University of Virginia Library

1. CHAP. I.

“My daughter!” said the Count Spinola.

The lady so addressed threw off a slight mantle
and turned her fair features inquiringly to her father.
Heedless of the attention he had arrested, the abstracted
count paced up and down the marble pavement

of his hall, and when, a moment after, Francesca
came to him for his good-night kiss, he imprinted
it silently on her forehead, and stepped out on the
balcony to pursue, under the aiding light of the stars,
thoughts that were more imperative than sleep.

There had been a fête of great splendour in the
ducal gardens of the Boboli, and Francesca Spinola
had shown there, as usual, the most radiant and
worshipped daughter of the nobilita of Florence.
The melancholy duke himself (this was in the days
of his first marriage) had seemed even gay in presenting
her with flowers which he had gathered at
her side, with the dew on them, (in an alley glittering
with the diamonds on noble bosoms, and dewdrops
on roses that would slumber, though it was the birth-night
of a princess,) and marked as was the royal
attention to the envied beauty, it was more easily
forgiven her than her usual triumphs—for it cost no
one a lover. True to his conjugal vows, the sad-featured
monarch paid to beauty only the homage
exacted alike by every most admirable work of
nature.

The Grand Duke Leopold had not been the only
admirer whose attentions to Francesca Spinola had
been remarked. A stranger, dressed with a magnificence
that seemed more fitted for a masquerade
than a court-ball, and yet of a mein that promised

danger to the too inquisitive, had entered alone, and,
marking out the daughter of the haughty count from
the first, had procured an introduction, no one knew
how, and sought every opportunity which the intervals
of the dance afforded, to place himself at her
side. Occupied with the courtly devoirs of his
rank, the count was, for a while, unaware of what
struck almost every one else, and it was only when
the stranger's name was inquired of him by the
duke, that his dark and jealous eye fell upon a face
whose language of kindling and undisguised admiration
a child would have interpreted aright. It
was one of those faces that are of no degree—that
may belong to a barbaric king, or to a Greek slave
—that no refinement would improve, and no servile
habits degrade; faces which take their changes from
an indomitable and powerful soul, and are beyond
the trifling impression of the common usages of life.
Spinola was offended with the daring and passionate
freedom of the stranger's gaze upon his daughter;
but he hesitated to interrupt their conversation too
rudely. He stayed to exchange a compliment with
some fair obstruction in his way across the crowded
saloon, and, in the next moment, Francesca stood
alone.

“Who left you this moment, my Francesca?” asked
the count, with affected unconcern.

“I think, a Venetian,” she answered.

“And, his name?”

“I know not, my father!”

The count's face flashed.

“Who presented him to my darling?” he asked,
again forcing himself to composure.

Francesca coloured; and, with downcast eyes,
answered—

“No one, my father! He seemed to know me,
and I thought I might have forgotten him.

Spinola turned on his heel, and after a few vain
enquiries, and as vain a search for the stranger,
ordered his attendants, and drove silently home.

It was close upon the gray of the morning, and
the count still leaned over the stone-railing of his
balcony. Francesca had been gone an hour to her
chamber. A guitar-string sounded from the street
below, and, a moment after, a manly and mellow
voice broke into a Venetian barcarole, and sang with
a skill and tenderness which a vestal could scarce
have listened to unmoved. Spinola stepped back
and laid his hand upon his sword; but, changing
his thought, he took a lamp from the wall within,
and crept noiselessly to his daughter's chamber.
She lay within her silken curtains, with her hands
crossed on her bosom, and from her parted lips
came the low breath of innocent and untroubled
sleep. Reassured, the count closed her window and

extinguished his lamp; and, when the guitar was
no longer heard echoing from the old palace walls,
and the rich voice of the serenader had died a way
with his footsteps, the lord of the Palazzo Spinola
betook himself to sleep with a heart somewhat
relieved of its burden.

On the following day, the count pleaded the early-coming
heats of summer; and, with slight preparation,
left Florence for his summer-palace in the
Appenines. When Francesca joined him cheerfully,
and even gaily, in his sudden plan, he threw
aside the jealous fears that had haunted his breast,
and forgot the stranger and his barcarole. The old
trees of his maison de plaisance were heavy with
the leaves of the Italian May; the statues stood
cool in the shade; the mountain rivulets forgot their
birth in the rocky brooks, and ran over channels of
marble, and played up through cactus-leaves and
sea-shells, and nereids' horns, all carved by the contemporaries
of Donatello. “And here,” thought the
proud noble, “I am á l'ecart of the designs of adventurers,
and the temptations and dangers of gaiety,
and the child of my hopes will refresh her beauty and
her innocence, under the watchful eye, ever present,
of my love.”

Francesca Spinola was one of those Italian natures
of which it is difficult for the inhabitants of other
climes to conceive. She had no feelings. She had

passions. She could love—but it sprang in an instant
to its fullest power—and maidenly reserve
and hesitation were incompatible with its existence.
She had listened, unmoved, to all the adulation of
the duke's court, and had been amused with the
devotion of all around her—but never touched. The
voice of the stranger at the fête of the Boboli—the
daring words he had addressed to her—had arrested
her attention; and it needed scarce the hour—which
flew like a moment at his side—to send a new sensation,
like a tempest, through her heart. She
reasoned upon nothing—asked nothing; but, while
she gave up her soul wholly to a passion hitherto
unfelt, the deep dissimulation which seems a natural
part of the love of that burning clime, prompted
her, by an unquestioned impulse, to conceal it entirely
from her father. She had counterfeited sleep
when nearly surprised in listening to the barcarole,
and she had little need to counterfeit joy at her departure
for the mountains.

The long valley of the Arno lay marked out upon
the landscape by a wreath of vapour, stealing up as
if enamoured of the fading colour of the clouds;
and far away, like a silver bar on the rim of the
horizon, shone the long line of the Mediterranean.
The mountain sides lay bathed in azure; and, echoing
from the nearest, came the vesper-bells of Vallombrosa.

Peace and purity were stamped upon
the hour.

“My child,” said the softened count, drawing
Francesca to his bosom, as they stood looking off
upon this scene from the flowery terrace beneath the
portico; “does my child love me?”

Francesca placed her hands upon his shoulders and
kissed him for reply.

“I feel impelled,” he continued, “to talk to you
while this beautiful hour is around us, of an affection
that resembles it.”

“Resembles the sunset, my father?”

“Yes! Shall I tell you how? By affecting with
its soft influence every object under the bend of the
sky! My Francesca! there are parents who love
their children, and love them well, and yet find feelings
for other attachments, and devotion for every
other interest in life. Not so mine! My love for
my child is a whole existence poured into hers.
Look at me, Francesca! I am not old. I am capable,
perhaps, of other love than a parent's. There
are among the young and beautiful who have looked
on me with favouring eyes. My blood runs warm
yet, and my step is as full of manhood—perhaps my
heart as prompt to be gay—as ever. I mean to
say, that I am not too old for a lover. Does my
daughter think so?”

“I have been long vain of your beauty, dear
father,” said Francesca, threading her hand in his
dark curls.

“There are other things that might share your
empire in my heart—politics, play, the arts—a hundred
passions which possess themselves of men
whose fortune or position gives them means and
leisure. Now listen, my daughter! You have
supplanted all these! You have filled my heart
with yourself. I am tempted to love—my heart is
my daughter's. I am asked to play—my thoughts
are with my child. I have neither time for politics,
nor attention for the arts—my being breathes
through my child. I am incapable of all else. Do
you hear me, Francesca?”

“I do, dear father!”

“Then, one moment more! I cannot conceal my
thoughts from you, and you will pardon love like
mine for ungrounded fears. I liked not the stranger
at the duke's palace.”

Francesca stole a quick look at her father, and,
with the rapidity of light, her dark eye resumed its
tranquillity.

“I say I liked him not! No one knew him! He
is gone, no one knows whither! I trust he will
never be seen more in Florence. But I will not
disguise from you that I thought you—pleased with
him!”

“Father!”

“Forgive me if I wrong you—but, without pursuing
the subject, let your father implore you, on his
knees, for the confidence of your heart. Will you
tell me your thoughts, Francesca? Will you love
me with but the thousandth part of my adoration,
my devotion, for my child?”

“Father! I will!”

The count rose from the knee on which he had
fallen, gave his daughter a long embrace, and led
her in. And that night she fled over the Tuscan
border, into neighbouring Romagna, and, with the
stranger at her side, sped away, under the cover of
night, toward the shores of the Brenta.

Like a city of secrets, sleeps silent Venice. Her
sea-washed foundations are buried under the smooth
glass of the tide. Her palace-entrances are dark
caverns, impenetrable to the eye. Her veiled dames
are unseen in their floating chambers, as they go
from street to street; and mysteriously and silently
glide to and fro those swift gondolas, black as night,
yet carrying sadness and mirth, innocence and guilt,
alike swiftly, mysteriously, and silently. Water,
that betrays no footstep, and covers all with the
same mantle of light, fills her streets. Silence, that
is the seal of secresy, reigns day and night over her
thousand palaces.

For an hour the smooth mirror of the broad canal
that sweeps under the Rialto, had not been divided
by the steel prow of a gondola. Francesca Spinola
stood at the window of a chamber in a palace of
gorgeous magnificence, watching that still water
for the coming of her husband. The silver lines of
the moon stole back imperceptibly, as her full orb
sailed up the heavens, and the turrets of the old
architecture of Venice, drawn clearly on the unruffled
bosom of the canal, seemed retiring before a
consuming sheet of silver. The silence seemed
painful. To the ear of the beautiful Florentine, the
want of the sound of a footstep, of the echo of some
distant wheel, the utter death of all sound common
to even the stillest hour of a paved city, seemed
oppressive and awful. Behind her burned lamps of
alabaster, and perfumes filled the chamber, and on
a cushion of costly velvet lay a mean and unornamented
guitar. Its presence in so costly a palace
was a secret yet withheld. She wished to touch
its strings, if only to disperse the horror of silence.
But she raised her fingers, and again, without touching
it, leaned out and watched the dark arch of the
Rialto.

A gondola, with a single oar, sped swiftly from
its black shadow. It could not be Paletto. He
had gone with his two faithful servants to St.
Marc's. The oar ceased—the bark headed in—the

water splashed on the marble stair—and the gondolier
stepped on shore. Ah, who but Paletto had
such a form as stood there in the moonlight?

“Are we to be married again,” said Francesca,
as her husband entered the chamber, “that you
have once more disguised yourself as a fisherman?”

Paletto turned from the light, and took up the
mysterious guitar. “It is no night to be in-doors,
my Francesca! Come with me to the lagoon, and
I will tell you the story of this despised instrument.
Will you come?” he pursued, as she stood looking
at him in wonder at his strange dress and disturbed
look. “Will you come, my wife?”

“But you have returned without your gondoliers!”
she said, advancing a step to take his hand.

“I have rowed a gondola ere now,” he answered;
and, without further explanation, he led her down
the lofty staircase, and seating her in the stern of
the bark which he had brought with him, stepped
upon the platform, and, with masterly skill and
power, drove it like a shadow under the Rialto.

He who has watched the horn of a quarter-moon
gliding past the towers, pinnacles and palaces of the
drifting clouds, and in his youthful and restless brain,
fancied such must be the smooth delight and changing
vision of a traveller in strange lands—one who
has thus dreamed in his boyhood will scarce shoot
through Venice for the first time in a gondola, without

a sense of familiarity with the scene and motion.
The architecture of the clouds is again drifting past,
and himself seems borne onward by the silver shallop
of the moon.

Francesca sat on the low cushion of the gondola,
watching and wondering. How should her luxurious
Paletto have acquired the exquisite skill with
which he drove the noiseless boat like a lance-fly
over the water. Another gondola approached or
was left behind, the corner of a palace was to be
rounded, or the black arch of a bridge to be shot
under, and the peculiar warning-cry of the gondoliers,
giving notice of their unheard approach, fell
from his lips so mechanically, that the hireling oarsmen
of the city, marvelling at his speed, but never
doubting that it was a comrade of the Piazza, added
the “fratello mio” to their passing salutation. She
saw by every broad beam of light, which, between
the palaces, came down across them, a brow clouded
and a mind far from the oar he turned so skilfully.
She looked at the gondola in which she sat. It was
old and mean. In the prow lay a fisher's net, and
the shabby guitar, thrown upon it, seemed now, at
least, not out of place. She looked up at Paletto
once more, and, in his bare throat and bosom, his
loose cap and neglected hair, she could with difficulty
recognize the haughty stranger of the Boboli.
She spoke to him. It was necessary to break the

low-born spell that seemed closing around her. Paletto
started at her voice, and suspending his oar,
while the gondola still kept way as if with its own
irresistible volition, he passed his hand over his eyes,
and seemed waking from some painful dream.

The gondola was now far out in the lagoon.—
Around them floated an almost impalpable vapour,
just making the moonlight visible, and the soft click
of the water beneath the rising and dropping prow
was the only sound between them and the cloudless
heaven. In that silence Paletto strung his guitar
and sang to his bride with a strange energy. She
listened and played with his tangled locks, but there
seemed a spell upon her tongue when she would ask
the meaning of this mystery.

“Francesca!” he said at last, raising his head from
her lap.

“What says my fisherman?” she replied, holding
up his rough cap with a smile.

Paletto started, but recovering his composure, instantly
took the cap from her jewelled fingers and
threw it carelessly upon his head.

“Francesca! who is your husband?”

“Paletto.”

“And who is Paletto?”

“I would have asked sometimes, but your kisses
have interrupted me. Yet I know enough.”

“What know you?”

“That he is a rich and noble seignior of Venice!”

“Do I look one to-night?”

“Nay—for a masquerade, I have never seen a
better! Where learned you to look so like a fisherman
and row so like a gondolier?”

Paletto frowned.

“Francesca!” said he folding his arms across his
bosom, “I am the son of a fisherman, and I was
bred to row the gondola beneath you!”

The sternness of his tone checked the smile upon
her beautiful lip, and when she spoke it was with a
look almost as stern as his own.

“You mock me too gravely, Paletto! But come!
I will question you in your own humour. Who educated
the fisherman's son?”

“The fisherman.”

“And his palace and his wealth—whence came
they, Signor Pescatore?”

The scornful smile of incredulity with which this
question was asked, speedily fled from her lip as
Paletto answered it.

“Listen! Three months since I had never known
other condition than a fisherman of the lagoon, nor
worn other dress than this in which you see me.
The first property I ever possessed beyond my day's
earnings, was this gondola. It was my father's,
Giannotto the fisherman. When it became mine
by his death, I suddenly wearied of my tame life,

Paletto looked at her with a smile, and never
sunbeam was more unmixed with shadow than the
smile which answered it on the lips of Spinola's
daughter.

“My Paletto!” she said, “you have the soul of
a noble, and the look of one, and I am your bride.
Let us return to the palace!”

“I have no palace but this!” he said striking his
hand like a bar of iron upon the side of the gondola.
“You have not heard out my tale.”

Francesca sat with a face unmoved as marble.

“This night, at play, I lost all. My servants are
dismissed, my palace belongs to another, and with
this bark which I had repurchased, I am once more
Paletto the fisherman!”

A slight heave of the bosom of the fair Florentine
was her only response to this astounding announcement.
Her eyes turned slowly from the face of
the fisherman, and fixing apparently on some point
far out in the Adriatic, she sat silent, motionless and
cold.

“I am a man, Francesca!” said Paletto after a
pause which, in the utter stillness of the lagoon
around them, seemed like a suspension of the breathing
of nature, and “I have not gone through this
insane dream without some turning aside of the
heart. Spite of myself, I loved you, and I could
not dishonour you. We are married, Francesca!”

The small dark brows of the Florentine lowered
till the silken lashes they overhung seemed starting
from beneath here forehead. Her eyes flashed fire
below.

“Bene!” said Paletto, rising to his feet; “one
word more while we have silence around us and
are alone. You are free to leave me, and I will so
far repair the wrong I have done you, as to point
out the way. It will be daylight in an hour. Fly
to the governor's palace, announce your birth,
declare that you were forced from your father by
brigands, and claim his protection. The world will
believe you, and the consequences to myself I will
suffer in silence.”

With a sudden, convulsive motion, Francesca
thrust out her arm, and pointed a single finger toward
Venice. Paletto bent to his oar, and quivering
in every seam beneath its blade, the gondola sped
on its way. The steel prow struck fire on the granite
steps of the Piazza, the superb daughter of Spinola
stepped over the trembling side, and with a
half-wave of her hand, strode past the Lion of St.
Mark, and approached the sentinel at the palace-gate.
And as her figure was lost among the arabesque
columns shaded from the moon, Paletto's
lonely gondola shot once more silently and slowly
from the shore.