University of Virginia Library

1. CHAP. I.

It was an eve fit for an angel's birthnight, (and we
know angels are born in this loving world,) and
while the moon, as if shining only for artist's eyes,
drew the outlines of palace and chapel, stern turret
and serenaded belvidere, with her silver pencil on the
street, two grave seniors, guardians in their own
veins of the blood of two lofty names known long to
Roman story, leaned together over a balcony of
fretted stone, jutting out upon the Corso, and affianced

now leaning against a palace wall, while a wandering
harp-girl sung better for a baiocco than noble
ladies for the praise of a cardinal; at one corner
stood an artist with his tablet, catching some chance
effect perhaps in the drapery of a marble saint,
perhaps in the softer drapery of a sinner; the cafés
far up and down, looked like festas out of doors, with
their groups of gaily dressed idlers, eating sherbets
and buying flowers; a gray friar passed now with
his low toned benedicite; and again a black cowl
with a face that reddened the very moonbeam that
peeped under; hunchbacks contended testily for the
wall and tall fellows (by their long hair and fine
symmetry, professed models for sculptors and painters)
yielded to them with a gibe. And this is Rome
when the moon shines well, and on this care cheating
scene looked down the Countess Violanta, with
her heart as full of perplexity as her silk boddice-lace
would bear without breaking.

I dare say you did not observe, if you were in
Rome that night, and strolling, as you would have
been, in the Corso, (this was three years ago last
May, and if you were in the habit of reading the
Diario di Roma, the story will not be new to you;)
you did not observe, I am sure, that a thread ran
across from the balcony I speak of, in the Palazzo
Cesarini, to a high window in an old palace opposite,
inhabited, as are many palaces in Rome, by a

decayed family and several artists. On the two
sides of this thread, pressed, while she mused, the
slight fingers of Violanta Cesarini; and, as if it
descended from the stars at every pull which the
light May-breeze gave it in passing, she turned her
soft blue eyes upwards, and her face grew radiant
with hope—not such as is fed with star-gazing!

Like a white dove shooting with slant wings
downwards a folded slip of paper flew across on
this invisible thread, and, by heaven's unflickering
lamp, Violanta read some characters traced with a
rough crayon, but in most sweet Italian. A look
upwards, and a nod, as if she were answering the
stars that peeped over her, and the fair form had
gone with its snowy robes from the balcony, and
across the high window from which the messenger
had come, dropped the thick and impenetrable folds
of the gray curtain of an artist.

It was a large upper room, such as is found in the
vast houses of the decayed nobility of Rome, and of
its two windows one was roughly boarded up to
exclude the light, while a coarse gray cloth did
nearly the same service at the other, shutting out all
but an artist's modicum of day. The walls of rough
plaster were covered with grotesque drawings, done
apparently with bits of coal, varied here and there
with scraps of unframed canvass. nailed carelessly

np, and covered with the study of some head, by a
famous master. A large table on one side of the
room was burdened with a confused heap of brushes,
paint-bags, and discoloured cloths, surmounted with
a clean pallette; and not far off stood an easel,
covered with thumb-marks of all dyes, and supporting
a new canvass, on which was outlined the figure
of a nymph, with the head finished in a style that
would have stirred the warm blood of Raphael
himself with emulous admiration. A low flock bed,
and a chair without a bottom, but with a large cloak
hung over its back, a pair of foils and a rapier, completed
so much of the furniture of the room as
belonged to a gay student of Corregio's art, who
wrote himself Biondo Amieri.

By the light of ths same antique lamp, hung on a
rusty nail against the wall, you might see a very
good effect on the face of an unfinished group in
marble, of which the model, in plaster, stood a little
behind, representing a youth with a dagger at his
heart, arrested in the act of self-murder by a female,
whose softened resembled to him proclaimed her at
the first glance his sister. A mallet, chisels, and
other implements used in sculpture, lay on the rough
base of the unfinished group, and half disclosed, half
concealed, by a screen covered with prints by some
curious female hand, stood a bed with white curtains,
and an oratory of carved oak at its head, supporting

a clasped missal. A chair or two, whose seats of
worked satin had figured one day in more luxurious
neighborhood, a table covered with a few books and
several drawings from the antique, and a carefully
locked escritoire, served, with other appearances, to
distinguish this side of the room as belonging to a
separate occupant, of gentler taste or nurture.

While the adventurous Violanta is preparing herself
to take advantage of the information received
by her secret telegraph, I shall have time, dear
reader, to put you up to a little of the family history
of the Cesarini, necessary no less to a proper understanding
of the story, than to the herione's character
for discretion. On the latter point, I would suggest
to you, you may as well suspend your opinion.

It is well known to all the gossips in Rome, that,
for four successive generations, the Marquises of
Cesarini have obtained dispensations of the Pope for
marrying beautiful peasant girls from the neighborhood
of their castle, in Romagna. The considerable
sums paid for these dispensations, reconciled the
Holy See to such an unprecedented introduction of
vulgar blood into the veins of the nobility, and the
remarkable female beauty of the race, (heightened
by the addition of nature's aristocracy to its own,)
contributed to maintain good-will at a court, devoted
above all others to the cultivation of the fine arts,
of which woman is the Eidolon and the soul. The

last marquis, educated like his fathers, in their wild
domain among the mountains, selected, like them,
the fairest wild-flower that sprung at his feet, and
after the birth of one son, applied for the tardy dispensation.
From some unknown cause, (possibly
a diminished bribe, as the marquis was less lavish
in his disposition than his predecessors,) the Pope
sanctioned the marriage, but refused to legitimatize
the son, unless the next born should be a daughter.
The marchioness soon after retired, (from mortification
it is supposed,) to her home in the mountains,
and after two years of close seclusion, returned to
Rome, bringing with her an infant daughter, then
three months of age, destined to be the heroine of our
story. No other child appearing, the young Cesarini
was legitimatized, and with his infant sister passed
most of his youth at Rome. Some three or four years
before the time when our tale commences, this youth,
who had betrayed always, a coarse and brutal temper,
administered his stiletto to a gentleman on the
Corso, and flying from Rome, became a brigand
in the Abruzzi. His violence and atrocity in this
congenial life, soon put him beyond hope of pardon,
and on his outlawry by the Pope, Violanta became
the heiress of the estates of Cesarini.

The marchioness had died when Violanta was
between seven and eight years of age, leaving her,
by a deathbed injunction, in the charge of her own

constant attendant, a faithful servant from Romagno,
supposed to be distant kinswomen to her mistress.
With this tried dependant, the young countess was
permitted to go where she pleased, at all hours
when not attended by her masters, and seeing her
tractable and lovely, the old marquess, whose pride
in the beauty of his family was the passion next to
love of money in his heart, gave himself little trouble,
and thought himself consoled for the loss of his son
in the growing attractions and filial virtues of his
daughter.

On a bright morning in early spring, six years
before the date of our tale, the young countess and
her attendant were gathering wild flowers near the
Fountain of Egeria, (of all spots of earth, that on
which the wild flowers are most profuse and sweetest,)
when a deformed youth, who seemed to be
no stranger to Donna Bettina, addressed Violanta
in a tone of voice so musical, and with a look so
kindly and winning, that the frank child took his hand,
and led him off in search of cardinals and blue-bells,
with the familiarity of an established playfellow.
After this day, the little countess never came home
pleased from a morning drive and ramble in which
she had not seen her friend Signor Giulio; and the
romantic baths of Caracalla, and the many delicious
haunts among the ruins about Rome, had borne
witness to the growth of a friendship, all fondness

and impulse on the part of Violanta, all tenderness
and delicacy on that of the deformed youth. By
what wonderful instinct they happened always to
meet, the delighted child never found time or thought
to inquire.

Two or three years passed on thus, and the old
marquess had grown to listen with amused familiarity
to his daughter's prattle about the deformed
youth, and no incident had varied the pleasant
tenour of their lives and rambles, except that, Giulio
once falling ill, Bettina had taken the young countess
to his home, where she discovered that, young
as he was, he made some progress in moulding in
clay, and was destined for a sculptor. This visit to
the apartment of an obscure youth, however, the
marquis had seen fit to object to; and though, at his
daughter's request, he sent the young sculptor an
order for his first statue, he peremptorily forbade all
further intercourse between him and Violanta. In
the paroxysm of her grief at the first disgrace she
had ever fallen into with her master, Bettina disclosed
to her young mistress, by way of justification,
a secret she had been bound by the most solemn
oaths to conceal, and of which she now was the sole
living depository—that this deformed youth was born
in the castle of the Cesarini, in Romagna, of no less
obscure parentage than the castle's lord and lady,
and being the first child after the dispensation of

marriage, and a son, he was consequently the rightful
heir to the marquisate and estates of Cesarini;
and the elder son, by the terms of that dispensation,
was illegitimate.

This was astounding intelligence to Violanta,
who, nevertheless, child as she was, felt its truth in
the yearnings of her heart to Giulio; but it was
with no little pains and difficulty on Bettina's part,
that she was persuaded to preserve the secret from
her father. The Romagnese knew her master's
weakness; and as the birth of the child had occurred
during his long absence from the castle, and the
marchioness, proud of her eldest-born, had determined
from the first that he alone should enjoy the
name and honours of his father, it was not very
probable that upon the simple word of a domestic,
he would believe a deformed hunchback to be his
son and heir.

The intermediate history of Giulio, Bettina knew
little about, simply informing her mistress, that disgusted
with his deformity, the unnatural mother had
sent him to nurse in a far-off village of Romagna,
and that the interest of a small sum which the marquess
supposed had been expended on masses for
the souls of his ancestors, was still paid to his foster
parents for his use.

From the time of this disclosure, Violanta's life
had been but too happy. Feeling justified in contriving

secret interviews with her brother; and possessing
the efficient connivance of Bettina, who grew,
like, herself, almost to worship the pure-minded
and the gentle Giulio, her heart and her time were
blissfully crowded with interest. So far, the love
that had welled from her heart had been all joyous
and untroubled.

It was during the absence of the marquis and his
daughter from Rome, and in an unhealthy season,
that Giulio, always delicate in health and liable to
excessive fits of depression, had fallen ill in his solitary
room, and, but for the friendly care of a young
artist whom he had long known, must have died of
want and neglect. As he began to recover, he accepted
the offer of Amieri, his friend, to share with
him a lodging in the more elevated air of the Corso,
and, the more readily, that this room chanced to
overlook the palace of Cesarina. Here Violanta
found him on her return, and though displeased that
he was no longer alone, she still continued, when
Amieri was absent, to see him sometimes in his
room, and their old haunts without the walls were
frequented as often as his health and strength would
permit. A chance meeting of Violanta and Amieri
in his own studio, however, made it necessary that
he should be admitted to their secret, and the consequence
of that interview, and others which Violanta
found it impossible to avoid, was a passion in the

heart of the enthusiastic painter, which consumed,
as it well might, every faculty of his soul.

We are thus brought to an evening of balmy May,
when Giulio found himself alone. Biondo had been
painting all day on the face of his nymph, endeavoring
in vain to give it any other features than those
of the lady of his intense worship, and having gone
out to ramble for fresh air and relaxation in the Corso,
Giulio thought he might venture to throw across
his ball of thread and send a missive to his sister,
promising her an uninterrupted hour of his society.

With these preliminaries, our story will now run
smoothly on.