University of Virginia Library

THE PODESTA'S DAUGHTER;

A DRAMATIC SKETCH.

SCENE. Before and within the Gate of an Italian Church-Yard. Enter, as if from the wars, Duke Odo, Vincenzo, and a train of Men-at-arms.
DUKE ODO.
(Dismounting.)
Hark you, Vincenzo; here will I dismount.
Lead on Falcone to the castle. See
He lack no provender nor barley-straw
To ease his battered sides. Poor war-worn horse!
When last we galloped past this church-yard gate,
He was a colt, gamesome and hot of blood,
Bearing against the bit until my arm
Ached with his humors. Mark the old jade now—
He knows we talk about him—a mere boy
Might ride him bare-backed. Give my people note
Of my approach, and tell them, for yourself,
I will not look too strictly at my house:
An absent lord trains careless servitors.
I wish no bonfires lighted on the hills,
No peaceful cannon roused to mimic wrath.
Say, I have seen cities burn, and shouting ranks
Of solid steel-clad footmen melt away
Before a hundred pieces. Say, I come
For rest, not jollity; and all I seek
Is a calm welcome in their lighted eyes,
And quiet murmurs that appear to come
More from the heart than lips. Remember this.
Yon old gray man who wanders through the tombs,
Like Time among his spoils, is the first face,
Of all the many strange ones we have passed,
That I can call by name: I'll question him.
See Marco's bed be soft. Let him be laid
In the south turret, close beside my room:
His wound aches cruelly. I must not forget
The cry of love with which he dashed between
My broken corslet and the Frenchman's spear.
There, lead Falcone gently. Loose his girth;
Unhook his curb. He ever fretted thus
To part from me.

VINCENZO.
Lord! signor, here 's a task!
First, lead this furious devil to his crib,
Throttle the cannon, blow the bonfires out,
Tell o'er another Iliad of your fights—
A hundred battles to Achilles' one;
Keep down such yells of joy as might outbrave
The lungs of thunder; make a bed for Marco—
A soft bed, bless me!—the outrageous bear
Would growl, like Cerberus, if he were laid
Upon the cloudy couch of amorous Venus.
Then—Well, you say it, and—

DUKE ODO.
You will obey;
Bettering my plans with your inventive brain:
Only there must be hinderances enough
To heighten your good service. Fare you well!
(Vincenzo and the train ride on towards the castle. Duke Odo enters the church-yard, and approaches the Podesta.)
Good-even, signor!

PODESTA.
Welcome! An old man
May fitly bid you welcome here; for I,
Standing upon this grave-yard, sometimes feel
Like an unseized inheritor who treads
Hereditary acres, long kept back.
I am next heir to this domain of death:
Ere many days, I'll come with funeral pomp
To claim my full possession. Welcome, then!
No breach of hospitality shall prove
My right unworthy. I was thinking thus—
Framing such salutation for a guest—
While you stood in the gateway.

DUKE ODO.
Merry sadness!

PODESTA.
Ay, signor, 't is as well as weeping mirth.
Laughter and tears! their issue is the same;
One treads upon the other's flying heels,
Heaven takes up each into its steady breast,
Life rolls along beyond the power of both,
And either is soon over.

DUKE ODO.
True as sad.
I pray you, Podesta—

PODESTA.
How! You know my office?

DUKE ODO.
One at the gate informed me.

PODESTA.
Who were they—
Those horsemen that went clattering up the street?
Yon wall concealed them.

DUKE ODO.
Servants of the castle.

PODESTA.
What a rude stir the lazy varlets made!
'T is now all play with them. The duke 's abroad,
Battering down castles, while malicious time
Is busy with his own. He'll find neglect
Makes as sad breaches as his cannon-balls.
The whole world rots together, men and things;
That 's comforting to mortals.

DUKE ODO.
How the graves
Have thickened here!

PODESTA.
Ay, truly; and should man
Consent to leave these landmarks of the dead
Stand a few centuries, he would make his home
Within the peopled cities of decay;
And the bewildered swain, furrowing the fields,
Would drive his plough zig-zag between the stones
In sowing-time.

DUKE ODO.
This consecrated ground,
Within my memory, was an open field.
Here I have seen the golden heads of grain
Shaken together in an autumn gust;
Where yon ambitious marble lifts its pile
Of sculptured trophies, I have seen the peasant,
With hearty, laughing labor, strike his spade
To found the May-pole. Glancing eyes and feet,
Timed to the lute and rattling castanet,
Figures of rustic grace and rustic strength,
Gaudy with flaring ribbons, I have seen
Whirled in a transient frenzy round and round
That festal tree. Where is the ripened grain?
Yonder the spade was struck, with heavier heart,
For other purposes; and other sounds
Than May-day dance and music have been heard
Around the crusted sculptures of that tomb.
Alas! the very flowers which twined the pole
Have turned to marble; colorless and sad
They stiffen round yon column, and appear
Such flowers as winter, in a jealous mood,
Might breed upon the bosom of his snows,
In mockery of spring. Where are the forms
Of maiden beauty and of manly power
That crushed the tender grass beneath their feet?
Sleep they in their own footsteps? Does the grass
Grow over them secure? The votive wreath,
Hanging upon the headstone of this grave,
Perchance conceals a name which one time passed
From lip to lip like cheering news; the eyes
Of young and old grew bright with heart-born ease,
To hear her foot-fall on the cottage-floor;
And some, no doubt, burned with a warmer fire
That smouldered shyly, and went out unseen—
An inner torture. Let me raise the garland.
“Giulia,” and nothing more. Whose grave is this?

PODESTA.
My daughter's.—Heaven protect your life! how pale,
How very pale you turn!

DUKE ODO.
What, I?—Indeed?—
Well, well, I am a soldier, and my wounds
Will twinge sometimes. Besides, I felt a shock
Recoil upon me, at my sudden burst
Into your sacred grief. Pray pardon me.—
Whose tomb is that?—yonder great, haughty work,
That seems to rise, like purse-puffed insolence,
Among the humbler grave-stones, crying, “See,
Even in death I keep my wonted state!”

PODESTA.
Signor, you wrong the dead. The clay beneath
Asked only to be tombed in open ground,
Where the deep sky might stretch above his head,
The bright flowers grow, and the south breezes bring
A noise of running waters, and a gush
Of drowsy murmurs, rustling through the trees,
Forever round him. 'T was his fancy. He
Shuddered with horror when the thought would come
Of his ancestral crypts, where daylight turned
Into an oozy dampness, worse than night.
“How shall I lie with patience all the years
Earth has in store for her, beneath a place
At which my dullest instincts cower with fear?
Lay me beneath the sun,” he ever said.
Age has its toys, like childhood; this was his.
So, when he died, through superstitious dread—
But more through love—with smothered discontent,
They laid him there, and piled that pompous mass—
Which wrongs the spirit of his last request—
High over him. That tomb is old Duke Odo's.

DUKE ODO.
Heaven rest his soul!

PODESTA.
Amen! My Giulia loved him—
Though she had little reason—to the last.

DUKE ODO.
How long has she been dead?

PODESTA.
Why—let me see
Since young Count Odo buckled on his arms—
He is the duke now, but I still forget—
Is nigh a score of years: my daughter died
A twelvemonth from the day he journeyed hence.
O, weary time! And Ugo, too, is dead;
Daughter and son are lying side by side:
The fruit has fallen, but the old trunk stands,
Forlorn and barren, rooted yet in life.
'T is a long story; would you hear it all?
Past griefs are garrulous, and slighted age
Is pleased to listen to its own thin voice.
Sit there on Giulia's grave—the sod is fresh—
I'll find a seat on Ugo's.

DUKE ODO.
Nay, nay, signor;
A maiden's grave is of choice sanctity:
I'll stand and listen.

PODESTA.
Please yourself; I'll sit.
This tale could not be told to every ear;—
Though, after all, 't is a mere history
Of how a maiden lived, how loved, how died:
A simple matter, such as gossips vex
Our sleepy ears with round a winter's fire.
Yet, for all this, a sympathetic heart,
Like that you seem to own, is only fit
To hold the pure distilment of such tears
As early sorrow sheds. Shall I go on?
Or do I blunder in my thought of you?

DUKE ODO.
Of me! O, heaven! (Aside.)
No, no.

PODESTA.
Well, let me think.
On her twelfth birthday my child, Giulia—
I now may say it, she is dead so long—
Was fairer than the rose she loved so much,
White as the lily were her virgin thoughts,
Her pride as humble as the violet;
Her fancies trained as easily as the vine
That loves a strong support to grow around,
And grows not upward, if not upward held:
So all her pliant nature leaned upon
Me and her brother, Ugo. Sweeter far
Than rose or lily, violet or vine,
Though they could gather all their charms in one,
Was the united being of my child,
Just as she stepped beyond her childish ways,
And lightly trod the paths of womanhood.
Only there was this one defect in her—
If a half beauty may be called defect—
She was too rare, too airy, too refined,
Too much of essence, and too little flesh,
For the rude struggles of rough-handed earth.
Even her very life seemed bound to her
By frailer tenures than belong to us.
There was no compact between heaven and earth
Regarding her. She had no term to live,
No time to die. Within her life and death
Seemed ever striving for the mastery;
And she on either smiled with equal cheer.
She was a product of her native air,
Born from the breath of flowers, the dews of night,
The balm of morning, the melodious strains
That haunt our twilight, waning with the moon.
Each unsubstantial thing took form in her;
Even her country's sun had shot its fire
Through all her nature, and burnt deeply down
Into her soul:—Here was the curse of all!
Count Odo—mark the contrast—so we called,
Through ancient courtesy, the old duke's son—
Came from the Roman breed of Italy.
A hundred Cæsars poured their royal blood
Through his full veins. He was both flint and fire;
Haughty and headlong, shy, imperious,
Tender, disdainful, tearful, full of frowns;
Cold as the ice on Ætna's wintry brow,
And hotter than its flame. All these by turns.
A mystery to his tutors and to me—
Yet some have said his father fathomed him—
A mystery to my daughter, but a charm
Deeper than magic. Him my daughter loved.

DUKE ODO.
Loved! Are you sane?

PODESTA.
The thing seems strange enough,
That love should draw my tender flutterer
Around this jetting flame; but so it was.
She loved so truly, and she flew so near—
But I forestall the end.

DUKE ODO.
O, misery!

[Aside.]
PODESTA.
My functions drew me to the castle oft,
Thither sometimes my daughter went with me;
And I have noticed how young Odo's eyes
Would light her up the stairway, lead her on
From room to room, through hall and corridor,
Showing her wonders, which were stale to him,
With a new strangeness. For familiar things,
Beneath her eyes, grew glorified to him;
And woke a strain of boyish eloquence,
Dressed with high thoughts and fluent images,
That sometimes made him wonder at himself,
Who had been blind so long to every charm
Which her admiring fancy gave his home.
Often I caught them standing rapt before
Some barbarous portrait, grim with early art—
A Gorgon, to a nicely-balanced eye,
That scarcely hinted at humanity;
Yet they would crown it with the port of Jove,
Make every wrinkle an heroic scar,
And light that garbage of forgotten times
With such a legendary halo, as would add
Another lustre to the Golden Book.
At first the children pleased me; many a laugh,
That reddened them, I owed their young romance.
But the time sped, and Giulia ripened too,
Yet would not deem herself the less a child;
And when I clad me for the castle, she
Would deck herself in her most childish gear,
And lay her hand in mine, and tranquilly
Look for the kindness in my eyes. She called
Odo her playfellow—“The little boy
Who showed the pictures, and the blazoned books,
The glittering armor and the oaken screen,
Grotesque with wry-faced purgatorial shapes
Twisted through all its leaves and knotted vines;
And the grand, solemn window, rich with forms
Of showy saints in holiday array
Of green, gold, red, orange, and violet,
With the pale Christ, who towered above them all,
Dropping a ruby splendor from his side.”
She told how “Odo—silly child!—would try
To catch the window's glare upon her neck,
Or her round arms;” and how “the flatterer vowed
The gleam upon her temple seemed to pale
Beside the native color of her cheek.”
Prattle like this enticed me to her wish,
Though cooler reason shook his threatening hand,
And counselled flat denial. Till at length
Ugo, my son, stung by the village taunts
Which the duke's menials had set going round,
Grew sad and moody with an inward shame,
That soon ran over in a wrathful stream
Of most unfilial censure. “Look you, sir,”—
Beating his sword-hilt with his furious hand,
Till blade and scabbard rang like clashing brands—
“This never shall be said! By Mary's tears,
I'll cleave the next bold slanderer to the beard!
And you, sir—you who are the cause of it—
Look that your house be stainless. Breed no trulls
For your liege lord; or, if you needs must pimp,
Look further from your home!” Here was a strait!
The partial justice of his hot rebuke
Pardoned its disrespect, and sealed my lips
Against reproaches: so I stammered out,
“Ugo, you rave.” “Rave! only look to it,
Or I may rave in action!” Down the hall,
Black as a thunder-cloud, he swept along,
Darkening the way before him. I awoke.
The shameful fear stood imminent; even now
Might be an age too late. But, though delayed,
Duty must be no reckoner of time;
An act good once is good forever. So,
When Giulia sought me for the usual walk,
I put her tears and her aside together;
Not sternly, kindly, but inflexibly.
Then all at once that rapid sorcerer,
The human heart, lit a new light within her.
Still as life may be, flushed from brow to breast
With modest scarlet, by my side she paused,
Tracing the mazes of bewildered thoughts.
I turned and left her; yet whene'er I stopped,
And cast a backward glance, fixed as before,
Her eyes inverted on her inner self,
And all her senses idle, Giulia stood,
Seeming her own excelling counterfeit.
Some strange thing stirred within her, that was plain;
So I, with just the sapience of our race,
Set my poor wits to reasoning down my fears.
Half up the hill, Count Odo, like a stag
Lured by the mimicked bleating of his doe,
Burst from the bushes, and before me stood
With such a wonder as the antlered king
Must feel before the hunter. Not a word
Nor sign of greeting did he make to me:
One flash of his dark eyes along the path—
A look which crossed my person as if I
Were rock, or tree, or mere transparent air—
And then his haughty nature towered aloft,
Magnificent as sunrise, calm as fate.
Back through the thicket, deigning not to part
The netted branches with his hand, he strode,
Wrapped in the grandeur of his boundless pride.
But other shapes his refluent passion took
Ere his heart settled; for the servants said
The house became a bedlam. In his wrath
He slashed the pictures which poor Giulia loved,
Tore up the missals, hacked the carvéd screen;
And with his impious hand, sheer through the glass
Of the great window—through the very Christ—
Hurled a great oaken settle, overweight
For two stout yeomen. Said the old duke naught?
Yes, merely this:—“Let all the pictures hang,
Spread out the books, cover the screen no more,
Let heaven have entrance through the broken panes;
These wrecks shall be Count Odo's monuments—
The guide-posts pointing him to better things.”
And he was wise. Ugo seemed pleased a while;
For Giulia was dumb about the castle.
I went and came, but never saw my child
Standing upon our threshold for my hand,
As in days past; and when Count Odo's name
Came up at table, not a word from her,
Who once would leap, like lightning, at that sound,
And bear it off triumphant from our lips,
Ringing his praises till her listeners tired.
Only, at times, I caught a shy, quick glance
Of bashful cunning glittering in her eyes,
As covertly, under her downcast brows,
She shot them round her. Her familiar cares,
The usual duties of our small abode,
Were duly ordered. Her accustomed walks,
At morn and evening, through the forest path,
Whereon she sowed her little charities
Among the woodmen, and reaped golden stores
Of grateful smiles, were taken as of old.
Sometimes, indeed, I marked a peevish haste
When aught delayed her, and a curt rebuff
When I or Ugo proffered company;
And sometimes from these walks she would return
With something heavy at her heart, a grief
That often rose to her convulséd lips,
And then dropped backward to her heart again.
I counted this a shadow, cast on her
By the distressful sights of poverty
Within the forest; and I talked at large,
In the smooth, flowing phrases of the rich—
When their world-wide philanthropy unlocks
The liberal mouth, and seals the pocket up:
In good round sentences I held discourse
On the huge evils of our social state,
And theorized, and drew fine instances,
Until the starving beggar at my door
Was clean forgotten. I cajoled the poor,
I flattered them, I called them God's own care;
Asked how the ravens fed. The smitten rock,
The quails and manna, were rare figures: thus
I shifted all the burden on the Lord,
And felt the lighter. I have changed since then.
My daughter listened; but, at times, I feared
Her mind was far away, and all my words
Buzzed in her ears, like a crone's spinning-wheel,
That only chimes in with her vagrant thoughts,
Unheard until the slighted threads divide,
And startle her with silence. Giulia, thus,
Would rise with something like a guilty pang,
And busy her about the household work,
Leaving my words unquestioned. So things went,
Till generous autumn shook his jolly torch
Around the land, and seared the rusty grass,
And scorched the trees, and shook their fruitage down,
And piled the dripping wains with purple grapes,
And turned the year into a jubilee.
Then Ugo in all sadness came to me,
Flushed with the chase, yet redder dyed with shame,
And in the pauses of his sighs told this:
A wounded boar, flying before his spear,
Forsook the closer covert of the wood,
And, mad with terror, harrowed through the glades,
Trailing his life behind him. Towards the town,
Followed by Ugo and his baying hounds,
The forest ruffian sped; but when the dogs
Laid their hot muzzles to his straining flank,
Into the open road he plunged amain,
And scoured the peaceful pathway. Naught availed;
His shadow kept not closer than the pack.
His strength gave way, and Ugo's crusted spear
Again was busy in his bristling side;
When, swerving from a blow, with sudden dart
He cleared the road, drove through a copse of oaks,
And Ugo heard a woman scream. O joy!
O sorrow! turning what we take as joy
Into thy own sad likeness, how is man
Balanced between ye! And what heart may say
“This thing is pleasure,” till its fleeting sense
Be past and gone forever? Ugo stood,
As if Medusa stared him in the face,
Breast-high amid the coppice; and beheld
Beneath a patriarchal oak Count Odo stand,
With one strong hand upholding Giulia,
While in the other flashed his wary brand,
Cutting and thrusting at the desperate boar.

DUKE ODO.
I passed that spot, threading the forest path,
An isle of greensward in a sea of leaves;
“Here,” cried I, gazing on a stricken oak
Whose mouldering remnants told of greatness gone,—
“Here the avenging hand of God has struck,
In lightning and in thunder reaching down!
Yon ghastly culprit, lopped of every limb,
His bark curled upward in a hundred scrolls,
His fruitless acorns filled with barren dust,
Points to a crime as clearly advertised
As if a herald blew it to the wind.”
My thought was just; two hearts were here betrayed
While heaven was near them. But did Ugo leave
These hapless children to the raging beast?

PODESTA.
Help was not needed. Ugo's hunter eye
Saw in that hand a weapon overmatch
For a bayed boar, without the hounds that hung
Still tugging at the monster's brindled haunch:
So, undiscovered, from the wood he turned,
And bore the heavy secret home to me.
Why rage did not o'ercome him in that hour,
Why he, in wonted fury, did not slay
The two together, is heaven's mystery.
Shame—loathful, cruel, degrading, abject shame—
That quite unmanned him, this alone was his;
No thought of vengeance. “She may yet be pure,”
Said Ugo; and the misery of a thought
That dared suppose her other bowed his head,
Crimson with meaning, to his outstretched palm.
“If she is not, Count Odo lives one hour;”
And he glanced sideways at the horologe.
Soon Giulia came; our fears might breathe a while.
She heard with patience, and replied with tears,
Heightening her fault, and taking Odo's blame.
“The guilt is mine,” she said; “I met him still:
I staid not to be wooed, I went for it.
I knew it to be wicked, but I bore
The crime for its strange sweetness. Woe is me!
That sin has bounties, while poor virtue starves.”
I reasoned with her, setting love aside,
That young Count Odo never could be hers;
I showed the gulf between our wide estates;
I said a dukedom could not wed a plot
Of narrow acres; and I raised a fear
Of dismal vengeance, from the old duke's hand,
Upon my head. Count Odo, even he,
Treated with justice merely, must endure
Some direful grief. At this she blanched and shook.
I balanced chances with the nicest art:
“What if the duke consent, would Odo too—
That hot, proud boy, who from his regal height
Looks, like an eagle, down upon the world—
Would he—ha! ha!—lead such a bride as you—
A new Giralda—to the altar-stone?
Why, child, the pathway between home and church
Would show more perils than the Cretan maze.”
Then I advised her. “Daughter, be content
With heaven's appointment; humbly walk the ground,
Nor fly your fancies where you cannot follow;
He is as far above you as the stars.”
This she believed; naught was too high for him,
Nothing too low for her, compared with him.
But when I named the danger of such loves,
How reason can be melted in the glow
Of tempted passion; when I almost spoke
In broad, blunt terms, as Ugo spoke to me—
So hard it was to make my meaning clear—
All the proud innocence of woman's soul
Bounded aloft in dreadful majesty;
And such indignant eloquence outburst,
At the gross taunt, that I, by helpless signs,
Was glad to beg her mercy. Well, the end
Of this long tossing to and fro of words
Was that my daughter, bowing to my will
With that obedience she had ever shown,
Promised to shun Count Odo from that hour.
She kept her faith; though Odo came by day
With missions from the castle that outsummed
His several hairs, and were of less respect;
Though, in the evening, I have seen his form
Skirting the roadside where my daughter took
Her silent walk with Ugo; though the night,
From nocturns unto cock-crow, could not rest
For the unceasing tinkle of his lute,
And such faint scraps of doleful melody
As he might venture with his trembling voice.
Now a new fear began. His father's eyes
Could not have missed Count Odo's altered ways;
And soon dread proof was given of what a man,
Good in all else, would forfeit to uphold
The perilled lustre of his heritage.
Ugo and Giulia, in a lonesome place,
By a masked ruffian were assailed; and though
Both mask and sweeping cloak gave Ugo odds
Against the villain, there was stirring work,
And wounds on both sides. Had not Giulia's voice,
Shrieking in terror at the bloody sight,
Prevailed more surely than brave Ugo's sword,
Heaven knows what purpose might have been achieved.
The vintage came, with it the festival;
And, strange to say, Duke Odo left his books,
To throw a chilling stiffness on the dance
With his unusual presence. How my heart
Shrank into nothing, when the aged duke,
Tottering along the greensward, slowly came
Before my daughter, and, with gallant words,
Lightly among the dancers led my child.
“Ugo,” I whispered, “in the name of heaven,
Stand near your sister—hear the duke's discourse—
Perhaps he'll traffic in his son's behalf.
That girl is doomed past saving!” Ugo said,
“Let him but trade with me; I'll name a price
To stagger his whole dukedom!” By and by,
With smiles and nods and gentle courtesies,
The duke returned to me. I almost snatched
My startled daughter from his outstretched hand;
And as the rustics cheered him to his horse,
Through the confusion, on the wings of fear,
I fled with Giulia; nor till bolt and bar
Rang in their sockets, and I saw the spear
And rusted sword I bore a while in Spain,
Felt I the safer. Ugo came behind:
He had heard nothing but the common talk
'Twixt high and humble;—questions from the duke,
And meek replies from Giulia. Once, indeed,
He wheeled his ponderous learning slowly round
To bear upon her knowledge; and seemed pleased
To find she knew this planet is a sphere,
Gold not a salt, and spirit not a substance;
That nature's movements are through various laws,
Diverse, and yet harmonious. But when she,
Radiant with faith, proclaimed the central light,
Without which reason were a helpless drudge,
From which, and to which, all creation flows,
And called it God,—ah! there her soul had flown
A league beyond his books; and from that thought
The fool and the philosopher might start
On equal ground. The duke was still a while.
Then they talked o'er the poets:—Petrarch's love,
And Laura's coyness, Tasso's holy war,
And the stupendous Florentine. Just here
The duke's smiles grew most fatherly, and here
The dance was ended. “Saw you not,” said Ugo,
“Count Odo join his father near the wood?”
“In good faith, no!” That question had upset
My growing confidence. “Some plot is here—
Some plot to be outplotted.” “Have her wed—
Ay, wed her to a clod, a slave, a beast—
To anything that can be made a groom;
But keep her honest!” Ugo shouted forth.
“A wise thought! Call your sister.” Giulia came.
A little hope was fluttering in her heart,
And warming one small spot on either cheek;
That died away and never woke again,
At my first sentence. “Marry!”—she was firm—
“Not all that cowards fear—not all the pangs
This groaning earth has borne since man left Eden—
Not all the cheating baits of fruitful sense—
Ambition's crown, toil's gain, fame's tainted breath—
Not all the spirit dreams of future bliss—
No, nor the dictate of the holy church—
The Pope's commandment, barbed with every ill
That may be thundered from Saint Peter's chair—
Should fright, bribe, master, or so far corrupt
The heart which God assigned her to keep pure!”
She spoke this with her virgin eyes aflame,
Blazing like Mars when he has clomb the sky,
And looks down hotly from his sovereign height.
I talked to her until the daylight wore,
And evening lent its pathos to my words,
Of what a daughter owes a parent's love—
And I had been both parents joined in one;
Of the great blessing which her mother laid
Upon her infant's forehead, as she stood
Upon the verge of Paradise, and saw,
Forward and backward, heaven and earth at once.
Would she be false to that? Move saintly eyes;
And wet the golden floor of heaven with tears?
I showed the duke's omnipotent command;
The long and sweeping arm of potentates;
The feeble shield of justice, when the voice
Of poor, oppressed humanity is drowned
In the loud roar of an impending doom.
I made my gray hairs plead to her. I talked
Of Ugo's blighted prospect, and the fate
Which hung above us, sure to fall at last;
Talked till my passion worked me into tears,
And she gave way—not slowly, all at once,
With desperate haste. “Do with me what you will;
But, O! in pity, get me to my grave
As soon as may be. Life is wearying me;
I would have rest from that which is within,”
Said Giulia; and her shaking hand she laid,
With a low, plaintive sob, upon her heart.
I offered comfort. “You shall not be wed”—
“No, by the saints!” roared Ugo, bursting through
A flood of running tears. “Only, my child,
We'll meet their arts with arts. We'll gossip round
That thou hast been betrothed. Some village beau—
Florio, thy cousin, will be proud of it—
Shall be a frequent suitor at my house;
And he shall be thy company to mass—
He'll spread thy cushion with a tender care,
I warrant me!” and then I tried to laugh.
“Why, here 's a plot to found a play upon!—
Thou didst like Florio.” “I shall hate him now,”
Giulia replied; and her eyes glared at me
With steely lustre, a blank outer light.
“Give me but time. Just lead the duke astray
Until I put my goods in proper trim,
And we will fly the country, and his wrath,
If nothing better offer.” Giulia raised
The hollow spectre of a long-lost smile,
And went her way.

DUKE ODO.
There was a murder done!

PODESTA.
It may be, signor; but my acts were squared,
Both to my daughter's interest and the duke's,
As well as my poor judgment would allow.

DUKE ODO.
Forgive my comment, and resume the tale.

PODESTA.
The rumored marriage reached Count Odo's ears.
'T was said, at first, he doubted; but his pride,
Now he was older, and held firmer rein
Above his passions, did not vent itself
In chilling looks and following agonies:
The pictures, books, screen, window, well had taught
Their storied lesson. Marble calmness now,
A mien that never altered with the times,
Was his high state. But when the rumor grew
A settled matter, and the people talked
Of Florio and Giulia in one breath,
Coupling their names as if they could not part,
Count Odo kindled. In a forest-path
He came on Florio. Face to face they stood.
Florio in terror, and the scornful eyes
Of Odo ranging him from head to foot.
He spoke at last: “Florio,”—his voice was soft
As the south wind—“Florio, the world has said
You are betrothed to Giulia; is it true?”
Then the habitual lie was stammered forth.
A while Count Odo's hand upon his sword
Hung, like a mountain pard upon the spring,
And the long veins went twisting through his neck,
Swollen with torture; but some power within
Wrested the clenched hand sharply from the sword,
And his face calmed, and a most lordly smile
Lit up his features, as he cried aloud,
In strong, firm accents, as a martyr might—
“God bless you, Florio!” and burst in tears.
'T was the old fight twixt heaven and hell renewed,
And, as of old, the battle-field was pitched
Within the heart of man. Count Odo left
Ere Florio could catch his scattered thoughts.
On the next day a blare of trumpets woke
The drowsy village, in scarce time to see
The rearward horsemen of a warlike band
Vanish within the forest. Some one said,
“That is Count Odo riding to the wars.”
The wars have gone against us: since that day
Thousands of hostile spears have ever lain
Between Count Odo and his distant home.
Sometimes for years in cities he was pent,
Sometimes in adverse battles he engaged,
Sometimes he skirmished through a long retreat,
Hanging between the enemy's flushed van
And the down-hearted soldiers of our rear;
But never has a rumor of his name—
For the foe barred direct intelligence—
Reached us uncoupled from the words of praise.
His father died—

DUKE ODO.
And knew not the deceit?

PODESTA.
How could he know? He died before my child,
Pining, 't was whispered, for his absent son.
Within a month poor Giulia followed him.
I can recall the time as yesterday.
A low fog lay upon the sodden land,
And on my spirits; from the sluggish clouds,
That trailed their ragged skirts along the hills,
Thick, moody showers were falling now and then;
And when they ceased, the poplars, drop by drop,
Kept their sad chime awake upon the roof.
Since Odo left us, Giulia had walked
Her birth-place like a stranger. All the world,
Its sights of beauty clustering round her feet,
And all the mystery that hung above
In the deep blue of heaven, seemed alien now;
Their power and their significance were gone.
The sun burnt out before her like a torch
Before a blind girl, and within her sight
The brightest moon was blurred by dim eclipse.
She seemed forever lost in solemn thoughts:
Yet when we questioned what she mused upon,
“Nothing,” she said, and I believed it true;
For strongest grief is thoughtless, and retains
Only a stupid sense of pain, no form,
Or else we should go mad. Ugo, the while,
Softened his nature to a woman's ways,
And through the house he went, with silent speed,
Forestalling Giulia in her wonted cares;
Or in the garden-walk some flower she loved,
In happier times, he planted full of bloom,
And smiled to see her bending o'er the bush,
Even with her vacant eyes: but I have marked,
When thus her memory stirred, the flower was wet
With other drops than morning's. As the year
Rounded to winter, Giulia's cheek assumed
A kindred color with the falling leaf,
And her eyes brightened, and her thin white hands
Grew thinner yet, her footstep lost its spring,
And life seemed beating a slow-paced retreat
From all its outposts. Just before the day—
The irksome, dismal day—of which I spoke,
She looked as if her frame had suddenly
Crumbled away beneath her, though its life
Still haunted round her heart. She knew her state,
And called us to her. “Father, first to you,
I have no blame, nothing but thanks to give,
And dying blessings. Ugo, so to you,
Who bore the wayward tricks of my disease
With so much kindness, such unfaltering love!”—
God bless her, she was patient as a saint!—
“I do not ask the motives of your acts;
For, since you chose them, they must be the best,
I have one word to leave behind me—hark!
I loved Count Odo, and I die for it.
This ring, which slides about my finger so,
He gave me once—pray bury it with me.
But I beseech you—ay, you promise me
Before I ask it; that is very kind—
If Odo should return, to make him know
That I by deed, or word, or sign, or thought,
Was never false to him. And tell him, too,
Into the grave, with this one pledge of love,
I go rejoicing; and he'll see it shine
Upon my finger thus in Paradise.
Odo, dear Odo—father—brother—God,
Have mercy on me!” And she closed her eyes,
Shutting the world forever from her sight.—
Soldier, you weep!

DUKE ODO.
Weep! am I stone, old man?
O shallow reason! O deep heart of youth!
What fearful issue has your conflict wrought!
O father, blinder than the burrowing mole,
To trust the mere deductions of your brain
Before the holy instincts of that love
Which, like a second revelation, God
Has founded on our nature! O, false pride!
Dark, sensual demon, that would rather writhe
An age of agony than ope thy lips—
Curse to thyself, and curse to thy possessor—
O, hadst thou slept one moment, what a flood
Of golden sunshine happy love had poured
Upon the desert darkness of two hearts!
Old man, old man, it is a fearful thing
To know what narrow mists, what threads of will,
Divide a life of full, contented bliss
From years of starved and utter misery;
How near our guideless feet may be to one,
Yet choose the other! Had a bare distrust
Of your presuming wisdom crossed your mind—
Had Odo come to you with candid heart,
And interchanged frank questions and replies—
She who is mouldering here might still have bloomed
To fragrant ripeness, and we fools, who stand
Watering the relics of our own misdeeds,
Might not be mourners. Woe to us, blind men,
We knit the meshes that ensnare ourselves!
Now hear your story closed by other lips.
Who was the masked assassin of your child?—
Count Odo, mad with the romantic wish
To rescue Giulia: he it was who fought
With stubborn Ugo, burning with a flame
As high as that which lighted chivalry.
Why came Duke Odo to the festival?—
To prove your daughter worthy of his son;
And found her so, beyond his topmost hope,
And would have crowned her with a diadem,
Holding the trinket honored!

PODESTA.
Gracious heaven!
And who are you?

DUKE ODO.
Count Odo. Do not stir:
From this grave hence, our paths lie far apart.

[Exit.]