 | CHAP. II. Romance of travel |  |
2. CHAP. 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 colours. The
riderless horse-races, which conclude the carnival
in Florence, were to be honoured 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 beneth the damask and cloth of gold,
the rough stone windows were worn smooth by the
touch of peasant hands, and the smutch'd occupants,
looking down their balconies above, upon the
usurpers 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,
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
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 child-like 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 scatheless 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
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
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 favoured 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 favour of the admired singer with his rivals, he
bad no rival now. There was in the demeanour 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 empress 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,
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 cannot live
unloved. I deserted you, for I was ignorant of myself.
I have tried splendour 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
to the lips of Cappone's daughter, the 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 attacked 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.”
| CHAP. II. Romance of travel | |