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 | The prose works of N.P. Willis |  |
1. PART I.
“Un homme capable de faire des dominos av ec les os de son
pere.”
—Pere Goriot.
It was in the golden month of August, not very
long ago, that the steamer which plies between St.
Mark's Stairs, at Venice, and the river into which
Phaeton turned a somerset with the horses of the sun,
started on its course over the lagoon with an unusual
God-send of passengers. The moon was rising from
the unchaste bed of the Adriatic (wedded every year
to Venice, yet every day and night sending the sun
and moon from her lovely bosom to the sky), and while
the gold of the west was still glowing on the landward
side of the Campanile, a silver gleam was brightening
momently on the other, and the Arabic domes of St.
Mark and the flying Mercury on the Dogana paled to
the setting orb and kindled to the rising with the same
Talleyrand-esque facility.
For the first hour the Mangia-foco sputtered on her
way with a silent company; the poetry of the scene,
or the regrets at leaving the delicious city lessening
in the distance, affecting all alike with a thoughtful
incommunicativeness. Gradually, however, the dolphin
hues over the Brenta faded away—the marble
city sank into the sea, with its turrets and bright spires
—the still lagoon became a sheet of polished glass—
and the silent groups leaning over the rails found
tongues and feet, and began to stir and murmur.
With the usual unconscious crystallization of society,
the passengers of the Mangia-foco had yielded
one side of the deck to a party of some rank, who had
left their carriages at Ferrara in coming from Florence
to Venice, and were now upon their return to the city
of Tasso, stomaching, with what grace they might, the
contact of a vulgar conveyance, which saved them the
hundred miles of posting between Ferrara and the
Brenta. In the centre of the aristocratic circle stood
a lady enveloped in a cashmere, but with her bonnet
hung by the string over her arm—one of those women
of Italy upon whom the divinest gifts of loveliness are
showered with a profusion which apparently impoverishes
the sex of the whole nation. A beautiful woman
in that land is rarely met; but when she does appear,
she is what Venus would have been after the contest
for beauty on Ida, had the weapons of her antagonists,
as in the tournaments of chivalry, been added to the
palm of victory. The marchesa del Marmore was apparently
twenty-three, and she might have been an
incarnation of the morning-star for pride and brightness.
On the other side of the deck stood a group of
young men, who, by their careless and rather shabby
dress, but pale and intellectual faces, were of that class
met in every public conveyance of Italy. The portfolios
under their arms, ready for a sketch, would have
removed a doubt of their profession, had one existed;
and with that proud independence for which the class
from the noble and ignoble—disqualified by inward
superiority from association with the one, and by accidental
poverty from the claims cultivation might give
them upon the other. Their glances at the divine
face turned toward them from the party I have alluded
to, were less constant than those of the vulgar, who
could not offend; but they were evidently occupied
more with it than with the fishing-boats lying asleep
on the lagoon: and one of them, half-buried in the
coil of rope, and looking under the arm of another,
had already made a sketch of her that might some day
make the world wonder from what seventh heaven of
fancy such an angelic vision of a head had descended
upon the painter's dream.
In the rear of this group, with the air of one who
would conceal himself from view, stood a young man
who belonged to the party, but who, with less of the
pallor of intellectual habits in his face, was much better
dressed than his companions, and had, in spite of
the portfolio under his arm, and a hat of the Salvator
breadth of rim, the undisguisable air of a person accustomed
to the best society. While maintaining a
straggling conversation with his friends, with whom he
seemed a favorite, Signor Basil employed himself in
looking over the sketch of the lovely marchesa going
on at his elbow—occasionally, as if to compare it with
the original, stealing a long look from between his
hand and his slouched hat at the radiant creature sitting
so unconsciously for her picture, and in a low
voice correcting, as by the result of his gaze, the rapid
touches of the artist.
“Take a finer pencil for the nostril, caro mio!” said
he; “it is as thin as the edge of a violet, and its transparent
curve—”
“Cospetto!” said the youth; “but you see by this
faint light better than I: if she would but turn to the
moon—”
The signor Basil suddenly flung his handkerchief
into the lagoon, bringing its shadow between the queen
of night and the marchesa del Marmore; and, attracted
from her revery by the passing object, the lady
moved her head quickly to the light, and in that moment
the spirited lip and nostril were transferred to the
painter's sketch.
“Thanks, mio bravo!” enthusiastically exclaimed
the looker-on; “Giorgione would not have beaten
thee with the crayon!”—and, with a rudeness which
surprised the artist, he seized the paper from beneath
his hand, walked away with it to the stern, and leaning
far over the rails, perused it fixedly by the mellow
lustre of the moon. The youth presently followed
him, and after a few words exchanged in an undertone,
Signor Basil slipped a piece of gold into his
hand, and carefully placed the sketch in his own portfolio.
2. II.
It was toward midnight when the Mangia-foco entered
the Adige, and keeping its steady way between
the low banks of the river, made for the grass-grown
and flowery canal which connects its waters with the
Po. Most of the passengers had yielded to the drowsy
influence of the night air, and, of the aristocratic party
on the larboard side, the young marchesa alone was
waking: her friends had made couches of their cloaks
and baggage, and were reclining at her feet, while the
artists, all except the signor Basil, were stretched fairly
on the deck, their portfolios beneath their heads, and
their large hats covering their faces from the powerful
rays of the moon.
“Miladi does justice to the beauty of the night,”
said the waking artist, in a low and respectful tone,
as he rose from her feet with a cluster of tuberoses she
had let fall from her hand.
“It is indeed lovely, Signor Pittore,” responded the
marchesa, glancing at his portfolio, and receiving the
flowers with a gracious inclination; “have you touched
Venice from the lagoon to-night?”
The signor Basil opened his portfolio, and replied
to the indirect request of the lady by showing her a
very indifferent sketch of Venice from the island of
St. Lazzaro. As if to escape from the necessity of
praising what had evidently disappointed her, she
turned the cartoon hastily, and exposed, on the sheet
beneath, the spirited and admirable outline of her own
matchless features.
A slight start alone betrayed the surprise of the
highborn lady, and raising the cartoon to examine it
more closely, she said with a smile, “You may easier
tread on Titian's heels than Canaletti's. Bezzuoli has
painted me, and not so well. I will awake the marquis,
and he shall purchase it of you.”
“Not for the wealth of the Medici, madam!” said
the young man, clasping his portfolio hastily, “pray
do not disturb monsignore! The picture is dear to
me!”
The marchesa, looking into his face, and with a
glance around, which the accomplished courtier before
her read better than she dreamed, she drew her
shawl over her blanched shoulders, and settled herself
to listen to the conversation of her new acquaintance.
“You would be less gracious if you were observed,
proud beauty,” thought Basil; “but while you think
the poor painter may while away the tediousness of a
vigil, he may feed his eyes on your beauty as well.”
The Mangia-foco turned into the canal, threaded
its lily-paved waters for a mile or two, and then, putting
forth upon the broad bosom of the Po, went on
her course against the stream, and, with retarded pace,
penetrated toward the sun-beloved heart of Italy. And
while the later hours performed their procession with
the stars, the marchesa del Marmore leaned sleepless
and unfatigued against the railing, listening with mingled
curiosity and scorn to the passionate love-murmur
of the enamored painter. His hat was thrown aside,
his fair and curling locks were flowing in the night
air, his form was bent earnestly but respectfully toward
her, and on his lip, with all its submissive tenderness,
there sat a shadow of something she could not define,
but which rebuked, ever and anon, as with the fierce
regard of a noble, the condescension she felt toward
him as an artist.
3. III.
Upon the lofty dome of the altar in the cathedral of
Bologna stands poised an angel in marble, not spoken
of in the books of travellers, but perhaps the loveliest
incarnation of a blessed cherub that ever lay in the
veined bosom of Pentelicus. Lost and unobserved on
the vast floor of the nave, the group of artists, who had
made a day's journey from Ferrara, sat in the wicker
chairs hired for a baioch during the vesper, and drew
silently from this angel, while the devout people of
Bologna murmured their Ave Marias around. Signor
Basil alone was content to look over the work of his
companions, and the twilight had already begun to
brighten the undying lamps at the shrine, when he
started from the pillar against which he leaned, and
crossed hastily toward a group issuing from a private
chapel in the western aisle. A lady walked between
two gentlemen of noble mien, and behind her, attended
by an equally distinguished company, followed that
lady's husband, the marchese del Marmore. They
were strangers passing through Bologna, and had been
attended to vespers by some noble friends.
The companions of the signor Basil looked on with
some surprise as their enamored friend stepped confidently
before the two nobles in attendance upon the
though respectful as became a gentleman, was marked
with the easy politeness of one accustomed to a favorable
reception.
“May I congratulate miladi,” he said, rising slowly
from his bow, and fixing his eyes with unembarrassed
admiration on her own liquid but now frowning orbs,
“upon her safe journey over the marches! Bologna,”
he continued, glancing at the nobles with a courteous
smile, “welcomes her fittingly.”
The lady listened with a look of surprise, and the
Bolognese glanced from the dusty boots of the artist
to his portfolio.
“Has the painter the honor to know la signora?”
asked the cavalier on her right.
“Signor, si!” said the painter, fiercely, as a curl
arched the lady's lip, and she prepared to answer.
The color mounted to the temples of the marchesa,
and her husband, who had loitered beneath the madonna
of Domenichino, coming up at the instant, she
bowed coldly to the signor Basil, and continued down
the aisle. The artist followed to her carriage, and
lifted his hat respectfully as the lumbering equipage
took its way by the famous statue of Neptune, and
then with a confident smile, which seemed to his companions
somewhat mistimed, he muttered between his
teeth, “Ciascuno son bel' giorno!” and strolled loitering
on with them to the trattoria.
4. IV.
The court of the grand-duke of Florence is perhaps
the most cosmopolitan and the most easy of access in
all Europe. The Austrian-born monarch himself,
adopting in some degree the frank and joyous character
of the people over whom he reigns, throws open
his parks and palaces, his gardens and galleries, to the
strangers passing through; and in the season of gayety
almost any presentable person, resident at Florence,
may procure the entree to the court balls, and start
fair with noble dames and gentlemen for grace in
courtly favor. The fêtes at the Palazzo Pitti, albeit
not always exempt from a leaven of vulgarity, are always
brilliant and amusing, and the exclusives of the
court, though they draw the line distinctly enough to
their own eye, mix with apparent abandonment in the
motley waltz and mazurka, and either from good-nature
or a haughty conviction of their superiority, never
suffer the offensive cordon to be felt, scarce to be suspected,
by the multitude who divert them. The
grand-duke, to common eyes, is a grave and rather
timid person, with more of the appearance of the
scholar than of the sovereign, courteous in public, and
benevolent and earnest in his personal attentions to
his guests at the palace. The royal quadrille may be
shared without permission of the grand chamberlain,
and the royal eye, after the first one or two dances of
ceremony, searches for partners by the lamp of beauty,
heedless of the diamonds on the brow, or the star of
nobility on the shoulder. The grand supper is scarce
more exclusive, and on the disappearance of the royal
cortege, the delighted crowd take their departure,
having seen no class more favored than themselves,
and enchanted with the gracious absence of pretension
in the nobilita of Tuscany.
Built against the side of a steep hill, the Palazzo
Pitti encloses its rooms of state within massive and
sombre walls in front, while in the rear the higher stories
of the palace open forth on a level with the delicious
gardens of the Boboli, and contain suites of
smaller apartments, fitted up with a cost and luxury
which would beggar the dream of a Sybarite. Here
lives the monarch, in a seclusion rendered deeper and
more sacred by the propinquity of the admitted world
in the apartments below; and in this sanctuary of royalty
is enclosed a tide of life as silent and unsuspected
by the common inhabitant of Florence as the flow of
the ocean-veiled Arethusa by the mariner of the Ionian
main. Here the invention of the fiery genius of Italy
is exhausted in poetical luxury; here the reserved and
silent sovereign throws off his maintein of royal condescension,
and enters with equal arms into the lists of
love and wit; here burn (as if upon an altar fed with
spice-woods and precious gums) the fervent and uncalculating
passions of this glowing clime, in senses refined
by noble nurture, and hearts prompted by the
haughty pulses of noble blood; and here—to the
threshold of this sanctuary of royal pleasure—press all
who know its secrets, and who imagine a claim to it
in their birth and attractions, while the lascia-passare
is accorded with a difficulty which alone preserves its
splendor.
Some two or three days after the repulse of the
signor Basil in the cathedral of Bologna, the group of
travelling artists were on their way from the grand gallery
at Florence to their noonday meal. Loitering
with slow feet through the crowded and narrow Via
Calzaiole, they emerged into the sunny Piazza, and
looking up with understanding eyes at the slender shaft
of the Campanile (than which a fairer figure of religious
architecture points not to heaven), they took
their way toward the church of Santa Trinita, proposing
to eat their early dinner at a house named, from
its excellence in a certain temperate beverage, La
Birra. The traveller should be advised, also, that by
paying an extra paul in the bottle, he may have at this
renowned eating-house an old wine sunned on the
southern shoulder of Fiesole, that hath in its flavor a
certain redolence of Boccaccio—scarce remarkable,
since it grew in the scene of the Decameron—but of a
virtue which, to the Hundred Tales of Love (read
drinking), is what the Gradus ad Parnassum should
be to the building of a dithyrambic. The oil of two
crazie upon the palm of the fat waiter Giuseppe will
assist in calling the vintage to his memory.
A thundering rap upon the gate of the adjoining
Palazzo arrested the attention of the artists as they
were about to enter the Birra, and in the occupant of
a dark-green cabriolet, drawn by a pampered horse of
the duke's breed, they recognised, elegantly dressed
and posed on his seat a la d'Orsay, the signor Basil.
His coat was of an undecided cut and color, and his
gloves were of primrose purity.
The recognition was immediate, and the cordiality
of the greeting mutual. They had parted from their
companion at the gate of Florence, as travellers part,
without question, and they met without reserve to part
as questionless again. The artists were surprised at
the signor Basil's transformation, but no follower of
their refined art would have been so ill-bred as to express
it. He wished them the bon appetito, as a tall
chasseur came out to say that her ladyship was at
home; and with a slacked rein the fiery horse sprang
through the gateway, and the marble court of the
palace rang with his prancing hoofs.
He who was idle and bought flowers at the Café of
the Colonna at Florence will have remarked, as he sat
in his chair upon the street in the sultry evening the
richly ornamented terrace and balustrade of the Palazzo
Corsi giving upon the Piazza Trinita. The
dark old Ghibelline palace of the Strozzi lets the eye
down upon it, as it might pass from a helmeted knight
with closed vizor to his unbonneted and laughing
page. The crimson curtains of the window opening
upon the terrace, at the time of our story, reminded
every passing Florentine of the lady who dwelt within
—a descendant of one of the haughtiest lines of English
chivalry—resident in Italy since many years for
health, but bearing in her delicate frame and exquisitely
transparent features, the loftiest type of patrician
beauty that had ever filled the eye that looked
upon her. In the inner heaven of royal exclusiveness
lady Geraldine had long been the worshipped and ascendant
cynosure. Happy in a husband without rank
and but of moderate fortune, she maintained the spotless
character of an English wife in this sphere of
conventional corruption; and though the idol of the
duke and his nobles, it would have been like a whisper
against the purity of the brightest Pleiad, to have
linked her name with love.
With her feet upon a sofa covered with a gossamer
cashmere, her lovely head pillowed on a cushion of
silk, and a slight stand within arm's length holding a
vase of flowers and the volume from which she had
been reading, the lady Geraldine received the count
Basil Spiriford, some time attaché to the Russian embassy
at Paris (where he had first sunned his eyes in
her beauty), and at present the newly-appointed secretary
to the minister of the same monarch near the
court of Tuscany.
Without a bow, but with the hasty step and gesture
of a long absent and favored friend, the count Basil
ran to the proffered hand, and pressed its alabaster
fingers to his lips. Had the more common acquaintances
of the diplomate seen him at this moment, they
would have marvelled how the mask of manhood may
drop, and disclose the ingenuous features of the boy.
The secretary knew his species, and the lady Geraldine
was one of those women for whom the soul is
unwilling to possess a secret.
After the first inquiries were over, the lady questioned
her recovered favorite of his history since they
had parted. “I left you,” she said, “swimming the
dangerous tide of life at Paris. How have you come
to shore?”
“Thanks, perhaps, to your friendship, which made
life worth the struggle! For the two extremes, however,
you know what I was at Paris—and yesterday I
was a wandering artist in velveteen and a sombrero!”
Lady Geraldine laughed.
“Ah! you look at my curls—but Macassar is at a
discount! It is the only grace I cherished in my incognito.
A resumer—I got terribly out of love by the
end of the year after we parted, and as terribly in
debt. My promotion in diplomacy did not arrive, and
the extreme hour for my credit did. Pozzo di Borgo
kindly procured me conge for a couple of years, and I
dived presently under a broad-rimmed hat, got into a
vetturino with portfolio and pencils, joined a troop of
wandering artists, and with my patrimony at nurse,
have been two years looking at life without spectacles
at Venice.”
“And painting?”
“Painting!”
“Might one see a specimen?” asked the lady Geraldine,
with an incredulous smile.
“I regret that my immortal efforts in oils are in the
possession of a certain Venetian, who lets the fifth
floor of a tenement washed by the narrowest canal in
that fair city. But if your ladyship cares to see a
drawing or two—”
He rang the bell, and his jocki Anglais presently
brought from the pocket of his cabriolet a wayworn
and thinly furnished portfolio. The lady Geraldine
turned over a half-dozen indifferent views of Venice,
but the last cartoon in the portfolio made her start.
“La Marchesa del Marmore!” she exclaimed, looking
at Count Basil with an inquiring and half uneasy
eye.
“Is it well drawn?” he asked quietly.
“Well drawn? It is a sketch worthy of Raphael.
Do you really draw so well as this, or”—she added,
after a slight hesitation—“is it a miracle of love?”
“It is a divine head,” soliloquized the Russian, half
closing his eyes, and looking at the drawing from a
distance, as if to fill up the imperfect outline from his
memory.
The lady Geraldine laid her hand on his arm. “My
dear Basil,” she said seriously, “I should be wretched
if I thought your happiness was in the power of this
woman. Do you love her?”
“The portrait was not drawn by me,” he answered,
“though I have a reason for wishing her to think so.
It was done by a fellow-traveller of mine, whom I wish
to make a sketch of yourself, and I have brought it
here to interest you in him as an artist. Mais revenons
a nos moutons—la marchesa was also a fellow-traveller
of mine, and without loving her too violently, I owe
her a certain debt of courtesy contracted on the way.
Will you assist me to pay it?”
Relieved of her fears, and not at all suspecting the
good faith of the diplomatist in his acknowledgments
of gratitude, the lady Geraldine inquired simply how
she could serve him.
“In the twenty-four hours since my arrival at Florence,”
he said, “I have put myself, as you will see,
au courant of the minor politics of the Pitti. Thanks
to my Parisian renown, the duke has enrolled me already
under the back-stairs oligarchy, and to-morrow
night I shall sup with you in the saloon of Hercules
after the ball is over. La marchesa, as you well know,
has, with all her rank and beauty, never been able to
set foot within those guarded penetralia—soit her malicious
tongue, soit the interest against her of the men
she has played upon her hook too freely. The road
to her heart, if there be one, lies over that threshold,
and I would take the toll. Do you understand me,
most beautiful lady Geraldine?”
The count Basil imprinted another kiss upon the
fingers of the fair Englishwoman, as she promised to
put into his hand the following night the illuminated
ticket which was to repay, as she thought, too generously,
a debt of gratitude; and plucking a flower from
her vase for his bosom, he took his leave to return at
twilight to dinner. Dismissing his cabriolet at the
gate, he turned on foot toward the church of San
Gaetano, and with an expression of unusual elation in
his step and countenance, entered the trattoria, where
dined at that moment his companions of the pencil.
5. V.
The green lamps glittering by thousands amid the
foliage of the Boboli had attained their full brightness,
and the long-lived Italian day had died over the distant
mountains of Carrara, leaving its inheritance of light
apparently to the stars, who, on their fields of deepening
blue, sparkled, each one like the leader of an unseen
host in the depths of heaven, himself the foremost
and the most radiant. The night was balmy and
voluptuous. The music of the ducal band swelled
forth from the perfumed apartments on the air. A
single nightingale, far back in the wilderness of the
garden, poured from his melodious heart a chant of
the most passionate melancholy. The sentinel of the
body-guard stationed at the limit of the spray of the
fountain leaned on his halberd and felt his rude senses
melt in the united spells of luxury and nature. The
ministers of a monarch's pleasure had done their utmost
to prepare a scene of royal delight, and night and
summer had flung in their enchantments when ingenuity
was exhausted.
The dark architectural mass of the Pitti, pouring a
blaze of light scarce endurable from its deeply-sunk
windows, looked like the side of an enchanted mountain
laid open for the revels of sorcery. The aigrette
and plume passed by; the tiara and the jewel upon
the breast; the gayly-dressed courtiers and glittering
dames; and to that soldier at his dewy post, it seemed
like the realized raving of the improvisatore when he
is lost in some fable of Araby. Yet within walked
malice and hate, and the light and perfume that might
have fed an angel's heart with love, but deepened
envy.
With the gold key of office on his cape, the grand
chamberlain stood at the feet of the dowager grand
dutchess, and by a sign to the musicians, hidden in
a latticed gallery behind the Corinthian capital of the
hall, retarded or accelerated the soft measure of the
waltz. On a raised seat in the rear of the chairs of
state, sat the ladies of honor and the noble dames
nearest allied to royal blood; one solitary and privileged
intruder alone sharing the elevated place—the
lady Geraldine. Dressed in white, her hair wound
about her head in the simplest form, yet developing
its divine shape with the clear outline of statuary, her
eyes lambent with purity and sweetness, heavily fringed
with lashes a shade darker than the light auburn
braided on her temples, and the tint of the summer's
most glowing rose turned out from the threadlike parting
of her lips; she was a vision of loveliness to take
into the memory, as the poet enshrines in his soul
the impossible shape of his ideal, and consumes youth
and age searching in vain for its like. Fair Lady Geraldine!
thou wilt read these passionate words from
one whose worship of thy intoxicating loveliness has
never before found utterance, but if this truly-told tale
should betray the hand that has dared to describe thy
beauty, in thy next orisons to St. Mary of pity, breathe
from those bright lips a prayer that he may forget
thee!
By the side of the lady Geraldine, but behind the
chair of the grand dutchess, who listened to his conversation
with singular delight, stood a slight young
man of uncommon personal beauty, a stranger apparently
to every other person present. His brilliant uniform
alone betrayed him to be in the Russian diplomacy;
and the marked distinction shown him, both by the
reigning queen of the court, and the more powerful
and inaccessible queen of beauty, marked him as an
object of keen and universal curiosity. By the time
the fifth mazurka had concluded its pendulous refrain,
the grand chamberlain had tolerably well circulated
the name and rank of Count Basil Spirifort, the renowned
wit and elegant of Paris, newly appointed to
the court of his royal highness of Tuscany. Fair
eyes wandered amid his sunny curls, and beating bosoms
hushed their pulses as he passed.
Count Basil knew the weight of a first impression.
Count Basil knew also the uses of contempt. Upon
the first principle he kept his place between the grand
dutchess and Lady Geraldine, exerting his deeply-studied
art of pleasing, to draw upon himself their exclusive
attention. Upon the second principle, he was
perfectly unconscious of the presence of another human
being; and neither the gliding step of the small-eared
princess S— in the waltz, nor the stately
advance of the last female of the Medici in the mazurka,
distracted his large blue eyes a moment from their
idleness. With one hand on the eagle-hilt of his
sword, and his side leaned against the high cushion of
red velvet honored by the pressure of the lady Geraldine,
he gazed up into that beaming face, when not
bending respectfully to the dutchess, and drank steadfastly
from her beauty, as the lotus-cup drinks light
from the sun.
The new secretary had calculated well. In the
deep recess of the window looking toward San Miniato,
stood a lady nearly hidden from view by the muslin
curtains just stirring with the vibration of the music,
who gazed on the immediate circle of the grand dutchess
with an interest that was not attempted to be disguised.
On her first entrance into the hall, the marchesa
del Marmore had recognised in the new minion
of favor her impassioned lover of the lagoon, her slighted
acquaintance of the cathedral. When the first shock
of surprise was over, she looked on the form which
she had found beautiful even in the disguise of pover
ty, and, forgetting her insulting repulse when he would
have claimed in public the smile she had given him
when unobserved, she recalled with delight every syllable
he had murmured in her ear, and every look she
had called forth in the light of a Venetian moon. The
man who had burned upon the altar of her vanity the
most intoxicating incense—who had broken through
the iron rules of convention and ceremony, to throw
his homage at her feet—who had portrayed so incomparably
(she believed) with his love-inspired pencil
the features imprinted on his heart—this chance-won
worshipper, this daring but gifted plebeian, as she had
thought him, had suddenly shot into her sphere and
become a legitimate object of love; and, beautified by
the splendor of dress, and distinguished by the preference
and favor of those incomparably above her, he
seemed tenfold, to her eyes, the perfection of adorable
beauty. As she remembered his eloquent devotion to
herself, and saw the interest taken in him by a woman
whom she hated and had calumniated—a woman who
she believed stood between her and all the light of existence—she
anticipated the triumph of taking him
from her side, of exhibiting him to the world as a falcon
seduced from his first quarry; and never doubting
that so brilliant a favorite would control the talisman
of the paradise she had so long wished to enter, she
panted for the moment when she should catch his eye
and draw him from his lure, and already heard the
chamberlain's voice in her ear commanding her presence
after the ball in the saloon of Hercules.
The marchesa had been well observed from the first
by the wily diplomate. A thorough adept in the art
(so necessary to his profession) of seeing without appearing
to see, he had scarce lost a shade of the varying
expressions of her countenance; and while she
fancied him perfectly unconscious of her presence, he
read her tell-tale features as if they had given utterance
to her thoughts. He saw, with secret triumph,
the effect of his brilliant position upon her proud and
vain heart; watched her while she made use of her
throng of despised admirers to create a sensation near
him and attract his notice; and when the ball wore on,
and he was still in unwearied and exclusive attendance
upon the lady Geraldine, he gazed after her with a
momentary curl of triumph on his lip, as she took up
her concealed position in the embayed window, and
abandoned herself to the bitter occupation of watching
the happiness of her rival. The lady Geraldine had
never been so animated since her first appearance at
the court of Tuscany.
It was past midnight when the grand-duke, flushed
and tired with dancing, came to the side of the lady
Geraldine. Count Basil gave place, and, remaining a
moment in nominal obedience to the sovereign's polite
request which he was too politic to construe literally,
he looked down the dance with the air of one who has
turned his back on all that could interest him, and,
passing close to the concealed position of the marchesa,
stepped out upon the balcony.
The air was cool, and the fountain played refreshingly
below. The count Basil was one of those minds
which never have so much leisure for digression as
when they are most occupied. A love, as deep and
profound as the abysses of his soul, was weaving thread
for thread with a revenge worthy of a Mohican; yet,
after trying in vain to count eight in the Pleiades, he
raised himself upon the marble balustrade, and perfectly
anticipating the interruption to his solitude which
presently occurred, began to speculate aloud on the
dead and living at that hour beneath the roof of the
Pitti.
“A painter's mistress,” he said, “immortal in her
touch of her paramour's pencil, is worshipped for centuries
on these walls by the pilgrims of art; while the
warm perfection of all loveliness—the purest and divinest
of highborn women—will perish utterly with the
Fornarina of Raffaelle—peasant-girls of Italy—have,
at this moment, more value in this royal palace than
the breathing forms that inhabit it! The lady Geraldine
herself, to whom the sovereign offers at this moment
his most flattering homage, would be less a loss
to him than either! Yet they despise the gods of the
pencil who may thus make them immortal! The dull
blood in their noble veins, that never bred a thought
beyond the instincts of their kind, would look down,
forsooth, on the inventive and celestial ichor that inflames
the brain, and prompts the fiery hand of the
painter! How long will this very sovereign live in the
memories of men? The murderous Medici, the ambitious
cardinals, the abandoned women, of an age gone
by, hang in imperishable colors on his walls; while of
him, the lord of this land of genius, there is not a bust
or a picture that would bring a sequin in the marketplace!
They would buy genius in these days like
wine, and throw aside the flask in which it ripened.
Raffaelle and Buonarotti were companions for a pope
and his cardinals: Titian was an honored guest for the
doge. The stimulus to immortalize these noble friends
was in the love they bore them; and the secret of their
power to do it lay half in the knowledge of their characters,
gained by daily intimacy. Painters were princes
then, as they are beggars now; and the princely art is
beggared as well!”
The marchesa del Marmore stepped out upon
the balcony, leaning on the arm of the grand
chamberlain. The soliloquizing secretary had foretold
to himself both her coming and her companon.
“Monsieur le comte,” said the chamberlain, “la
marchesa del Marmore wishes for the pleasure of your
acquaintance.”
Count Basil bowed low, and in that low and musical
tone of respectful devotion which, real or counterfeit,
made him irresistible to a woman who had a soul to be
thrilled, he repeated the usual nothings upon the beauty
of the night; and when the chamberlain returned
to his duties, the marchesa walked forth with her
companion to the cool and fragrant alleys of the garden,
and, under the silent and listening stars, implored
forgiveness for her pride; and, with the sudden abandonment
peculiar to the clime, poured into his ear
the passionate and weeping avowal of her sorrow and
love.
“Those hours of penitence in the embayed window,”
thought Count Basil, “were healthy for your
soul.” And as she walked by his side, leaning heavily
on his arm, and half-dissolved in a confiding tenderness,
his thoughts reverted to another and a far sweeter
voice; and while the caressing words of the marchesa
fell on an unlistening ear, his footsteps insensibly turned
back to the lighted hall.
6. VI.
As the daylight stole softly over Vallombrosa, the
luxurious chariot of the marchesa del Marmore stopped
at the door of Count Basil. The lady Geraldine's suit
had been successful; and the hitherto excluded Florentine
had received, from the hand of the man she had
once so ignorantly scorned, a privilege for which she
would have bartered her salvation: she had supped at
his side in the saloon of Hercules. With many faults
of character, she was an Italian in feeling, and had a
capacity, like all her countrywomen, for a consuming
and headlong passion. She had better have been born
of marble.
“I have lifted you to heaven,” said Count Basil, as
her chariot-wheels rolled from his door; “but it is as
the eagle soars into the clouds with the serpent. We
will see how you will relish the fall!”
| The prose works of N.P. Willis | |