they were checked by the stealing sense of duality that so often
paralysed his action. He had recovered his lucidity of vision, and his
impulses faded before it like mist. He saw life again as it was, an
incomplete and shabby business, a patchwork of torn and ravelled effort.
Everywhere the shears of Atropos were busy, and never could the cut
threads be joined again.
He took his wife's hand and bent over it ceremoniously. It lay in his
like a stone.
4.8.
The jubilee of the Mountain Madonna fell on the feast of the
Purification. It was mid-November, but with a sky of June. The autumn
rains had ceased for the moment, and fields and orchards glistened with
a late verdure.
Never had the faithful gathered in such numbers to do honour to the
wonder-working Virgin. A widespread resistance to the influences of free
thought and Jansenism was pouring fresh life into the old formulas of
devotion. Though many motives combined to strengthen this movement, it
was still mainly a simple expression of loyalty to old ideals, an
instinctive rallying around a threatened cause. It is the honest
conviction underlying all great popular impulses that gives them their
real strength; and in this case the thousands of pilgrims flocking on
foot to the mountain shrine embodied a greater moral force than the
powerful ecclesiastics at whose call they had gathered.
The clergy themselves were come from all sides; while those that were
unable to attend had sent costly gifts to the miraculous Virgin. The
Bishops of Mantua, Modena, Vercelli and Cremona had travelled to Pianura
in state, the people flocking out beyond the gates to welcome them. Four
mitred Abbots, several Monsignori, and Priors, Rectors, Vicars-general
and canons innumerable rode in the procession, followed on foot by the
humble army of parish priests and by interminable confraternities of all
orders.
The approach of the great dignitaries was hailed with enthusiasm by the
crowds lining the roads. Even the Bishop of Pianura, never popular with
the people, received an unwonted measure of applause, and the
white-cowled Prior of the Dominicans, riding by stern and close-lipped
as a monk of Zurbaran's, was greeted with frenzied acclamations. The
report that the Bishop and the heads of the religious houses in Pianura
were to set free suppers for the pilgrims had doubtless quickened this
outburst of piety; yet it was perhaps chiefly due to the sense of coming
peril that had gradually permeated the dim consciousness of the crowd.
In the church, the glow of lights, the thrilling beauty of the music and
the glitter of the priestly vestments were blent in a melting harmony of
sound and colour. The shrine of the Madonna shone with unearthly
radiance. Hundreds of candles formed an elongated nimbus about her
hieratic figure, which was surmounted by the canopy of cloth-of-gold
presented by the Duke of Modena. The Bishops of Vercelli and Cremona had
offered a robe of silver brocade studded with coral and turquoises, the
devout Princess Clotilda of Savoy an emerald necklace, the Bishop of
Pianura a marvellous veil of rose-point made in a Flemish convent; while
on the statue's brow rested the Duke's jewelled diadem.
The Duke himself, seated in his tribune above the choir, observed the
scene with a renewed appreciation of the Church's unfailing dramatic
instinct. At first he saw in the spectacle only this outer and symbolic
side, of which the mere sensuous beauty had always deeply moved him; but
as he watched the effect produced on the great throng filling the
aisles, he began to see that this external splendour was but the veil
before the sanctuary, and to realise what de Crucis meant when he spoke
of the deep hold of the Church upon the people. Every colour, every
gesture, every word and note of music that made up the texture of the
gorgeous ceremonial might indeed seem part of a long-studied and
astutely-planned effect. Yet each had its root in some instinct of the
heart, some natural development of the inner life, so that they were in
fact not the cunningly-adjusted fragments of an arbitrary pattern but
the inseparable fibres of a living organism. It was Odo's misfortune to
see too far ahead on the road along which his destiny was urging him. As
he sat there, face to face with the people he was trying to lead, he
heard above the music of the mass and the chant of the kneeling throng
an echo of the question that Don Gervaso had once put to him:--"If you
take Christ from the people, what have you to give them instead?"
He was roused by a burst of silver clarions. The mass was over, and the
Duke and Duchess were to descend from their tribune and venerate the
holy image before it was carried through the church.
Odo rose and gave his hand to his wife. They had not seen each other,
save in public, since their last conversation in her closet. The Duchess
walked with set lips and head erect, keeping her profile turned to him
as they descended the steps and advanced to the choir. None knew better
how to take her part in such a pageant. She had the gift of drawing upon
herself the undivided attention of any assemblage in which she moved;
and the consciousness of this power lent a kind of Olympian buoyancy to
her gait. The richness of her dress and her extravagant display of
jewels seemed almost a challenge to the sacred image blazing like a
rainbow beneath its golden canopy; and Odo smiled to think that his
childish fancy had once compared the brilliant being at his side to the
humble tinsel-decked Virgin of the church at Pontesordo.
As the couple advanced, stillness fell on the church. The air was full
of the lingering haze of incense, through which the sunlight from the
clerestory poured in prismatic splendours on the statue of the Virgin.
Rigid, superhuman, a molten flamboyancy of gold and gems, the
wonder-working Madonna shone out above her worshippers. The Duke and
Duchess paused, bowing deeply, below the choir. Then they mounted the
steps and knelt before the shrine. As they did so a crash broke the
silence, and the startled devotees saw that the ducal diadem had fallen
from the Madonna's head.
The hush prolonged itself a moment; then a canon sprang forward to pick
up the crown, and with the movement a murmur rose and spread through the
church. The Duke's offering had fallen to the ground as he approached to
venerate the blessed image. That this was an omen no man could doubt. It
needed no augur to interpret it. The murmur, gathering force as it swept
through the packed aisles, passed from surprise to fear, from fear to a
deep hum of anger;--for the people understood, as plainly as though she
had spoken, that the Virgin of the Valseccas had cast from her the gift
of an unbeliever...
* * * * *
The ceremonies over, the long procession was formed again and set out
toward the city. The crowd had surged ahead, and when the Duke rode
through the gates the streets were already thronged. Moving slowly
between the compact mass of people he felt himself as closely observed
as on the day of his state entry; but with far different effect.
Enthusiasm had given way to a cold curiosity. The excitement of the
spectators had spent itself in the morning, and the sight of their
sovereign failed to rouse their flagging ardour. Now and then a cheer
broke out, but it died again without kindling another in the
uninflammable mass. Odo could not tell how much of this indifference was
due to a natural reaction from the emotions of the morning, how much to
his personal unpopularity, how much to the ominous impression produced
by the falling of the Virgin's crown. He rode between his people
oppressed by a sense of estrangement such as he had never known. He felt
himself shut off from them by an impassable barrier of superstition and
ignorance; and every effort to reach them was like the wrong turn in a
labyrinth, drawing him farther away from the issue to which it seemed to
lead.
As he advanced under this indifferent or hostile scrutiny, he thought
how much easier it would be to face a rain of bullets than this
withering glare of criticism. A sudden longing to escape, to be done
with it all, came over him with sickening force. His nerves ached with
the physical strain of holding himself upright on his horse, of
preserving the statuesque erectness proper to the occasion. He felt like
one of his own ancestral effigies, of which the wooden framework had
rotted under the splendid robes. A congestion at the head of a narrow
street had checked the procession, and he was obliged to rein in his
horse. He looked about and found himself in the centre of the square
near the Baptistery. A few feet off, directly in a line with him, was
the weather-worn front of the Royal Printing-Press. He raised his head
and saw a group of people on the balcony. Though they were close at
hand, he saw them in a blur, against which Fulvia's figure suddenly
detached itself. She had told him that she was to view the procession
with the Andreonis; but through the mental haze which enveloped him her
apparition struck a vague surprise. He looked at her intently, and their
eyes met. A faint happiness stole over her face, but no recognition was
possible, and she continued to gaze out steadily upon the throng below
the balcony. Involuntarily his glance followed hers, and he saw that she
was herself the centre of the crowd's attention. Her plain, almost
Quakerish habit, and the tranquil dignity of her carriage, made her a
conspicuous figure among the animated groups in the adjoining windows,
and Odo, with the acuteness of perception which a public life develops,
was instantly aware that her name was on every lip. At the same moment
he saw a woman close to his horse's feet snatch up her child and make
the sign against the evil eye. A boy who stood staring open-mouthed at
Fulvia caught the gesture and repeated it; a barefoot friar imitated the
boy, and it seemed to Odo that the familiar sign was spreading with
malignant rapidity to the furthest limits of the crowd. The impression
was only momentary; for the cavalcade was again in motion, and without
raising his eyes he rode on, sick at heart...
* * * * *
At nightfall a man opened the gate of the ducal gardens below the
Chinese pavilion and stepped out into the deserted lane. He locked the
gate and slipped the key into his pocket; then he turned and walked
toward the centre of the town. As he reached the more populous quarters
his walk slackened to a stroll; and now and then he paused to observe a
knot of merry-makers or look through the curtains of the tents set up in
the squares.
The man was plainly but decently dressed, like a petty tradesman or a
lawyer's clerk, and the night being chill he wore a cloak, and had drawn
his hat-brim over his forehead. He sauntered on, letting the crowd carry
him, with the air of one who has an hour to kill, and whose
holiday-making takes the form of an amused spectatorship. To such an
observer the streets offered ample entertainment. The shrewd air
discouraged lounging and kept the crowd in motion; but the open
platforms built for dancing were thronged with couples, and every
peep-show, wine-shop and astrologer's booth was packed to the doors. The
shrines and street-lamps being all alight, and booths and platforms hung
with countless lanterns, the scene was as bright as day; but in the
ever-shifting medley of peasant-dresses, liveries, monkish cowls and
carnival disguises, a soberly-clad man might easily go unremarked.
Reaching the square before the Cathedral, the solitary observer pushed
his way through the idlers gathered about a dais with a curtain at the
back. Before the curtain stood a Milanese quack, dressed like a noble
gentleman, with sword and plumed hat, and rehearsing his cures in
stentorian tones, while his zany, in the short mask and green-and-white
habit of Brighella, cracked jokes and turned hand-springs for the
diversion of the vulgar.
"Behold," the charlatan was shouting, "the marvellous Egyptian
love-philter distilled from the pearl that the great Emperor Antony
dropped into Queen Cleopatra's cup. This infallible fluid, handed down
for generations in the family of my ancestor, the High Priest of Isis--"
The bray of a neighbouring show-man's trumpet cut him short, and
yielding to circumstances he drew back the curtain, and a tumbling-girl
sprang out and began her antics on the front of the stage.
"What did he say was the price of that drink, Giannina?" asked a young
maid-servant pulling her neighbour's sleeve.
"Are you thinking of buying it for Pietrino, my beauty?" the other
returned with a laugh. "Believe me, it is a sound proverb that says:
When the fruit is ripe it falls of itself."
The girl drew away angrily, and the quack took up his harangue:--"The
same philter, ladies and gentlemen--though in confessing it I betray a
professional secret--the same philter, I declare to you on the honour of
a nobleman, whereby, in your own city, a lady no longer young and no way
remarkable in looks or station, has captured and subjugated the
affections of one so high, so exalted, so above all others in beauty,
rank, wealth, power and dignities--"
"Oh, oh, that's the Duke!" sniggered a voice in the crowd.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I name no names!" cried the quack impressively.
"No need to," retorted the voice.
"They do say, though, she gave him something to drink," said a young
woman to a youth in a clerk's dress. "The saying is she studied medicine
with the Turks."
"The Moors, you mean," said the clerk with an air of superiority.
"Well, they say her mother was a Turkey slave and her father a murderer
from the Sultan's galleys."
"No, no, she's plain Piedmontese, I tell you. Her father was a physician
in Turin, and was driven out of the country for poisoning his patients
in order to watch their death-agonies."
"They say she's good to the poor, though," said another voice
doubtfully.
"Good to the poor? Ay, that's what they said of her father. All I know
is that she heard Stefano the weaver's lad had the falling sickness, and
she carried him a potion with her own hands, and the next day the child
was dead, and a Carmelite friar, who saw the phial he drank from, said
it was the same shape and size as one that was found in a witch's grave
when they were digging the foundations for the new monastery."
"Ladies and gentlemen," shrieked the quack, "what am I offered for a
drop of this priceless liquor?"
The listener turned aside and pushed his way toward the farther end of
the square. As he did so he ran against a merry-andrew who thrust a long
printed sheet in his hand.
"Buy my satirical ballads, ladies and gentlemen!" the fellow shouted.
"Two for a farthing, invented and written by an own cousin of the great
Pasquino of Rome! What will you have, sir? Here's the secret history of
a famous Prince's amours with an atheist--here's the true scandal of an
illustrious lady's necklace--two for a farthing...and my humblest thanks
to your excellency." He pocketed the coin, and the other, thrusting the
broadsheets beneath his cloak, pushed on to the nearest coffee-house.
Here every table was thronged, and the babble of talk so loud that the
stranger, hopeless of obtaining refreshment, pressed his way into the
remotest corner of the room and seated himself on an empty cask. At
first he sat motionless, silently observing the crowd; then he drew
forth the ballads and ran his eye over them. He was still engaged in
this study when his notice was attracted by a loud discussion going
forward between a party of men at the nearest table. The disputants,
petty tradesman or artisans by their dress, had evidently been warmed by
a good flagon of wine, and their tones were so lively that every word
reached the listener on the cask.
"Reform, reform!" cried one, who appeared by his dress and manner to be
the weightiest of the company--"it's all very well to cry reform; but
what I say is that most of those that are howling for it no more know
what they're asking than a parrot that's been taught the litany. Now the
first question is: who benefits by your reform? And what's the answer to
that, eh? Is it the tradesmen? The merchants? The clerks, artisans,
household servants, I ask you? I hear some of my fellow-tradesmen
complaining that the nobility don't pay their bills. Will they be better
paid, think you, when the Duke has halved their revenues? Will the
quality keep up as large households, employ as many lacqueys, set as
lavish tables, wear as fine clothes, collect as many rarities, buy as
many horses, give us, in short, as many opportunities of making our
profit out of their pleasure? What I say is, if we're to have new taxes,
don't let them fall on the very class we live by!"
"That's true enough," said another speaker, a lean bilious man with a
pen behind his ear. "The peasantry are the only class that are going to
profit by this constitution."
"And what do the peasantry do for us, I should like to know?" the first
speaker went on triumphantly. "As far as the fat friars go, I'm not
sorry to see them squeezed a trifle, for they've wrung enough money out
of our women-folk to lie between feathers from now till doomsday; but I
say, if you care for your pockets, don't lay hands on the nobility!"
"Gently, gently, my friend," exclaimed a cautious flaccid-looking man
setting down his glass. "Father and son, for four generations, my family
have served Pianura with Church candles, and I can tell you that since
these new atheistical notions came in, the nobility are not the good
patrons they used to be. But as for the friars, I should be sorry to see
them meddled with. It's true they may get the best morsel in the pot and
the warmest seat on the hearth--and one of them, now and then, may take
too long to teach a pretty girl her Pater Noster--but I'm not sure we
shall be better off when they're gone. Formerly, if a child too many
came to poor folk they could always comfort themselves with the thought
that, if there was no room for him at home, the Church was there to
provide for him. But if we drive out the good friars, a man will have to
count mouths before he dares look at his wife too lovingly."
"Well," said the scribe with a dry smile, "I've a notion the good friars
have always taken more than they gave; and if it were not for the gaping
mouths under the cowl even a poor man might have victuals enough for his
own."
The first speaker turned on him contentiously.
"Do I understand you are for this new charter, then?" he asked.
"No, no," said the other. "Better hot polenta than a cold ortolan.
Things are none too good as they are, but I never care to taste first of
a new dish. And in this case I don't fancy the cook."
"Ah, that's it," said the soft man. "It's too much like the apothecary's
wife mixing his drugs for him. Men of Roman lineage want no women to
govern them!" He puffed himself out and thrust a hand in his bosom.
"Besides, gentlemen," he added, dropping his voice and glancing
cautiously about the room, "the saints are my witness I'm not
superstitious--but frankly, now, I don't much fancy this business of the
Virgin's crown."
"What do you mean?" asked a lean visionary-looking youth who had been
drinking and listening.
"Why, sir, I needn't say I'm the last man in Pianura to listen to
women's tattle; but my wife had it straight from Cino the barber, whose
sister is portress of the Benedictines, that, two days since, one of the
nuns foretold the whole business, precisely as it happened--and what's
more, many that were in the Church this morning will tell you that they
distinctly saw the blessed image raise both arms and tear the crown from
her head."
"H'm," said the young man flippantly, "what became of the Bambino
meanwhile, I wonder?"
The scribe shrugged his shoulders. "We all know," said he, "that Cino
the barber lies like a christened Jew; but I'm not surprised the thing
was known in advance, for I make no doubt the priests pulled the wires
that brought down the crown."
The fat man looked scandalised, and the first speaker waved the subject
aside as unworthy of attention.
"Such tales are for women and monks," he said impatiently. "But the
business has its serious side. I tell you we are being hurried to our
ruin. Here's this matter of draining the marshes at Pontesordo. Who's to
pay for that? The class that profits by it? Not by a long way. It's we
who drain the land, and the peasants are to live on it."
The visionary youth tossed back his hair. "But isn't that an inspiration
to you, sir?" he exclaimed. "Does not your heart dilate at the thought
of uplifting the condition of your down-trodden fellows?"
"My fellows? The peasantry my fellows?" cried the other. "I'd have you
know, my young master, that I come of a long and honourable line of
cloth-merchants, that have had their names on the Guild for two hundred
years and over. I've nothing to do with the peasantry, thank God!"
The youth had emptied another glass. "What?" he screamed. "You deny the
universal kinship of man? You disown your starving brothers? Proud
tyrant, remember the Bastille!" He burst into tears and began to quote
Alfieri.
"Well," said the fat man, turning a disgusted shoulder on this display
of emotion, "to my mind this business of draining Pontesordo is too much
like telling the Almighty what to do. If God made the land wet, what
right have we to dry it? Those that begin by meddling with the Creator's
works may end by laying hands on the Creator."
"You're right," said another. "There's no knowing where these
new-fangled notions may land us. For my part, I was rather taken by them
at first; but since I find that his Highness, to pay for all his good
works, is cutting down his household and throwing decent people out of a
job--like my own son, for instance, that was one of the under-steward's
boys at the palace--why, since then, I begin to see a little farther
into the game."
A shabby shrewd-looking fellow in a dirty coat and snuff-stained stock
had sauntered up to the table and stood listening with an amused smile.
"Ah," said the scribe, glancing up, "here's a thoroughgoing reformer,
who'll be asking us all to throw up our hats for the new charter."
The new-comer laughed contemptuously. "I?" he said. "God forbid! The new
charter's none of my making. It's only another dodge for getting round
the populace--for appearing to give them what they would rise up and
take if it were denied them any longer."
"Why, I thought you were hot for these reforms?" exclaimed the fat man
with surprise.
The other shrugged. "You might as well say I was in favour of having the
sun rise tomorrow. It would probably rise at the same hour if I voted
against it. Reform is bound to come, whether your Dukes and Princes are
for it or against it; and those that grant constitutions instead of
refusing them are like men who tie a string to their hats before going
out in a gale. The string may hold for a while--but if it blows hard
enough the hats will all come off in the end."
"Ay, ay; and meanwhile we furnish the string from our own pockets," said
the scribe with a chuckle.
The shabby man grinned. "It won't be the last thing to come out of your
pockets," said he, turning to push his way toward another table.
The others rose and called for their reckoning; and the listener on the
cask slipped out of his corner, elbowed a passage to the door and
stepped forth into the square.
It was after midnight, a thin drizzle was falling, and the crowd had
scattered. The rain was beginning to extinguish the paper lanterns and
the torches, and the canvas sides of the tents flapped dismally, like
wet sheets on a clothes-line. The man drew his cloak closer, and
avoiding the stragglers who crossed his path, turned into the first
street that led to the palace. He walked fast over the slippery
cobble-stones, buffeted by a rising wind and threading his way between
dark walls and sleeping house-fronts till he reached the lane below the
ducal gardens. He unlocked the door by which he had come forth, entered
the gardens, and paused a moment on the terrace above the lane.
Behind him rose the palace, a dark irregular bulk, with a lighted window
showing here and there. Before him lay the city, an indistinguishable
huddle of roofs and towers under the rainy night. He stood awhile gazing
out over it; then he turned and walked toward the palace. The garden
alleys were deserted, the pleached walks dark as subterranean passages,
with the wet gleam of statues starting spectrally out of the blackness.
The man walked rapidly, leaving the Borromini wing on his left, and
skirting the outstanding mass of the older buildings. Behind the marble
buttresses of the chapel, he crossed the dense obscurity of a court
between high walls, found a door under an archway, turned a key in the
lock, and gained a spiral stairway as dark as the court. He groped his
way up the stairs and paused a moment on the landing to listen. Then he
opened another door, lifted a heavy hanging of tapestry, and stepped
into the Duke's closet. It stood empty, with a lamp burning low on the
desk.
The man threw off his cloak and hat, dropped into a chair beside the
desk, and hid his face in his hands.
4.9.
It was the eve of the Duke's birthday. A cabinet council had been called
in the morning, and his Highness's ministers had submitted to him the
revised draft of the constitution which was to be proclaimed on the
morrow.
Throughout the conference, which was brief and formal, Odo had been
conscious of a subtle change in the ministerial atmosphere. Instead of
the current of resistance against which he had grown used to forcing his
way, he became aware of a tacit yielding to his will. Trescorre had
apparently withdrawn his opposition to the charter, and the other
ministers had followed suit. To Odo's overwrought imagination there was
something ominous in the change. He had counted on the goad of
opposition to fight off the fatal languor which he had learned to expect
at such crises. Now that he found there was to be no struggle he
understood how largely his zeal had of late depended on such factitious
incentives. He felt an irrational longing to throw himself on the other
side of the conflict, to tear in bits the paper awaiting his signature,
and disown the policy which had dictated it. But the tide of
acquiescence on which he was afloat was no stagnant back-water of
indifference, but the glassy reach just above the fall of a river. The
current was as swift as it was smooth, and he felt himself hurried
forward to an end he could no longer escape. He took the pen which
Trescorre handed him, and signed the constitution.
The meeting over, he summoned Gamba. He felt the need of such
encouragement as the hunchback alone could give. Fulvia's enthusiasms
were too unreal, too abstract. She lived in a region of ideals, whence
ugly facts were swept out by some process of mental housewifery which
kept her world perpetually smiling and immaculate. Gamba at least fed
his convictions on facts. If his outlook was narrow it was direct: no
roseate medium of fancy was interposed between his vision and the truth.
He stood listening thoughtfully while Odo poured forth his doubts.
"Your Highness may well hesitate," he said at last. "There are always
more good reasons against a new state of things than for it. I am not
surprised that Count Trescorre appears to have withdrawn his opposition.
I believe he now honestly wishes your Highness to proclaim the
constitution."
Odo looked up in surprise. "You do not mean that he has come to believe
in it?"
Gamba smiled. "Probably not in your Highness's sense; but he may have
found a use of his own for it."
"What do you mean?" Odo asked.
"If he does not believe it will benefit the state he may think it will
injure your Highness."
"Ah--" said the Duke slowly.
There was a pause, during which he was possessed by the same shuddering
reluctance to fix his mind on the facts before him as when he had
questioned the hunchback about Momola's death. He longed to cast the
whole business aside, to be up and away from it, drawing breath in a new
world where every air was not tainted with corruption. He raised his
head with an effort.
"You think, then, that the liberals are secretly acting against me in
this matter?"
"I am persuaded of it, your Highness."
Odo hesitated. "You have always told me," he began again, "that the love
of dominion was your brother's ruling passion. If he really believes
this movement will be popular with the people, why should he secretly
oppose it, instead of making the most of his own share in it as the
minister of a popular sovereign?"
"For several reasons," Gamba answered promptly. "In the first place, the
reforms your Highness has introduced are not of his own choosing, and
Trescorre has little sympathy with any policy he has not dictated. In
the second place, the powers and opportunities of a constitutional
minister are too restricted to satisfy his appetite for rule; and
thirdly--" he paused a moment, as though doubtful how his words would be
received--"I suspect Trescorre of having a private score against your
Highness, which he would be glad to pay off publicly."
Odo fell silent, yielding himself to a fresh current of thought.
"I know not what score he may have against me," he said at length; "but
what injures me must injure the state, and if Trescorre has any such
motive for withdrawing his opposition, it must be because he believes
the constitution will defeat its own ends."
"He does believe that, assuredly; but he is not the only one of your
Highness's ministers that would ruin the state on the chance of finding
an opportunity among the ruins."
"That is as it may be," said Odo with a touch of weariness. "I have seen
enough of human ambition to learn how limited and unimaginative a
passion it is. If it saw farther I should fear it more. But if it is
short-sighted it sees clearly at close range; and the motive you ascribe
to Trescorre would imply that he believes the constitution will be a
failure."
"Without doubt, your Highness. I am convinced that your ministers have
done all they could to prevent the proclamation of the charter, and
failing that, to thwart its workings if it be proclaimed. In this they
have gone hand in hand with the clergy, and their measures have been
well taken. But I do not believe that any state of mind produced by
external influences can long withstand the natural drift of opinion; and
your Highness may be sure that, though the talkers and writers are
mostly against you in this matter, the mass of the people are with you."
Odo answered with a despairing gesture. "How can I be sure, when the
people have no means of expressing their needs? It is like trying to
guess the wants of a deaf and dumb man!"
The hunchback flushed suddenly. "The people will not always be deaf and
dumb," he said. "Some day they will speak."
"Not in my day," said Odo wearily. "And meanwhile we blunder on, without
ever really knowing what incalculable instincts and prejudices are
pitted against us. You and your party tell me the people are sick of the
burdens the clergy lay on them--yet their blind devotion to the Church
is manifest at every turn, and it did not need the business of the
Virgin's crown to show me how little reason and justice can avail
against such influences."
Gamba replied by an impatient gesture. "As to the Virgin's crown," he
said, "your Highness must have guessed it was one of the friars' tricks:
a last expedient to turn the people against you. I was not bred up by a
priest for nothing; I know what past masters those gentry are in raising
ghosts and reading portents. They know the minds of the poor folk as the
herdsman knows the habits of his cattle; and for generations they have
used that knowledge to bring the people more completely under their
control."
"And what have we to oppose to such a power?" Odo exclaimed. "We are
fighting the battle of ideas against passions, of reflection against
instinct; and you have but to look in the human heart to guess which
side will win in such a struggle. We have science and truth and
common-sense with us, you say--yes, but the Church has love and fear and
tradition, and the solidarity of nigh two thousand years of dominion."
Gamba listened in respectful silence; then he replied with a faint
smile: "All that your Highness says is true; but I beg leave to relate
to your Highness a tale which I read lately in an old book of your
library. According to this story it appears that when the early
Christians of Alexandria set out to destroy the pagan idols in the
temples they were seized with great dread at sight of the god Serapis;
for even those that did not believe in the old gods feared them, and
none dared raise a hand against the sacred image. But suddenly a soldier
who was bolder than the rest flung his battle-axe at the figure--and
when it broke in pieces, there rushed out nothing worse than a great
company of rats."...
* * * * *
The Duke had promised to visit Fulvia that evening. For several days his
state of indecision had made him find pretexts for avoiding her; but now
that the charter was signed and he had ordered its proclamation, he
craved the contact of her unwavering faith.
He found her alone in the dusk of the convent parlour; but he had hardly
crossed the threshold before he was aware of an indefinable change in
his surroundings. She advanced with an impulsiveness out of harmony with
the usual tranquillity of their meetings, and he felt her hand tremble
and burn in his. In the twilight it seemed to him that her very dress
had a warmer rustle and glimmer, that there emanated from her glance and
movements some heady fragrance of a long-past summer. He smiled to think
that this phantom coquetry should have risen at the summons of an
academic degree; but some deeper sense in him was stirred as by a vision
of waste riches adrift on the dim seas of chance.
For a moment she sat silent, as in the days when they had been too near
each other for many words; and there was something indescribably
soothing in this dreamlike return to the past. It was he who roused
himself first.
"How young you look!" he said, giving involuntary utterance to his
thought.
"Do I?" she answered gaily. "I am glad of that, for I feel
extraordinarily young tonight. Perhaps it is because I have been
thinking a great deal of the old days--of Venice and Turin--and of the
high-road to Vercelli, for instance." She glanced at him with a smile.
"Do you know," she went on, moving to a seat at his side, and laying a
hand on the arm of his chair, "that there is one secret of mine you have
never guessed in all these years?"
Odo returned her smile. "What is it, I wonder?" he said.
She fixed him with bright bantering eyes. "I knew why you deserted us at
Vercelli." He uttered an exclamation, but she lifted a hand to his lips.
"Ah, how angry I was then--but why be angry now? It all happened so long
ago; and if it had not happened--who knows?--perhaps you would never
have pitied me enough to love me as you did." She laughed softly,
reminiscently, leaning back as if to let the tide of memories ripple
over her. Then she raised her head suddenly, and said in a changed
voice: "Are your plans fixed for tomorrow?"
Odo glanced at her in surprise. Her mind seemed to move as capriciously
as Maria Clementina's.
"The constitution is signed," he answered, "and my ministers proclaim it
tomorrow morning." He looked at her a moment, and lifted her hand to his
lips. "Everything has been done according to your wishes," he said.
She drew away with a start, and he saw that she had turned pale. "No,
no--not as I wish," she murmured. "It must not be because _I_ wish--"
she broke off and her hand slipped from his.
"You have taught me to wish as you wish," he answered gently. "Surely
you would not disown your pupil now?"
Her agitation increased. "Do not call yourself that!" she exclaimed.
"Not even in jest. What you have done has been done of your own
choice--because you thought it best for your people. My nearness or
absence could have made no difference."
He looked at her with growing wonder. "Why this sudden modesty?" he said
with a smile. "I thought you prided yourself on your share in the great
work."
She tried to force an answering smile, but the curve broke into a quiver
of distress, and she came close to him, with a gesture that seemed to
take flight from herself.
"Don't say it, don't say it!" she broke out. "What right have they to
call it my doing? I but stood aside and watched you and gloried in
you--is there any guilt to a woman in THAT?" She clung to him a moment,
hiding her face in his breast.
He loosened her arms gently, that he might draw back and look at her.
"Fulvia," he asked, "what ails you? You are not yourself tonight. Has
anything happened to distress you? Have you been annoyed or alarmed in
any way?--It is not possible," he broke off, "that Trescorre has been
here--?"
She drew away, flushed and protesting. "No, no," she exclaimed. "Why
should Trescorre come here? Why should you fancy that any one has been
here? I am excited, I know; I talk idly; but it is because I have been
thinking too long of these things--"
"Of what things?"
"Of what people say--how can one help hearing that? I sometimes fancy
that the more withdrawn one lives the more distinctly one hears the
outer noises."
"But why should you heed the outer noises? You have never done so
before."
"Perhaps I was wrong not to do so before. Perhaps I should have listened
sooner. Perhaps others have seen--understood--sooner than I--oh, the
thought is intolerable!"
She moved a pace or two away, and then, regaining the mastery of her
lips and eyes, turned to him with a show of calmness.
"Your heart was never in this charter--" she began.
"Fulvia!" he cried protestingly; but she lifted a silencing hand. "Ah, I
have seen it--I have felt it--but I was never willing to own that you
were right. My pride in you blinded me, I suppose. I could not bear to
dream any fate for you but the greatest. I saw you always leading
events, rather than waiting on them. But true greatness lies in the man,
not in his actions. Compromise, delay, renunciation--these may be as
heroic as conflict. A woman's vision is so narrow that I did not see
this at first. You have always told me that I looked only at one side of
the question; but I see the other side now--I see that you were right."
Odo stood silent. He had followed her with growing wonder. A volte-face
so little in keeping with her mental habits immediately struck him as a
feint; yet so strangely did it accord with his own secret reluctances
that these inclined him to let it pass unquestioned.
Some instinctive loyalty to his past checked the temptation. "I am not
sure that I understand you," he said slowly. "Have you lost faith in the
ideas we have worked for?"
She hesitated, and he saw the struggle beneath her surface calmness.
"No, no," she exclaimed quickly, "I have not lost faith in them--"
"In me, then?"
She smiled with a disarming sadness. "That would be so much simpler!"
she murmured.
"What do you mean, then?" he urged. "We must understand each other." He
paused, and measured his words out slowly. "Do you think it a mistake to
proclaim the constitution tomorrow?"
Again her face was full of shadowy contradictions. "I entreat you not to
proclaim it tomorrow," she said in a low voice.
Odo felt the blood drum in his ears. Was not this the word for which he
had waited? But still some deeper instinct held him back, warning him,
as it seemed, that to fall below his purpose at such a juncture was the
only measurable failure. He must know more before he yielded, see deeper
into her heart and his; and each moment brought the clearer conviction
that there was more to know and see.
"This is unlike you, Fulvia," he said. "You cannot make such a request
on impulse. You must have a reason."
She smiled. "You told me once that a woman's reasons are only impulses
in men's clothes."
But he was not to be diverted by this thrust. "I shall think so now," he
said, "unless you can give me some better account of yours!"
She was silent, and he pressed on with a persistency for which he
himself could hardly account: "You must have a reason for this request."
"I have one," she said, dropping her attempts at evasion.
"And it is--?"
She paused again, with a look of appeal against which he had to stiffen
himself.
"I do not believe the time has come," she said at length.
"You think the people are not ready for the constitution?"
She answered with an effort: "I think the people are not ready for it."
He fell silent, and they sat facing each other, but with eyes apart.
"You have received this impression from Gamba, from Andreoni--from the
members of our party?" he asked.
She made no reply.
"Remember, Fulvia," he went on almost sternly, "that this is the end for
which we have worked together all these years--the end for which we
renounced each other and went forth in our youth, you to exile and I to
an unwilling sovereignty. It was because we loved this cause better than
ourselves that we had strength to give up for it our personal hopes of
happiness. If we betray the cause from any merely personal motive we
shall have fallen below our earlier selves." He waited again, but she
was still silent. "Can you swear to me," he went on, "that no such
motive influences you now? That you honestly believe we have been
deceived and mistaken? That our years of faith and labour have been
wasted, and that, if mankind is to be helped, it is to be in other ways
and by other efforts than ours?"
He stood before her accusingly, almost, the passion of the long fight
surging up in him as he felt the weapon drop from his hand.
Fulvia had sat motionless under his appeal; but as he paused she rose
with an impulsive gesture. "Oh, why do you torment me with questions?"
she cried, half-sobbing. "I venture to counsel a delay, and you arraign
me as though I stood at the day of judgment!"
"It IS our day of judgment," he retorted. "It is the day on which life
confronts us with our own actions, and we must justify them or own
ourselves deluded." He went up to her and caught her hands entreatingly.
"Fulvia," he said, "I too have doubted, wavered--and if you will give me
one honest reason that is worthy of us both--"
She broke from him to hide her weeping. "Reasons! reasons!" she
stammered. "What does the heart know of reasons? I ask a favour--the
first I ever asked of you--and you answer it by haggling with me for
reasons!"
Something in her voice and gesture was like a lightning-flash over a
dark landscape. In an instant he saw the pit at his feet.
"Some one has been with you. Those words were not yours," he cried.
She rallied instantly. "That is a pretext for not heeding them!" she
returned.
The lightning glared again. He stepped close and faced her.
"The Duchess has been here," he said.
She dropped into a chair and hid her face from him. A wave of anger
mounted from his heart, choking back his words and filling his brain
with its fumes. But as it subsided he felt himself suddenly cool, firm,
attempered. There could be no wavering, no self-questioning now.
"When did this happen?" he asked.
She shook her head despairingly.
"Fulvia," he said, "if you will not speak I will speak for you. I can
guess what arguments were used--what threats, even. Were there threats?"
burst from him in a fresh leap of anger.
She raised her head slowly. "Threats would not have mattered," she said.
"But your fears were played on--your fears for my safety?--Fulvia,
answer me!" he insisted.
She rose suddenly and laid her arms about his shoulders, with a gesture
half-tender, half-maternal.
"Oh," she said, "why will you torture me? I have borne much for our
love's sake, and would have borne this too--in silence, like the
rest--but to speak of it is to relieve it; and my strength fails me!"
He held her hands fast, keeping his eyes on hers. "No," he said, "for
your strength never failed you when there was any call on it; and our
whole past calls on it now. Rouse yourself, Fulvia: look life in the
face! You were told there might be troubles tomorrow--that I was in
danger, perhaps?"
"There was worse--there was worse," she shuddered.
"Worse?"
"The blame was laid on me--the responsibility. Your love for me, my
power over you, were accused. The people hate me--they hate you for
loving me! Oh, I have destroyed you!" she cried.
Odo felt a slow cold strength pouring into all his veins. It was as
though his enemies, in thinking to mix a mortal poison, had rendered him
invulnerable. He bent over her with great gentleness.
"Fulvia, this is madness," he said. "A moment's thought must show you
what passions are here at work. Can you not rise above such fears? No
one can judge between us but ourselves."
"Ah, but you do not know--you will not understand. Your life may be in
danger!" she cried.
"I have been told that before," he said contemptuously. "It is a common
trick of the political game."
"This is no trick," she exclaimed. "I was made to see--to
understand--and I swear to you that the danger is real."
"And what if it were? Is the Church to have all the martyrs?" said he
gaily. "Come, Fulvia, shake off such fancies. My life is as safe as
yours. At worst there may be a little hissing to be faced. That is easy
enough compared to facing one's own doubts. And I have no doubts
now--that is all past, thank heaven! I see the road straight before
me--as straight as when you showed it to me once before, years ago, in
the inn-parlour at Peschiera. You pointed the way to it then; surely you
would not hold me back from it now?"
He took her in his arms and kissed her lips to silence.
"When we meet tomorrow," he said, releasing her, "It will be as teacher
and pupil, you in your doctor's gown and I a learner at your feet. Put
your old faith in me into your argument, and we shall have all Pianura
converted."
He hastened away through the dim gardens, carrying a boy's heart in his
breast.
4.10.
The University of Pianura was lodged in the ancient Signoria or Town
Hall of the free city; and here, on the afternoon of the Duke's
birthday, the civic dignitaries and the leading men of the learned
professions had assembled to see the doctorate conferred on the
Signorina Fulvia Vivaldi and on several less conspicuous candidates of
the other sex.
The city was again in gala dress. Early that morning the new
constitution had been proclaimed, with much firing of cannon and display
of official fireworks; but even these great news, and their attendant
manifestations, had failed to enliven the populace, who, instead of
filling the streets with their usual stir, hung massed at certain
points, as though curiously waiting on events. There are few sights more
ominous than that of a crowd thus observing itself, watching in
inconscient suspense for the unknown crisis which its own passions have
engendered.
It was known that his Highness, after the public banquet at the palace,
was to proceed in state to the University; and the throng was thick
about the palace gates and in the streets betwixt it and the Signoria.
Here the square was close-packed, and every window choked with gazers,
as the Duke's coach came in sight, escorted meagrely by his equerries
and the half-dozen light-horse that preceded him. The small escort, and
the marked absence of military display, perhaps disappointed the
splendour-loving crowd; and from this cause or another, scarce a cheer
was heard as his Highness descended from his coach, and walked up the
steps to the porch of ancient carved stone where the faculty awaited
him.
The hall was already filled with students and graduates, and with the
guests of the University. Through this grave assemblage the Duke passed
up to the row of armchairs beneath the dais at the farther end of the
room. Trescorre, who was to have attended his Highness, had excused
himself on the plea of indisposition, and only a few
gentlemen-in-waiting accompanied the Duke; but in the brown half-light
of the old Gothic hall their glittering uniforms contrasted brilliantly
with the black gowns of the students, and the sober broadcloth of the
learned professions. A discreet murmur of enthusiasm rose at their
approach, mounting almost to a cheer as the Duke bowed before taking his
seat; for the audience represented the class most in sympathy with his
policy and most confident of its success.
The meetings of the faculty were held in the great council-chamber where
the Rectors of the old free city had assembled; and such a setting was
regarded as peculiarly appropriate to the present occasion. The fact was
alluded to, with much wealth of historical and mythological analogy, by
the President, who opened the ceremonies with a polysyllabic Latin
oration, in which the Duke was compared to Apollo, Hercules and Jason,
as well as to the flower of sublunary heroes.
This feat of rhetoric over, the candidates were called on to advance and
receive their degrees. The men came first, profiting by the momentary
advantage of sex, but clearly aware of its inability to confer even
momentary importance in the eyes of the impatient audience. A pause
followed, and then Fulvia appeared. Against the red-robed faculty at the
back of the dais, she stood tall and slender in her black cap and gown.
The high windows of painted glass shed a paleness on her face, but her
carriage was light and assured as she advanced to the President and
knelt to receive her degree. The parchment was placed in her hand, the
furred hood laid on her shoulders; then, after another flourish of
rhetoric, she was led to the lectern from which her discourse was to be
delivered. Odo sat just below her, and as she took her place their eyes
met for an instant. He was caught up in the serene exaltation of her
look, as though she soared with him above wind and cloud to a region of
unshadowed calm; then her eyes fell and she began to speak.
She had a pretty mastery of Latin, and though she had never before
spoken in public, her poetical recitations, and the early habit of
intercourse with her father's friends, had given her a fair measure of
fluency and self-possession. These qualities were raised to eloquence by
the sweetness of her voice, and by the grave beauty which made the
academic gown seem her natural wear, rather than a travesty of learning.
Odo at first had some difficulty in fixing his attention on what she
said; and when he controlled his thoughts she was in the height of her
panegyric of constitutional liberty. She had begun slowly, almost
coldly; but now her theme possessed her. One by one she evoked the
familiar formulas with which his mind had once reverberated. They woke
no echo in him now; but he saw that she could still set them ringing
through the sensibilities of her hearers. As she stood there, a slight
impassioned figure, warming to her high argument, his sense of irony was
touched by the incongruity of her background. The wall behind her was
covered by an ancient fresco, fast fading under its touches of renewed
gilding, and representing the patron scholars of the mediaeval world:
the theologians, law-givers and logicians under whose protection the
free city had placed its budding liberties. There they sat, rigid and
sumptuous on their Gothic thrones: Origen, Zeno, David, Lycurgus,
Aristotle; listening in a kind of cataleptic helplessness to a
confession of faith that scattered their doctrines to the winds. As he
looked and listened, a weary sense of the reiterance of things came over
him. For what were these ancient manipulators of ideas, prestidigitators
of a vanished world of thought, but the forbears of the long line of
theorists of whom Fulvia was the last inconscient mouthpiece? The new
game was still played with the old counters, the new jugglers repeated
the old tricks; and the very words now poured out in defence of the new
cause were but mercenaries scarred in the service of its enemies. For
generations, for centuries, man had fought on; crying for liberty,
dreaming it was won, waking to find himself the slave of the new forces
he had generated, burning and being burnt for the same beliefs under
different guises, calling his instinct ideas and his ideas revelations;
destroying, rebuilding, falling, rising, mending broken weapons,
championing extinct illusions, mistaking his failures for achievements
and planting his flag on the ramparts as they fell. And as the vision of
this inveterate conflict rose before him, Odo saw that the beauty, the
power, the immortality, dwelt not in the idea but in the struggle for
it.
His resistance yielded as this sense stole over him, and with an almost
physical relief he felt himself drawn once more into the familiar
current of emotion. Yes, it was better after all to be one of that great
unconquerable army, though, like the Trojans fighting for a phantom
Helen, they might be doing battle for the shadow of a shade; better to
march in their ranks, endure with them, fight with them, fall with them,
than to miss the great enveloping sense of brotherhood that turned
defeat to victory.
As the conviction grew in him, Fulvia's words regained their lost
significance. Through the set mask of language the living thoughts
looked forth, old indeed as the world, but renewed with the new life of
every heart that bore them. She had left the abstract and dropped to
concrete issues: to the gift of the constitution, the benefits and
obligations it implied, the new relations it established between ruler
and subject and between man and man. Odo saw that she approached the
question without flinching. No trace remained of the trembling woman who
had clung to him the night before. Her old convictions repossessed her
and she soared above human fears.
So engrossed was he that he had been unaware of a growing murmur of
sound which seemed to be forcing its way from without through the walls
of the ancient building. As Fulvia's oration neared its end the murmur
rose to a roar. Startled faces were turned toward the doors of the
council-chamber, and one of the Duke's gentlemen left his seat and made
his way through the audience. Odo sat motionless, his eyes on Fulvia. He
noticed that her face paled as the sound reached her, but there was no
break in the voice with which she uttered the closing words of her
peroration. As she ended, the noise was momentarily drowned under a loud
burst of clapping; but this died in a hush of apprehension through which
the outer tumult became more ominously audible. The equerry reentered
the hall with a disordered countenance. He hastened to the Duke and
addressed him urgently.
"Your Highness," he said, "the crowd has thickened and wears an ugly
look. There are many friars abroad, and images of the Mountain Virgin
are being carried in procession. Will your Highness be pleased to remain
here while I summon an escort from the barracks?"
Odo was still watching Fulvia. She had received the applause of the
audience with a deep reverence, and was now in the act of withdrawing to
the inner room at the back of the dais. Her eyes met Odo's; she smiled
and the door closed on her. He turned to the equerry.
"There is no need of an escort," he said. "I trust my people if they do
not trust me."
"But, your Highness, the streets are full of demagogues who have been
haranguing the people since morning. The crowd is shouting against the
constitution and against the Signorina Vivaldi."
A flame of anger passed over the Duke's face; but he subdued it
instantly.
"Go to the Signorina Vivaldi," he said, pointing to the door by which
Fulvia had left the hall. "Assure her that there is no danger, but ask
her to remain where she is till the crowd disperses, and request the
faculty in my name to remain with her."
The equerry bowed, and hurried up the steps of the dais, while the Duke
signed to his other companions to precede him to the door of the hall.
As they walked down the long room, between the close-packed ranks of the
audience, the outer tumult surged threateningly toward them. Near the
doorway, another of the gentlemen-in-waiting was seen to speak with the
Duke.
"Your Highness," he said, "there is a private way at the back by which
you may yet leave the building unobserved."
"You appear to forget that I entered it publicly," said Odo.
"But, your Highness, we cannot answer for the consequences--"
The Duke signed to the ushers to throw open the doors. They obeyed, and
he stepped out into the stone vestibule preceding the porch. The
iron-barred outer doors of this vestibule were securely bolted, and the
porter hung back in affright at the order to unlock them.
"Your Highness, the people are raving mad," he said, flinging himself on
his knees.
Odo turned impatiently to his escort. "Unbar the doors, gentlemen," he
said. The blood was drumming in his ears, but his eye was clear and
steady, and he noted with curious detachment the comic agony of the fat
porter's face, and the strain and swell of the equerry's muscles as he
dragged back the ponderous bolts.
The doors swung open, and the Duke emerged. Below him, still with that
unimpaired distinctness of vision which seemed a part of his heightened
vitality, he saw a great gesticulating mass of people. They packed the
square so closely that their own numbers held them immovable, save for
their swaying arms and heads; and those whom the square could not
contain had climbed to porticoes, balconies and cornices, and massed
themselves in the neck of the adjoining streets. The handful of
light-horse who had escorted the Duke's carriage formed a single line at
the foot of the steps, so that the approach to the porch was still
clear; but it was plain that the crowd, with its next movement, would
break through this slender barrier and hem in the Duke.
At Odo's appearance the shouting had ceased and every eye was turned on
him. He stood there, a brilliant target, in his laced coat of
peach-coloured velvet, his breast covered with orders, a hand on his
jewelled sword-hilt. For a moment sovereign and subjects measured each
other; and in that moment Odo drank his deepest draught of life. He was
not thinking now of the constitution or its opponents. His present
business was to get down the steps and into the carriage, returning to
the palace as openly as he had come. He was conscious of neither pity
nor hatred for the throng in his path. For the moment he regarded them
merely as a natural force, to be fought against like storm or flood. His
clearest sensation was one of relief at having at last some material
obstacle to spend his strength against, instead of the impalpable powers
which had so long beset him. He felt, too, a boyish satisfaction at his
own steadiness of pulse and eye, at the absence of that fatal inertia
which he had come to dread. So clear was his mental horizon that it
embraced not only the present crisis, but a dozen incidents leading up
to it. He remembered that Trescorre had urged him to take a larger
escort, and that he had refused on the ground that any military display
might imply a doubt of his people. He was glad now that he had done so.
He would have hated to slink to his carriage behind a barrier of drawn
swords. He wanted no help to see him through this business. The blood
sang in his veins at the thought of facing it alone.
The silence lasted but a moment; then an image of the Mountain Virgin
was suddenly thrust in air, and a voice cried out: "Down with our Lady's
enemies! We want no laws against the friars!"
A howl caught up the words and tossed them to and fro above the seething
heads. Images of the Virgin, religious banners, the blue-and-white of
the Madonna's colours, suddenly canopied the crowd.
"We want the Barnabites back!" sang out another voice.
"Down with the free-thinkers!" yelled a hundred angry throats.
A stone or two sped through the air and struck the sculptures of the
porch.
"Your Highness!" cried the equerry who stood nearest, and would have
snatched the Duke back within doors.
For all answer, Odo stepped clear of the porch and advanced to the edge
of the steps. As he did so, a shower of missiles hummed about him, and a
stone struck him on the lip. The blood rushed to his head, and he swayed
in the sudden grip of anger; but he mastered himself and raised his lace
handkerchief to the cut.
His gentlemen had drawn their swords; but he signed to them to sheathe
again. His first thought was that he must somehow make the people hear
him. He lifted his hand and advanced a step; but as he did so a shot
rang out, followed by a loud cry. The lieutenant of the light-horse,
infuriated by the insult to his master, had drawn the pistol from his
holster and fired blindly into the crowd. His bullet had found a mark,
and the throng hissed and seethed about the spot where a man had fallen.
At the same instant Odo was aware of a commotion in the group behind
him, and with a great plunge of the heart he saw Fulvia at his side. She
still wore the academic dress, and her black gown detached itself
sharply against the bright colours of the ducal uniforms.
Groans and hisses received her, but the mob hung back, as though her
look had checked them. Then a voice shrieked out: "Down with the
atheist! We want no foreign witches!" and another caught it up with the
yell: "She poisoned the weaver's boy! Her father was hanged for
murdering Christian children!"
The cry set the crowd in motion again, and it rolled toward the line of
mounted soldiers at the foot of the steps. The men had their hands on
their holsters; but the Duke's call rang out: "No firing!" and drawing
their blades, they sat motionless to receive the shock.
It came, dashed against them and dispersed them. Only a few yards lay
now between the people and their sovereign. But at that moment another
shot was fired. This time it came from the thick of the crowd. The
equerries' swords leapt forth again, and they closed around the Duke and
Fulvia.
"Save yourself, sir! Back into the building!" one of the gentlemen
shouted; but Odo had no eyes for what was coming. For as the shot was
heard he had seen a change in Fulvia. A moment they had stood together,
smiling, undaunted, hands locked and wedded eyes, then he felt her
dissolve against him and drop between his arms.
A cry had gone out that the Duke was wounded, and a leaden silence fell
on the crowd. In that silence Odo knelt, lifting Fulvia's head to his
breast. No wound showed through her black gown. She lay as though
smitten by some invisible hand. So deep was the hush that her least
whisper must have reached him; but though he bent close no whisper came.
The invisible hand had struck the very source of life; and to these two,
in their moment of final reunion, with so much unsaid between them that
now at last they longed to say, there was left only the dumb communion
of fast-clouding eyes...
A clatter of cavalry was heard down the streets that led to the square.
The equerry sent to warn Fulvia had escaped from the back of the
building and hastened to the barracks to summon a regiment. But the
soldiery were no longer needed. The blind fury of the mob had died of
its own excess. The rumour that the Duke was hurt brought a chill
reaction of dismay, and the rioters were already scattering when the
cavalry came in sight. Their approach turned the slow dispersal to a
stampede. A few arrests were made, the remaining groups were charged by
the soldiers, and presently the square lay bare as a storm-swept plain,
though the people still hung on its outskirts, ready to disband at the
first threat of the troops.
It was on this solitude that the Duke looked out as he regained a sense
of his surroundings. Fulvia had been carried into the audience-chamber
and laid on the dais, her head resting on the velvet cushions of the
ducal chair. She had died instantly, shot through the heart, and the
surgeons summoned in haste had soon ceased from their ineffectual
efforts. For a long time Odo knelt beside her, unconscious of all but
that one wild moment when life at its highest had been dashed into the
gulf of death. Thought had ceased, and neither rage nor grief moved as
yet across the chaos of his being. All his life was in his eyes, as they
drew up, drop by drop, the precious essence of her loveliness. For she
had grown, beneath the simplifying hand of death, strangely yet most
humanly beautiful. Life had fallen from her like the husk from the
flower, and she wore the face of her first hopes. The transition had
been too swift for any backward look, any anguished rending of the
fibres, and he felt himself, not detached by the stroke, but caught up
with her into some great calm within the heart of change.
He knew not how he found himself once more on the steps above the
square. Below him his state carriage stood in the same place, flanked by
the regiment of cavalry. Down the narrow streets he saw the brooding
cloud of people, and the sight roused his blood. They were his enemies
now--he felt the warm hate in his veins. They were his enemies, and he
would face them openly. No closed chariot guarded by troops--he would
not have so much as a pane of glass between himself and his subjects. He
descended the steps, bade the colonel of the regiment dismount, and
sprang into his saddle. Then, at the head of his soldiers, at a
foot-pace, he rode back through the packed streets to the palace.
In the palace, courtyard and vestibule were thronged with courtiers and
lacqueys. He walked through them with his head high, the cut on his lip
like the mark of a hot iron in the dead whiteness of his face. At the
head of the great staircase Maria Clementina waited. She sprang forward,
distraught and trembling, her face as blanched as his.
"You are safe--you are safe--you are not hurt--" she stammered, catching
at his hands.
A shudder seized him as he put her aside.
"Odo! Odo!" she cried passionately, and made as though to bar his way.
He gave her a blind look and passed on down the long gallery to his
closet.
4.11.
The joy of reprisals lasted no longer than a summer storm. To hurt, to
silence, to destroy, was too easy to be satisfying. The passions of his
ancestors burned low in Odo's breast: though he felt Bracciaforte's fury
in his veins he could taste no answering gratification of revenge. And
the spirit on which he would have spent his hatred was not here or
there, as an embodied faction, but everywhere as an intangible
influence. The acqua tofana of his enemies had pervaded every fibre of
the state.
The mist of anguish lifted, he saw himself alone among ruins. For a
moment Fulvia's glowing faith had hung between him and a final vision of
the truth; and as his convictions weakened he had replaced them with an
immense pity, an all-sufficing hope. Sentimental verbiage: he saw it
clearly now. He had been the dupe of the old word-jugglery which was
forever confounding fact and fancy in men's minds. For it was
essentially an age of words: the world was drunk with them, as it had
once been drunk with action; and the former was the deadlier drug of the
two. He looked about him languidly, letting the facts of life filter
slowly through his faculties. The sources of energy were so benumbed in
him that he felt like a man whom long disease had reduced to
helplessness and who must laboriously begin his bodily education again.
Hate was the only passion which survived, and that was but a deaf
intransitive emotion coiled in his nature's depths.
Sickness at last brought its obliteration. He sank into gulfs of
weakness and oblivion, and when the rise of the tide floated him back to
life, it was to a life as faint and colourless as infancy. Colourless
too were the boundaries on which he looked out: the narrow enclosure of
white walls, opening on a slit of pale spring landscape. His hands lay
before him, white and helpless on the white coverlet of his bed. He
raised his eyes and saw de Crucis at his side. Then he began to
remember. There had been preceding intervals of consciousness, and in
one of them, in answer perhaps to some vaguely-uttered wish for light
and air, he had been carried out of the palace and the city to the
Benedictine monastery on its wooded knoll beyond the Piana. Then the
veil had dropped again, and his spirit had wandered in a dim place of
shades. There was a faint sweetness in coming back at last to familiar
sights and sounds. They no longer hurt like pressure on an aching nerve:
they seemed rather, now, the touch of a reassuring hand.
As the contact with life became closer and more sustained he began to
watch himself curiously, wondering what instincts and habits of thought
would survive his long mental death. It was with a bitter, almost
pitiable disappointment that he found the old man growing again in him.
Life, with a mocking hand, brought him the cast-off vesture of his past,
and he felt himself gradually compressed again into the old passions and
prejudices. Yet he wore them with a difference--they were a cramping
garment rather than a living sheath. He had brought back from his lonely
voyagings a sense of estrangement deeper than any surface-affinity with
things.
As his physical strength returned, and he was able to leave his room and
walk through the long corridors to the outer air, he felt the old spell
which the life of Monte Cassino had cast on him. The quiet garden, with
its clumps of box and lavender between paths converging to the statue of
Saint Benedict; the cloisters paved with the monks' nameless graves; the
traces of devotional painting left here and there on the weather-beaten
walls, like fragments of prayer in a world-worn mind: these formed a
circle of tranquillising influences in which he could gradually
reacquire the habit of living.
He had never deceived himself as to the cause of the riots. He knew from
Gamba and Andreoni that the liberals and the court, for once working in
unison, had provoked the blind outburst of fanaticism which a rasher
judgment might have ascribed to the clergy. The Dominicans, bigoted and
eager for power, had been ready enough to serve such an end, and some of
the begging orders had furnished the necessary points of contact with
the people; but the movement was at bottom purely political, and
represented the resistance of the privileged classes to any attack on
their inherited rights.
As such, he could no longer regard it as completely unreasonable. He was
beginning to feel the social and political significance of those old
restrictions and barriers against which his early zeal had tilted.
Certainly in the ideal state the rights and obligations of the different
classes would be more evenly adjusted. But the ideal state was a figment
of the brain. The real one, as Crescenti had long ago pointed out, was
the gradual and heterogeneous product of remote social conditions,
wherein every seeming inconsistency had its roots in some bygone need,
and the character of each class, with its special passions, ignorances
and prejudices, was the sum total of influences so ingrown and
inveterate that they had become a law of thought. All this, however,
seemed rather matter for philosophic musing than for definite action.
His predominant feeling was still that of remoteness from the immediate
issues of life: the soeva indignatio had been succeeded by a great calm.
The soothing influences of the monastic life had doubtless helped to
tide him over the stormy passage of returning consciousness. His
sensitiveness to these influences inclined him for the first time to
consider them analytically. Hitherto he had regarded the Church as a
skilfully-adjusted engine, the product of human passions scientifically
combined to obtain the greatest sum of tangible results. Now he saw that
he had never penetrated beneath the surface. For the Church which
grasped, contrived, calculated, struggled for temporal possessions and
used material weapons against spiritual foes--this outer Church was
nothing more than the body, which, like any other animal body, had to
care for its own gross needs, nourish, clothe, defend itself, fight for
a footing among the material resistances of life--while the soul, the
inner animating principle, might dwell aloof from all these things, in a
clear medium of its own.
To this soul of the Church his daily life now brought him close. He felt
it in the ordered beneficence of the great community, in the simplicity
of its external life and the richness and suavity of its inner
relations. No alliance based on material interests, no love of power
working toward a common end, could have created that harmony of thought
and act which was reflected in every face about him. Each of these men
seemed to have FOUND OUT SOMETHING of which he was still ignorant.
What it was, de Crucis tried to tell him as they paced the cloisters
together or sat in the warm stillness of the budding garden. At the
first news of the Duke's illness the Jesuit had hastened to Pianura. No
companionship could have been so satisfying to Odo. De Crucis's mental
attitude toward mankind might have been defined as an illuminated
charity. To love men, or to understand them, is not as unusual as to do
both together; and it was the intellectual acuteness of his friend's
judgments that made their Christian amenity so seductive to Odo.
"The highest claim of Christianity," the Jesuit said one morning, as
they sat on a worn stone bench at the end of the sunny vine-walk, "is
that it has come nearer to solving the problem of men's relations to
each other than any system invented by themselves. This, after all, is
the secret principle of the Church's vitality. She gave a spiritual
charter of equality to mankind long before the philosophers thought of
giving them a material one. If, all the while, she has been fighting for
dominion, arrogating to herself special privileges, struggling to
preserve the old lines of social and legal demarcation, it has been
because for nigh two thousand years she has cherished in her breast the
one free city of the spirit, because to guard its liberties she has had
to defend and strengthen her own position. I do not ask you to consider
whence comes this insight into the needs of man, this mysterious power
over him; I ask you simply to confess them in their results. I am not of
those who believe that God permits good to come to mankind through one
channel only, and I doubt not that now and in times past the thinkers
whom your Highness follows have done much to raise the condition of
their fellows; but I would have you observe that, where they have done
so, it has been because, at bottom, their aims coincided with the
Church's. The deeper you probe into her secret sources of power, the
more you find there, in the germ if you will, but still potentially
active, all those humanising energies which work together for the
lifting of the race. In her wisdom and her patience she may have seen
fit to withhold their expression, to let them seek another outlet; but
they are there, stored in her consciousness like the archetypes of the
Platonists in the Universal Mind. It is the knowledge of this, the sure
knowledge of it, which creates the atmosphere of serenity that you feel
about you. From the tilling of the vineyards, or the dressing of a
beggar's sores, to the loftiest and most complicated intellectual labour
imposed on him, each brother knows that his daily task is part of a
great scheme of action, working ever from imperfection to perfection,
from human incompleteness to the divine completion. This sense of being,
not straws on a blind wind of chance, but units in an ordered force,
gives to the humblest Christian an individual security and dignity which
kings on their thrones might envy.
"But not only does the Church anticipate every tendency of mankind;
alone of all powers she knows how to control and direct the passions she
excites. This it is which makes her an auxiliary that no temporal prince
can well despise. It is in this aspect that I would have your Highness
consider her. Do not underrate her power because it seems based on the
commoner instincts rather than on the higher faculties of man. That is
one of the sources of her strength. She can support her claims by reason
and argument, but it is because her work, like that of her divine
Founder, lies chiefly among those who can neither reason nor argue, that
she chooses to rest her appeal on the simplest and most universal
emotions. As, in our towns, the streets are lit mainly by the tapers
before the shrines of the saints, so the way of life would be dark to
the great multitude of men but for the light of faith burning within
them..."
Meanwhile the shufflings of destiny had brought to Trescorre the prize
for which he waited. During the Duke's illness he had been appointed
regent of Pianura, and his sovereign's reluctance to take up the cares
of government had now left him for six months in authority. The day
after the proclaiming of the constitution Odo had withdrawn his
signature from it, on the ground that the concessions it contained were
inopportune. The functions of government went on again in the old way.
The old abuses persisted, the old offences were condoned: it was as
though the apathy of the sovereign had been communicated to his people.
Centuries of submission were in their blood, and for two generations
there had been no warfare south of the Alps.
For the moment men's minds were turned to the great events going forward
in France. It had not yet occurred to the Italians that the recoil of
these events might be felt among themselves. They were simply amused
spectators, roused at last to the significance of the show, but never
dreaming that they might soon be called from the wings to the
footlights. To de Crucis, however, the possibility of such a call was
already present, and it was he who pressed the Duke to return to his
post. A deep reluctance held Odo back. He would have liked to linger on
in the monastery, leading the tranquil yet busy life of the monks, and
trying to read the baffling riddle of its completeness. At that moment
it seemed to him of vastly more importance to discover the exact nature
of the soul--whether it was in fact a metaphysical entity, as these men
believed, or a mere secretion of the brain, as he had been taught to
think--than to go back and govern his people. For what mattered the
rest, if he had been mistaken about the soul?
With a start he realised that he was going as his cousin had gone--that
this was but another form of the fatal lethargy that hung upon his race.
An effort of the will drew him back to Pianura, and made him resume the
semblance of authority; but it carried him no farther. Trescorre
ostensibly became prime minister, and in reality remained the head of
the state. The Duke was present at the cabinet meetings but took no part
in the direction of affairs. His mind was lost in a maze of metaphysical
speculations; and even these served him merely as some
cunningly-contrived toy with which to trick his leisure.
His revocation of the charter had necessarily separated him from Gamba
and the advanced liberals. He knew that the hunchback, ever scornful of
expediency, charged him with disloyalty to the people; but such charges
could no longer wound. The events following the Duke's birthday had
served to crystallise the schemes of the little liberal group, and they
now formed a campaign of active opposition to the government, attacking
it by means of pamphlets and lampoons, and by such public speaking as
the police allowed. The new professors of the University, ardently in
sympathy with the constitutional movement, used their lectures as means
of political teaching, and the old stronghold of dogma became the centre
of destructive criticism. But as yet these ideas formed but a single
live point in the general numbness.
Two years passed in this way. North of the Alps, all Europe was
convulsed, while Italy was still but a sleeper who tosses in his sleep.
In the two Sicilies, the arrogance and perfidy of the government gave a
few martyrs to the cause, and in Bologna there was a brief revolutionary
outbreak; but for the most part the Italian states were sinking into
inanition. Venice, by recalling her fleet from Greece, let fall the
dominion of the sea. Twenty years earlier Genoa had basely yielded
Corsica to France. The Pope condemned the French for their outrages on
religion, and his subjects murdered Basseville, the agent of the new
republic. The sympathies and impulses of the various states were as
contradictory as they were ineffectual.
Meanwhile, in France, Europe was trying to solve at a stroke the
problems of a thousand years. All the repressed passions which
civilisation had sought, however imperfectly, to curb, stalked abroad
destructive as flood and fire. The great generation of the
Encyclopaedists had passed away, and the teachings of Rousseau had
prevailed over those of Montesquieu and Voltaire. The sober sense of the
economists was swept aside by the sound and fury of the demagogues, and
France was become a very Babel of tongues. The old malady of words had
swept over the world like a pestilence.
To the little Italian courts, still dozing in fancied security under the
wing of Bourbon and Hapsburg suzerains, these rumours were borne by the
wild flight of emigres--dead leaves loosened by the first blast of the
storm. Month by month they poured across the Alps in ever-increasing
numbers, bringing confused contradictory tales of anarchy and outrage.
Among those whom chance thus carried to Pianura were certain familiars
of the Duke's earlier life--the Count Alfieri and his royal mistress,
flying from Paris, and arriving breathless with the tale of their
private injuries. To the poet of revolt this sudden realisation of his
doctrines seemed in fact a purely personal outrage. It was as though a
man writing an epic poem on an earthquake should suddenly find himself
engulphed. To Alfieri the downfall of the French monarchy and the
triumph of democratic ideas meant simply that his French investments had
shrunk to nothing, and that he, the greatest poet of the age, had been
obliged, at an immense sacrifice of personal dignity, to plead with a
drunken mob for leave to escape from Paris. To the wider aspect of the
"tragic farce," as he called it, his eyes remained obstinately closed.
He viewed the whole revolutionary movement as a conspiracy against his
comfort, and boasted that during his enforced residence in France he had
not so much as exchanged a word with one of the "French slaves,
instigators of false liberty," who, by trying to put into action the
principles taught in his previous works, had so grievously interfered
with the composition of fresh masterpieces.
The royal pretensions of the Countess of Albany--pretentions affirmed
rather than abated as the tide of revolution rose--made it impossible
that she should be received at the court of Pianura; but the Duke found
a mild entertainment in Alfieri's company. The poet's revulsion of
feeling seemed to Odo like the ironic laughter of the fates. His
thoughts returned to the midnight meetings of the Honey Bees, and to the
first vision of that face which men had lain down their lives to see.
Men had looked on that face since then, and its horror was reflected in
their own.
Other fugitives to Pianura brought another impression of events--that
comic note which life, the supreme dramatic artist, never omits from her
tragedies. These were the Duke's old friend the Marquis de Coeur-Volant,
fleeing from his chateau as the peasants put the torch to it, and
arriving in Pianura destitute, gouty and middle-aged, but imperturbable
and epigrammatic as ever. With him came his Marquise, a dark-eyed lady,
stout to unwieldiness and much given to devotion, in whom it was
whispered (though he introduced her as the daughter of a Venetian
Senator) that a reminiscent eye might still detect the outline of the
gracefullest Columbine who had ever flitted across the Italian stage.
These visitors were lodged by the Duke's kindness in the Palazzo
Cerveno, near the ducal residence; and though the ladies of Pianura were
inclined to look askance on the Marquise's genealogy, yet his Highness's
condescension, and her own edifying piety, had soon allayed these
scruples, and the salon of Madame de Coeur-Volant became the rival of
Madame d'Albany's.
It was, in fact, the more entertaining of the two; for, in spite of his
lady's austere views, the Marquis retained that gift of social
flexibility that was already becoming the tradition of a happier day. To
the Marquis, indeed, the revolution was execrable not so much because of
the hardships it inflicted, as because it was the forerunner of social
dissolution--the breaking-up of the regime which had made manners the
highest morality, and conversation the chief end of man. He could have
lived gaily on a crust in good company and amid smiling faces; but the
social deficiencies of Pianura were more difficult to endure than any
material privation. In Italy, as the Marquis had more than once
remarked, people loved, gambled, wrote poetry, and patronised the arts;
but, alas, they did not converse. Coeur-Volant could not conceal from
his Highness that there was no conversation in Pianura; but he did his
best to fill the void by the constant exercise of his own gift in that
direction, and to Odo at least his talk seemed as good as it was
copious. Misfortune had given a finer savour to the Marquis's
philosophy, and there was a kind of heroic grace in his undisturbed
cultivation of the amenities.
While the Marquis was struggling to preserve the conversational art, and
Alfieri planning the savage revenge of the Misogallo, the course of
affairs in France had gained a wilder impetus. The abolition of the
nobility, the flight and capture of the King, his enforced declaration
of war against Austria, the massacres of Avignon, the sack of the
Tuileries--such events seemed incredible enough till the next had
crowded them out of mind. The new year rose in blood and mounted to a
bloodier noon. All the old defences were falling. Religion, monarchy,
law, were sucked down into the whirlpool of liberated passions. Across
that sanguinary scene passed, like a mocking ghost, the philosophers'
vision of the perfectibility of man. Man was free at last--freer than
his would-be liberators had ever dreamed of making him--and he used his
freedom like a beast. For the multitude had risen--that multitude which
no man could number, which even the demagogues who ranted in its name
had never seriously reckoned with--that dim, grovelling
indistinguishable mass on which the whole social structure rested. It
was as though the very soil moved, rising in mountains or yawning in
chasms about the feet of those who had so long securely battened on it.
The earth shook, the sun and moon were darkened, and the people, the
terrible unknown people, had put in the sickle to the harvest.
Italy roused herself at last. The emissaries of the new France were
swarming across the Alps, pervading the peninsula as the Jesuits had
once pervaded Europe; and in the mind of a young general of the
republican army visions of Italian conquest were already forming. In
Pianura the revolutionary agents found a strong republican party headed
by Gamba and his friends, and a government weakened by debt and
dissensions. The air was thick with intrigue. The little army could no
longer be counted on, and a prolonged bread-riot had driven Trescorre
out of the ministry and compelled the Duke to appoint Andreoni in his
place. Behind Andreoni stood Gamba and the radicals. There could be no
doubt which way the fortunes of the duchy tended. The Duke's would-be
protectors, Austria and the Holy See, were too busy organising the hasty
coalition of the powers to come to his aid, had he cared to call on
them. But to do so would have been but another way of annihilation. To
preserve the individuality of his state, or to merge it in the vision of
a United Italy, seemed to him the only alternatives worth fighting for.
The former was a futile dream, the latter seemed for a brief moment
possible. Piedmont, ever loyal to the monarchical principle, was calling
on her sister states to arm themselves against the French invasion. But
the response was reluctant and uncertain. Private ambitions and petty
jealousies hampered every attempt at union. Austria, the Bourbons and
the Holy See held the Italian principalities in a network of conflicting
interests and obligations that rendered free action impossible. Sadly
Victor Amadeus armed himself alone against the enemy.
Under such conditions Odo could do little to direct the course of
events. They had passed into more powerful hands than his. But he could
at least declare himself for or against the mighty impulse which was
behind them. The ideas he had striven for had triumphed at last, and his
surest hold on authority was to share openly in their triumph. A
profound horror dragged him back. The new principles were not those for
which he had striven. The goddess of the new worship was but a bloody
Maenad who had borrowed the attributes of freedom. He could not bow the
knee in such a charnel-house. Tranquilly, resolutely, he took up the
policy of repression. He knew the attempt was foredoomed to failure, but
that made no difference now: he was simply acting out the inevitable.
The last act came with unexpected suddenness. The Duke woke one morning
to find the citadel in the possession of the people. The impregnable
stronghold of Bracciaforte was in the hands of the serfs whose fathers
had toiled to build it, and the last descendant of Bracciaforte was
virtually a prisoner in his palace. The revolution took place quietly,
without violence or bloodshed. Andreoni waited on the Duke, and a
cabinet-council was summoned. The ministers affected to have yielded
reluctantly to popular pressure. All they asked was a constitution and
the assurance that no resistance would be offered to the French.
The Duke requested a few hours for deliberation. Left alone, he summoned
the Duchess's chamberlain. The ducal pair no longer met save on
occasions of state: they had not exchanged a word since the death of
Fulvia Vivaldi. Odo sent word to her Highness that he could no longer
answer for her security while she remained in the duchy, and that he
begged her to leave immediately for Vienna. She replied that she was
obliged for his warning, but that while he remained in Pianura her place
was at his side. It was the answer he had expected--he had never doubted
her courage--but it was essential to his course that she should leave
the duchy without delay, and after a moment's reflection he wrote a
letter in which he informed her that he must insist on her obedience. No
answer was returned, but he learned that she had turned white, and
tearing the letter in shreds had called for her travelling-carriage
within the hour. He sent to enquire when he might take leave of her, but
she excused herself on the plea of indisposition, and before nightfall
he heard the departing rattle of her wheels.
He immediately summoned Andreoni and announced his unconditional refusal
of the terms proposed to him. He would not give a constitution or
promise allegiance to the French. The minister withdrew, and Odo was
left alone. He had dismissed his gentlemen, and as he sat in his closet
a sense of deathlike isolation came over him. Never had the palace
seemed so silent or so vast. He had not a friend to turn to. De Crucis
was in Germany, and Trescorre, it was reported, had privately attended
the Duchess in her flight. The waves of destiny seemed closing over Odo,
and the circumstances of his past rose, poignant and vivid, before his
drowning sight.
And suddenly, in that moment of failure and abandonment, it seemed to
him again that life was worth the living. His indifference fell from him
like a garment. The old passion of action awoke and he felt a new warmth
in his breast. After all, the struggle was not yet over: though Piedmont
had called in vain on the Italian states, an Italian sword might still
be drawn in her service. If his people would not follow him against
France he could still march against her alone. Old memories hummed in
him at the thought. He recalled how his Piedmontese ancestors had gone
forth against the same foe, and the stout Donnaz blood began to bubble
in his veins.
A knock roused him and Gamba entered by the private way. His appearance
was not unexpected to Odo, and served only to reinforce his new-found
energy. He felt that the issue was at hand. As he expected, Gamba had
been sent to put before him more forcibly and unceremoniously the veiled
threat of the ministers. But the hunchback had come also to plead with
his master in his own name, and in the name of the ideas for which they
had once laboured together. He could not believe that the Duke's
reaction was more than momentary. He could not calculate the strength of
the old associations which, now that the tide had set the other way,
were dragging Odo back to the beliefs and traditions of his caste.
The Duke listened in silence; then he said: "Discussion is idle. I have
no answer to give but that which I have already given." He rose from his
seat in token of dismissal.
The moment was painful to both men. Gamba drew nearer and fell at the
Duke's feet.
"Your Highness," he said, "consider what this means. We hold the state
in our hands. If you are against us you are powerless. If you are with
us we can promise you more power than you ever dreamed of possessing."
The Duke looked at him with a musing smile. "It is as though you offered
me gold in a desert island," he said. "Do not waste such poor bribes on
me. I care for no power but the power to wipe out the work of these last
years. Failing that, I want nothing that you or any other man can give."
Gamba was silent a moment. He turned aside into the embrasure of the
window, and when he spoke again it was in a voice broken with grief.
"Your Highness," he said, "if your choice is made, ours is made also. It
is a hard choice, but these are fratricidal hours. We have come to the
parting of the ways."
The Duke made no sign, and Gamba went on with gathering anguish: "We
would have gone to the world's end with your Highness for our leader!"
"With a leader whom you could lead," Odo interposed. He went up to Gamba
and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Speak out, man," he said. "Say what
you were sent to say. Am I a prisoner?"
The hunchback burst into tears. Odo, with his arms crossed, stood
leaning against the window. The other's anguish seemed to deepen his
detachment.
"Your Highness--your Highness--" Gamba stammered.
The Duke made an impatient gesture. "Come, make an end," he said.
Gamba fell back with a profound bow.
"We do not ask the surrender of your Highness's person," he said.
"Not even that?" Odo returned with a faint sneer.
Gamba flushed to the temples, but the retort died on his lips.
"Your Highness," he said, scarce above a whisper, "the gates are
guarded; but the word for tonight is 'Humilitas.'" He knelt and kissed
Odo's hand. Then he rose and passed out of the room...
* * * * *
Before dawn the Duke left the palace. The high emotions of the night had
ebbed. He saw himself now, in the ironic light of morning, as a fugitive
too harmless to be worth pursuing. His enemies had let him keep his
sword because they had no cause to fear it. Alone he passed through the
gardens of the palace, and out into the desert darkness of the streets.
Skirting the wall of the Benedictine convent where Fulvia had lodged, he
gained a street leading to the marketplace. In the pallor of the waning
night the ancient monuments of his race stood up mournful and deserted
as a line of tombs. The city seemed a grave-yard and he the ineffectual
ghost of its dead past. He reached the gates and gave the watchword. The
gates were guarded, as he had been advised; but the captain of the watch
let him pass without show of hesitation or curiosity. Though he made no
effort at disguise he went forth unrecognised, and the city closed her
doors on him as carelessly as on any passing wanderer.
Beyond the gates a lad from the ducal stables waited with a horse. Odo
sprang into the saddle and rode on toward Pontesordo. The darkness was
growing thinner, and the meagre details of the landscape, with its
huddled farm-houses and mulberry-orchards, began to define themselves as
he advanced. To his left the field stretched, grey and sodden; ahead, on
his right, hung the dark woods of the ducal chase. Presently a bend of
the road brought him within sight of the keep of Pontesordo. His way led
past it, toward Valsecca; but some obscure instinct laid a detaining
hand on him, and at the cross-roads he bent to the right and rode across
the marshland to the old manor-house.
The farmyard lay hushed and deserted. The peasants who lived there would
soon be afoot; but for the moment Odo had the place to himself. He
tethered his horse to a gate-post and walked across the rough
cobble-stones to the chapel. Its floor was still heaped with farm-tools
and dried vegetables, and in the dimness a heavier veil of dust seemed
to obscure the painted walls. Odo advanced, picking his way among broken
ploughshares and stacks of maize, till he stood near the old marble
altar, with its sea-gods and acanthus volutes. The place laid its
tranquillising hush on him, and he knelt on the step beneath the altar.
Something stirred in him as he knelt there--a prayer, yet not a
prayer--a reaching out, obscure and inarticulate, toward all that had
survived of his early hopes and faiths, a loosening of old founts of
pity, a longing to be somehow, somewhere reunited to his old belief in
life.
How long he knelt he knew not; but when he looked up the chapel was full
of a pale light, and in the first shaft of the sunrise the face of Saint
Francis shone out on him...He went forth into the daybreak and rode away
toward Piedmont.
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