University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.

The smooth, flat pavement of the Borg'ognisanti
had been covered since morning with earth, and the
windows and balconies on either side were flaunting
with draperies of the most gorgeous colors. The
riderless horse-races, which conclude the carnival in
Florence, were to be honored by the presence of the
court. At the far extremity of the street, close by the
gate of the Cascine, an open veranda, painted in fresco,
stood glittering with the preparations for the royal party,
and near it the costlier hangings of here and there a
window or balustrade, showed the embroidered crests
of the different nobles of Tuscany. It was the people's
place and hour, and beneath the damask and cloth of
gold, the rough stone windows were worn smooth by
the touch of peasant hands, and the smutched occupants,
looking down from the balconies above, upon
the usupers of their week-day habitations, formed, to
the stranger's eye, not the least interesting feature of
the scene.

As evening approached, the balconies began to
show their burden of rank and beauty, and the street
below filled with the press of the gay contadini.
The ducal cortege, in open carriages, drove down
the length of the course to their veranda at the gate,
but no other vehicle was permitted to enter the serried
crowd; and, on foot like the peasant-girl, the
noble's daughter followed the servants of her house,
who slowly opened for her a passage to the balcony
she sought. The sun-light began to grow golden.
The convent-bell across the Arno rang the first peal
of vespers, and the horses were led in.

It was a puzzle to any but an Italian how that race
was to be run. The entire population of Florence
was crowded into a single narrow street—men, women,
and children, struggling only for a foothold. The signal
was about to be given for the start, yet no attempt
was made to clear a passage. Twenty high-spirited
horses fretted behind the rope, each with a dozen
spurs hung to his surcingales, which, at the least motion,

must drive him onward like the steed of Mazeppa.
Gay ribands were braided in their manes, and the
bets ran high. All sounded and looked merry, yet it
would seem as if the loosing of the start-rope must be
like the letting in of destruction upon the crowd.

In a projecting gallery of a house on the side next
the Arno, was a party that attracted attention, somewhat
from their rank and splendid attire, but more
from the remarkable beauty of a female, who seemed
their star and idol. She was something above the
middle height of the women of Italy, and of the style
of face seen in the famous Judith of the Pitti—dark,
and of melancholy so unfathomable as almost to affray
the beholder. She looked a brooding prophetess;
yet through the sad expression of her features
there was a gleam of fierceness, that to the more critical
eye betrayed a more earthly gleam of human passion
and suffering. As if to belie the maturity of years
of which such an expression should be the work, an
ungloved hand and arm of almost childlike softness
and roundness lay on the drapery of the railed gallery;
and stealing from that to her just-perfected form, the
gazer made a new judgment of her years, while he
wondered what strange fires had forced outward the
riper lineaments of her character.

The count Fazelli, the husband of this fair dame,
stood within reach of her hand, for it was pressed on
his arm with no gentle touch, yet his face was turned
from her. He was a slight youth, little older, apparently,
than herself, of an effeminate and yet wilful cast
of countenance, and would have been pronounced by
women (what a man would scarce allow him to be)
eminently handsome. Effeminate coxcomb as he was,
he had power over the stronger nature beside him, and
of such stuff, in courts and cities, are made sometimes
the heroes whose success makes worthier men almost
forswear the worship due to women.

There were two other persons in the balconies of
the Corso, who were actors in the drama of which this
was a scene. The first was the prima donna of the
Cocomero, to whose rather mature charms the capricious
Fazelli had been for a month paying a too open
homage; and the second was a captain in the duke's
guard, whose personal daring in the extermination of
a troop of brigands, had won for him some celebrity
and his present commission. What thread of sympathy
rested between so humble an individual and the
haughty countess Fazelli, will be shown in the sequel.
Enough for the present, that, as he stood leaning
against the pillar of an opposite gallery, looking carelessly
on the preparations for the course, that proud
dame saw and remembered him.

A blast from a bugle drew all eyes to the starting-post,
and in another minute the rope was dropped, and
the fiery horses loosed upon their career. Right into
the crowd, as if the bodies of the good citizens of
Florence were made of air, sprang the goaded troop,
and the impossible thing was done, for the suffocating
throngs divided like waves before the prow, and united
again as scathless and as soon. The spurs played
merrily upon the flanks of the affrighted animals, and
in an instant they had swept through the Borg'ognisanti,
and disappeared into the narrow lane leading to
the Trinita. It was more a scramble than a race, yet
there must be a winner, and all eyes were now occupied
in gazing after the first glimpse of his ribands as
he was led back in triumph.

Uncompelled by danger, the suffocating crowd made
way with more difficulty for the one winning horse
than they had done for the score that had contended
with him. Yet, champing the bit, and tossing his
ribands into the air, he came slowly back, and after
passing in front of the royal veranda, where a small
flag was thrown down to be set into the rosette of his
bridle, he returned a few steps, and was checked by
the groom under the balcony of the prima donna. A
moment after, the winning flag was waving from the
rails above, and as the sign that she was the owner of
the victorious horse was seen by the people, a shout
arose which thrilled the veins of the fair singer more
than all the plaudits of the Cocomero. It is thought
to be pleasant to succeed in that for which we have
most struggled—that for which our ambition and our
efforts are known to the world—to be eminent, in
short, in our metier, our vocation. I am inclined to
think it natural to most men, however, and to all possessors
of genius, to undervalue that for which the
world is most willing to praise them, and to delight
more in excelling in that which seems foreign to their
usual pursuits, even if it be a trifle. It is delightful to
disappoint the world by success in anything. Detraction,
that follows genius to the grave, sometimes admits
its triumph, but never without the “back-water”
that it could do no more. The fine actress had won a
shout from assembled Florence, yet off the scene. She
laid one hand upon her heart, and the other, in the
rash exultation of the moment, ventured to wave a
kiss of gratitude to the count Fazelli.

As that favored signor crossed to offer his congratulations,
his place beside the countess was filled by a
young noble, who gave her the explanatory information—that
the horse was Fazelli's gift. Calmly, almost
without a sign of interest or emotion, she turned her
eyes upon the opposite balcony. A less searching and
interested glance would have discovered, that if the
young count had hitherto shared the favor of the admired
singer with his rivals, he had no rival now.
There was in the demeanor of both an undisguised
tenderness that the young countess had little need to
watch long, and retiring from the balcony, she accepted
the attendance of her communicative companion,
and was soon whirling in her chariot over the Ponte
St. Angelo, on her way to the princely palace that
would soon cease to call her its mistress.

Like square ingots of silver, the moonlight came
through the battlements of the royal abode of the
Medici. It was an hour before day. The heavy heel
of the sentry was the only sound near the walls of the
Pitti, save, when he passed to turn, the ripple of the
Arno beneath the arches of the jeweller's bridge broke
faintly on the ear. The captain of the guard had
strolled from the deep shadow of the palace into the
open moonlight, and leaned against a small stone shrine
of the Virgin set into the opposite wall, watching musingly
the companionable and thought-stirring emperess
of the night.

“Paletto!” suddenly uttered a voice near him.

The guardsman started, but instantly recovered his
position, and stood looking over his epaulet at the
intruder, with folded arms.

“Paletto!” she said again, in a lower and more appealing
tone—“will you listen to me?”

“Say on, Countess Fazelli!”

“Countess Fazelli no longer, but Paletto's wife!”

“Ha! ha!” laughed the guardsman bitterly, “that
story is old, for so false a one.”

“Scorn me not! I am changed.” The dark eyes
of Francesca Cappone lifted up, moist and full, into
the moonlight, and fixing them steadfastly on the soldier's,
she seemed to demand that he should read her
soul in them. For an instant, as he did so, a troubled
emotion was visible in his own features, but a new
thought seemed to succeed the feeling, and turning
away with a cold gesture, he said, “I knew you false,
but till now I thought you pure. Tempt me not to
despise as well as hate you!”

“I have deserved much at your hand,” she answered,
with a deeper tone, “but not this. You are my husband,
Paletto!”

“One of them!” he replied, with a sneer.

Francesca clasped her hands in agony. “I have
come to you,” she said, “trusting the generous nature

which I have proved so well. I can not live unloved.
I deserted you, for I was ignorant of myself. I have
tried splendor and the love of my own rank, but one
is hollow and the last is selfish. Oh, Paletto! what
love is generous like yours?”

The guardsman's bosom heaved, but he did not turn
to her. She laid her hand upon his arm: “I have
come to implore you to take me back, Paletto. False
as I was to you, you have been true to me. I would
be your wife again. I would share your poverty, if
you were once more a fisherman on the lagoon. Are
you inexorable, Paletto?”

Her hand stole up to his shoulder: she crept closer
to him, and buried her head, unrepelled, in his bosom.
Paletto laid his hand upon the mass of raven hair
whose touch had once been to him so familiar, and
while the moon drew their shadows as one on the
shrine of the Virgin, the vows of early love were repeated
with a fervor unknown hitherto to the lips of
Cappone's daughter, and Paletto replied, not like a
courtly noble, but like that which was more eloquent
—his own love-prompted and fiery spirit.

The next day there was a brief but fierce rencontre
between Count Fazelli and the guardsman Paletto, at
the door of the church of Santa Trinita. Francesca
had gone openly with her husband to vespers, attended
by a monk. When attracked by the young count
as the daring abducer of his wife, he had placed her
under that monk's protection till the quarrel should be
over, and, with the same holy man to plead his cause,
he boldly claimed his wife at the duke's hands, and
bore her triumphantly from Florence.

I heard this story in Venice. The gondolier Paletto,
they say, still rows his boat on the lagoon: and
sometimes his wife is with him, and sometimes a daughter,
whose exquisite beauty, though she is still a child,
is the wonder of the Rialto as he passes under. I
never chanced to see him, but many a stranger has
hired the best oar of the Piazza, to pull out toward the
Adriatic in the hope of finding Paletto's boat and getting
a glimpse of his proud and still most beautiful
wife—a wife, it is said, than whom a happier or more
contented one with her lot lives not in the “city of
the sea.”