University of Virginia Library

Violanta Cesarini.

ROMANCE OF TRAVEL.

VIOLANTA CESARINI.

1. CHAP. I.

It was an eve fit for an angel's birthnight, (and we
know angels are born in this loving world,) and
while the moon, as if shining only for artist's eyes,
drew the outlines of palace and chapel, stern turret
and serenaded belvidere, with her silver pencil on the
street, two grave seniors, guardians in their own
veins of the blood of two lofty names known long to
Roman story, leaned together over a balcony of
fretted stone, jutting out upon the Corso, and affianced

now leaning against a palace wall, while a wandering
harp-girl sung better for a baiocco than noble
ladies for the praise of a cardinal; at one corner
stood an artist with his tablet, catching some chance
effect perhaps in the drapery of a marble saint,
perhaps in the softer drapery of a sinner; the cafés
far up and down, looked like festas out of doors, with
their groups of gaily dressed idlers, eating sherbets
and buying flowers; a gray friar passed now with
his low toned benedicite; and again a black cowl
with a face that reddened the very moonbeam that
peeped under; hunchbacks contended testily for the
wall and tall fellows (by their long hair and fine
symmetry, professed models for sculptors and painters)
yielded to them with a gibe. And this is Rome
when the moon shines well, and on this care cheating
scene looked down the Countess Violanta, with
her heart as full of perplexity as her silk boddice-lace
would bear without breaking.

I dare say you did not observe, if you were in
Rome that night, and strolling, as you would have
been, in the Corso, (this was three years ago last
May, and if you were in the habit of reading the
Diario di Roma, the story will not be new to you;)
you did not observe, I am sure, that a thread ran
across from the balcony I speak of, in the Palazzo
Cesarini, to a high window in an old palace opposite,
inhabited, as are many palaces in Rome, by a

decayed family and several artists. On the two
sides of this thread, pressed, while she mused, the
slight fingers of Violanta Cesarini; and, as if it
descended from the stars at every pull which the
light May-breeze gave it in passing, she turned her
soft blue eyes upwards, and her face grew radiant
with hope—not such as is fed with star-gazing!

Like a white dove shooting with slant wings
downwards a folded slip of paper flew across on
this invisible thread, and, by heaven's unflickering
lamp, Violanta read some characters traced with a
rough crayon, but in most sweet Italian. A look
upwards, and a nod, as if she were answering the
stars that peeped over her, and the fair form had
gone with its snowy robes from the balcony, and
across the high window from which the messenger
had come, dropped the thick and impenetrable folds
of the gray curtain of an artist.

It was a large upper room, such as is found in the
vast houses of the decayed nobility of Rome, and of
its two windows one was roughly boarded up to
exclude the light, while a coarse gray cloth did
nearly the same service at the other, shutting out all
but an artist's modicum of day. The walls of rough
plaster were covered with grotesque drawings, done
apparently with bits of coal, varied here and there
with scraps of unframed canvass. nailed carelessly

np, and covered with the study of some head, by a
famous master. A large table on one side of the
room was burdened with a confused heap of brushes,
paint-bags, and discoloured cloths, surmounted with
a clean pallette; and not far off stood an easel,
covered with thumb-marks of all dyes, and supporting
a new canvass, on which was outlined the figure
of a nymph, with the head finished in a style that
would have stirred the warm blood of Raphael
himself with emulous admiration. A low flock bed,
and a chair without a bottom, but with a large cloak
hung over its back, a pair of foils and a rapier, completed
so much of the furniture of the room as
belonged to a gay student of Corregio's art, who
wrote himself Biondo Amieri.

By the light of ths same antique lamp, hung on a
rusty nail against the wall, you might see a very
good effect on the face of an unfinished group in
marble, of which the model, in plaster, stood a little
behind, representing a youth with a dagger at his
heart, arrested in the act of self-murder by a female,
whose softened resembled to him proclaimed her at
the first glance his sister. A mallet, chisels, and
other implements used in sculpture, lay on the rough
base of the unfinished group, and half disclosed, half
concealed, by a screen covered with prints by some
curious female hand, stood a bed with white curtains,
and an oratory of carved oak at its head, supporting

a clasped missal. A chair or two, whose seats of
worked satin had figured one day in more luxurious
neighborhood, a table covered with a few books and
several drawings from the antique, and a carefully
locked escritoire, served, with other appearances, to
distinguish this side of the room as belonging to a
separate occupant, of gentler taste or nurture.

While the adventurous Violanta is preparing herself
to take advantage of the information received
by her secret telegraph, I shall have time, dear
reader, to put you up to a little of the family history
of the Cesarini, necessary no less to a proper understanding
of the story, than to the herione's character
for discretion. On the latter point, I would suggest
to you, you may as well suspend your opinion.

It is well known to all the gossips in Rome, that,
for four successive generations, the Marquises of
Cesarini have obtained dispensations of the Pope for
marrying beautiful peasant girls from the neighborhood
of their castle, in Romagna. The considerable
sums paid for these dispensations, reconciled the
Holy See to such an unprecedented introduction of
vulgar blood into the veins of the nobility, and the
remarkable female beauty of the race, (heightened
by the addition of nature's aristocracy to its own,)
contributed to maintain good-will at a court, devoted
above all others to the cultivation of the fine arts,
of which woman is the Eidolon and the soul. The

last marquis, educated like his fathers, in their wild
domain among the mountains, selected, like them,
the fairest wild-flower that sprung at his feet, and
after the birth of one son, applied for the tardy dispensation.
From some unknown cause, (possibly
a diminished bribe, as the marquis was less lavish
in his disposition than his predecessors,) the Pope
sanctioned the marriage, but refused to legitimatize
the son, unless the next born should be a daughter.
The marchioness soon after retired, (from mortification
it is supposed,) to her home in the mountains,
and after two years of close seclusion, returned to
Rome, bringing with her an infant daughter, then
three months of age, destined to be the heroine of our
story. No other child appearing, the young Cesarini
was legitimatized, and with his infant sister passed
most of his youth at Rome. Some three or four years
before the time when our tale commences, this youth,
who had betrayed always, a coarse and brutal temper,
administered his stiletto to a gentleman on the
Corso, and flying from Rome, became a brigand
in the Abruzzi. His violence and atrocity in this
congenial life, soon put him beyond hope of pardon,
and on his outlawry by the Pope, Violanta became
the heiress of the estates of Cesarini.

The marchioness had died when Violanta was
between seven and eight years of age, leaving her,
by a deathbed injunction, in the charge of her own

constant attendant, a faithful servant from Romagno,
supposed to be distant kinswomen to her mistress.
With this tried dependant, the young countess was
permitted to go where she pleased, at all hours
when not attended by her masters, and seeing her
tractable and lovely, the old marquess, whose pride
in the beauty of his family was the passion next to
love of money in his heart, gave himself little trouble,
and thought himself consoled for the loss of his son
in the growing attractions and filial virtues of his
daughter.

On a bright morning in early spring, six years
before the date of our tale, the young countess and
her attendant were gathering wild flowers near the
Fountain of Egeria, (of all spots of earth, that on
which the wild flowers are most profuse and sweetest,)
when a deformed youth, who seemed to be
no stranger to Donna Bettina, addressed Violanta
in a tone of voice so musical, and with a look so
kindly and winning, that the frank child took his hand,
and led him off in search of cardinals and blue-bells,
with the familiarity of an established playfellow.
After this day, the little countess never came home
pleased from a morning drive and ramble in which
she had not seen her friend Signor Giulio; and the
romantic baths of Caracalla, and the many delicious
haunts among the ruins about Rome, had borne
witness to the growth of a friendship, all fondness

and impulse on the part of Violanta, all tenderness
and delicacy on that of the deformed youth. By
what wonderful instinct they happened always to
meet, the delighted child never found time or thought
to inquire.

Two or three years passed on thus, and the old
marquess had grown to listen with amused familiarity
to his daughter's prattle about the deformed
youth, and no incident had varied the pleasant
tenour of their lives and rambles, except that, Giulio
once falling ill, Bettina had taken the young countess
to his home, where she discovered that, young
as he was, he made some progress in moulding in
clay, and was destined for a sculptor. This visit to
the apartment of an obscure youth, however, the
marquis had seen fit to object to; and though, at his
daughter's request, he sent the young sculptor an
order for his first statue, he peremptorily forbade all
further intercourse between him and Violanta. In
the paroxysm of her grief at the first disgrace she
had ever fallen into with her master, Bettina disclosed
to her young mistress, by way of justification,
a secret she had been bound by the most solemn
oaths to conceal, and of which she now was the sole
living depository—that this deformed youth was born
in the castle of the Cesarini, in Romagna, of no less
obscure parentage than the castle's lord and lady,
and being the first child after the dispensation of

marriage, and a son, he was consequently the rightful
heir to the marquisate and estates of Cesarini;
and the elder son, by the terms of that dispensation,
was illegitimate.

This was astounding intelligence to Violanta,
who, nevertheless, child as she was, felt its truth in
the yearnings of her heart to Giulio; but it was
with no little pains and difficulty on Bettina's part,
that she was persuaded to preserve the secret from
her father. The Romagnese knew her master's
weakness; and as the birth of the child had occurred
during his long absence from the castle, and the
marchioness, proud of her eldest-born, had determined
from the first that he alone should enjoy the
name and honours of his father, it was not very
probable that upon the simple word of a domestic,
he would believe a deformed hunchback to be his
son and heir.

The intermediate history of Giulio, Bettina knew
little about, simply informing her mistress, that disgusted
with his deformity, the unnatural mother had
sent him to nurse in a far-off village of Romagna,
and that the interest of a small sum which the marquess
supposed had been expended on masses for
the souls of his ancestors, was still paid to his foster
parents for his use.

From the time of this disclosure, Violanta's life
had been but too happy. Feeling justified in contriving

secret interviews with her brother; and possessing
the efficient connivance of Bettina, who grew,
like, herself, almost to worship the pure-minded
and the gentle Giulio, her heart and her time were
blissfully crowded with interest. So far, the love
that had welled from her heart had been all joyous
and untroubled.

It was during the absence of the marquis and his
daughter from Rome, and in an unhealthy season,
that Giulio, always delicate in health and liable to
excessive fits of depression, had fallen ill in his solitary
room, and, but for the friendly care of a young
artist whom he had long known, must have died of
want and neglect. As he began to recover, he accepted
the offer of Amieri, his friend, to share with
him a lodging in the more elevated air of the Corso,
and, the more readily, that this room chanced to
overlook the palace of Cesarina. Here Violanta
found him on her return, and though displeased that
he was no longer alone, she still continued, when
Amieri was absent, to see him sometimes in his
room, and their old haunts without the walls were
frequented as often as his health and strength would
permit. A chance meeting of Violanta and Amieri
in his own studio, however, made it necessary that
he should be admitted to their secret, and the consequence
of that interview, and others which Violanta
found it impossible to avoid, was a passion in the

heart of the enthusiastic painter, which consumed,
as it well might, every faculty of his soul.

We are thus brought to an evening of balmy May,
when Giulio found himself alone. Biondo had been
painting all day on the face of his nymph, endeavoring
in vain to give it any other features than those
of the lady of his intense worship, and having gone
out to ramble for fresh air and relaxation in the Corso,
Giulio thought he might venture to throw across
his ball of thread and send a missive to his sister,
promising her an uninterrupted hour of his society.

With these preliminaries, our story will now run
smoothly on.

2. CHAP. II.

“Come in, carissima!” said the low, silver-toned
voice of the deformed sculptor, as a female figure,
in the hood and cloak of an old woman, crossed the
threshold of his chamber.

“Dear Giulio!” And she leaned slightly over the
diminutive form of her brother, and first kissing his
pale forehead, while she unfastened the clasp of
Bettina's cloak of black silk, threw her arms about
him as the disguise fell off, and multiplied, between
her caresses, the endearing terms in which the lan
guage of that soft clime is so prodigal.

They sat down at the foot of his group in marble,
and each told the little history of the hours they had
spent apart. They grew alike as they conversed;
for theirs was that resemblance of the soul, to which
the features answer only when the soul is breathing
through. Unless seen together, and not only together,
but gazing on each other in complete abandonment
of heart, the friends that knew them best
would have said they were unlike. Yet Amieri's
nymph on the canvass was like both, for Amieri drew
from the picture burnt on his own heart by love, and
the soul of Violanta lay breathing beneath every
lineament.

“You have not touched the marble to-day!” said
the countess, taking the lamp from its nail, and shedding
the light aslant on the back of the statue.

“No! I have lifted the hammer twenty times to
break it in pieces.”

“Ah! dearest Giulio! talk not thus! Think it is
my image you would destroy!”

“If it were, and truly done, I would sooner strike
the blessed crucifix. But, Violanta! there is a link
wanting in this deformed frame of mine! The sense
of beauty, or the power to body it forth wants room
in me. I feel it—I feel it!”

Violanta ran to him and pressed the long curls
that fell over his pallid temples to her bosom. There

was a tone of conviction in his voice that she knew
not how to answer.

He continued, as if he were musing aloud:

“I have tried to stifle this belief in my bosom, and
have never spoken of it till now—but it is true!
Look at that statue! Parts of it are like nature—
but it wants uniformity—it wants grace—it wants
what I want—proportion! I never shall give it
that, because I want the sense, the consciousness,
the emotion, of complete godlike movement. It is
only the well formed who feel this. Sculptors may
imitate gods! for they are made in God's image.
But oh, Violanta! I am not!”

“My poor brother!”

“Our blessed Saviour was not more beautiful
than the Apollo,” he passionately continued, “but
could I feel like the Apollo! Can I stand before
the clay and straighten myself to his attitude, and
fancy, by the most delirious effort of imagination,
that I realize in this frame, and could ever have
conceived and moulded his indignant and lofty beauty?”
No—no—no!”

“Dear—dear Giulio.” He dropped his head
again, and she felt his tears penetrate to her bosom.

“Leave this melancholy theme,” she said, in an
imploring tone, “and let us talk of other things, I
have something to tell you, Giulio!”

“Raphael was beautiful,” he said, raising himself
up, unconscious of the interruption, “and Giorgione,
and Titian, both nobly formed, and Michael Angelo
had the port of an archangel! Yes, the soul inhabits
the whole body, and the sentiment of beauty
moves and quickens through it all. My tenement is
cramped!—Violanta!”

“Well dear brother!”

“Tell me your feelings when you first breathe the
air in a bright morning in spring. Do you feel
graceful? Is there a sensation of beauty? Do you
lift yourself and feel swan-like and lofty, and worthy
of the divine image in which you breathe. Tell me
truly, Violanta.”

“Yes, brother!”

“I knew it! I have a faint dream of such a feeling—a
sensation that is confined to my brain somehow
which I struggle to express in motion—but
if I lift my finger, it is gone. I watch Amieri
sometimes, when he draws. He pierces my very
soul by assuming, always, the attitude on his canvass.
Violanta! how can I stand like a statue
that would please the eye?”

“Giulio! Giulio!”

“Well, I will not burden you with my sadness.
Let us look at Biondo's nymph. Pray the Virgin he
come not in the while—for painting, by lamp-light,
shows less fairly than marble.”

He took the lamp, and while Violanta shook the
tears from her eyes, he drew out the pegs of the
easel, and lowered the picture to the light.

“Are you sure Amieri will not come in, Giulio?”
inquired his sister, looking back timidly at the door
while she advanced.

“I think he will not. The Corso is gay to night,
and his handsome face and frank carriage, win greetings,
as the diamond draws light. Look at his
picture, Violanta! With what triumph he paints!
How different from my hesitating hand! The
thought that is born in his fancy, collects instant fire
in his veins and comes prompt and proportionate to
his hand. It looks like a thing born, not wrought!
How beautiful you are, my Violanta! He has done
well—brave Biondo!”

“It is like me, yet fairer.”

“I wish it were done! There is a look on the lips
that is like a sensation I feel sometimes on my own
I almost feel as if I should straighten and grow fair
as it advances. Would it not be a blessed thing,
Violanta?”

“I love you as you are, dear Giulio!”

“But I thirst to be loved like other men! I would
pass in the street and not read pity in all eyes. I
would go out like Biondo, and be greeted in the
street with `Mio bravo!' `Mio bello!' I would be
beloved by some one that is not my sister, Violanta!
I would have my share—only my share—of huma

joy and regard. I were better dead than be a
hunchback. I would die, but for you—to-night—
yes, to night.”

With a convulsive hand he pulled aside the curtain,
and sent a long, earnest look up to the stars.
Violanta had never before heard him give words to
his melancholy thoughts, and she felt appalled and
silenced by the inexpressible poignancy of his tones,
and the feverish, tearless, broken-heartedness of his
whole manner. As she took his hand, there was a
noise in the street below, and presently after, a hurried
step was heard on the stair, and Amieri rushed
in, seized the rapier which hung over his bed and
without observing Violanta, was flying again from
the apartment.

“Biondo!” cried a voice which would have stayed
him were next breath to have been drawn in heaven.

“Contessa Violanta!”

“What is it Amieri? Where go you now?”
asked Giulio, gliding between him and the door.
Biondo's cheek and brow had flushed when first
arrested by the voice of the countess, but now he
stood silent and with his eyes on the floor, pale as
the statue before him.

“A quarrel, Giulio!' he said at length.

“Biondo!” The countess sprang to his side with
the simple utterance of his name, and laid her small
hand on his arm. “You shall not go! You are

dear to us—dear to Guilio, Signor Amieri! If you
love us—if you care for Giulio—nay, I will say it—
if you care for me, dear Biondo, put not your life in
peril.”

“Lady!” said the painter, bowing his head to his
wrist, and kissing lightly the small white fingers
that pressed it, “if I were to lose my life this hour,
I should bless with my dying lips the occasion which
had drawn from you the blessed words I hear. But
the more life is valuable to me by your regard, the
more need you should not delay me. I am waited
for. Farewell!”

Disengaging himself from Violanta's grasp, quickly
but gently, Amieri darted through the door, and was
gone.

3. CHAP. III.

Biondo had readily found a second in the first
artist he met on the Corso, and after a rapid walk
they turned on the lonely and lofty wall of the
Palatine, to look back on the ruins of the Forum.—
At a fountain side, not far beyond, he had agreed to
find his antagonist; but spite of the pressing business
of the hour, the wonderful and solemn beauty of the
ruins that lay steeped in moonlight at his feet, awoke,
for an instant, all of the painter in his soul.

“Is it not glorious, Lenzoni?” he said, pointing with
his rapier to the softened and tall columns that carried
their capitals among the stars.

“We have not come out to sketch, Amieri!” was
the reply.

“True, caro! but my fingers work as if the pencil
was in them, and I forget revenge while I see what I
shall never sketch again!”

Lenzoni struck his hand heavily on Amieri's
shoulder, as if to wake him from a dream, and looked
close into his face.

“If you fight in this spirit, Biondo—”

“I shall fight with heart and soul, Lenzoni; fear
me not! But when I saw, just now, the bel'effetto
of the sharp-drawn shadows under the arch of Constantine,
and felt instinctively for my pencil, something
told me, at my heart's ear—you will never
trace line again, Amieri!”

“Take heart, caro amico!”

My heart is ready, but my thoughts come fast!—
What were my blood, I cannot but reflect, added to
the ashes of Rome? We fight in the grave of an
empire! But you will not philosophize, dull Lenzoni!
Come on to the fountain!”

The moon shone soft on the greensward rim of
the neglected fountain that once sparkled through
the “gold palace” of Nero. The white edges of
half buried marble peeped here and there from the

grass, and beneath the shadow of an ivy-covered and
tottering arch, sang a nightingale, the triumphant
possessor of life amid the forgotten ashes of the
Cæsars. Amieri listened to his song.

“You are prompt, signor!” said a gay-voiced
gentleman, turning the corner of the ruined wall, as
Biondo, still listening to the nightingale, fed his heart
with the last sweet words of Violanta.

“`Sempre pronto,' is a good device,” answered
Lenzoni, springing to his feet. “Will you fight, side
to the moon, signors, or shall we pull straws for the
choice of light?”

Amieri's antagonist was a strongly made man of
thirty, costly in his dress, and of that class of features
eminently handsome, yet eminently displeasing.—
The origin of the quarrel was an insulting observation,
coupled with the name of the young Countess
Cesarini, which Biondo, who was standing in the
shadow of a wall, watching her window from the
Corso,accidentally overheard. A blow on the mouth
was the first warning the stranger received of a
listener's neighbourhood, and after a momentary
struggle they exchanged cards, and separated to
meet in an hour, with swords. at the fountain, on the
Palatine.

Amieri was accounted the best foil in the ateliers
of Rome, but his antagonist, the Count Lamba
Malaspina, had just returned from a long residence

in France, and had the reputation of an accomplished
swordsman. Amieri was slighter in person, but well
made, and agile as a leopard; but when Lenzoni
looked into the cool eye of Malaspina, the spirit and
fire which he would have relied upon to ensure his
friend success in an ordinary contest, made him
tremble now.

Count Lamba bowed, and they crossed swords.
Amieri had read his antagonist's character, like his
friend, and, at the instant their blades parted, he
broke down his guard with the quickness of lightning,
and wounded him in the face. Malapina smiled as
he crossed his rapier again, and in the next moment
Amieri's sword flew high above his head, and the
count's was at his breast.

“Ask for your life, mio bravo!” he said, as calmly
as if they had met by chance in the Corso.

“A'morte! villain and slandered!” cried Amieri,
and striking the sword from his bosom, he aimed a
a blow at Malaspina, which by a backward movement,
was recieved on the point of the blade. Transfixed
through the wrist, Amieri struggled in vain
against the superior strength and coolness of his
antagonist, and falling on his knee, waited in silence
for his death-blow. Malaspina drew his sword
gently as possible from the wound, and recommending
a tourniquet to Lenzoni till a surgeon could be
procured, washed the blood from his face in the

fountain,and descended into the Forum, humming the
air of a new song.

Faint with loss of blood, and with his left arm
around Lenzoni's neck, Biondo arrived at the surgeon's
door.

“Can you save his hand?” was the first eager
question.

Amieri held up his bleeding wrist with difficulty,
and the surgeon shook his head as he laid the helpless
fingers in his palm. The tendon was entirely parted.

“I may save the hand,” he said, “but he will never
use it more!”

Amieri gave his friend a look full of anguish, and
fell back insensible.

“Poor Biondo!” said Lenzoni, as he raised his
pallid head from the surgeon's pillow. “Death were
less misfortune than the loss of a hand like thine.—
The foreboding was too true, alas! that thou never
wouldst use pencil more!”

4. CHAP. IV.

The frowning battlements of St. Angelo were
brightened with the glare of lamps across the Tiber,
and the dark breast of the river was laced with bars
of gold like the coat of a captain of dragoons. Here

and there lay a boat in mid-stream, and while the
drift of the current was counteracted by an occasional
stroke at the oar, the boatmen listened to the
heavenly strains of a waltz, dying and triumphing
in alternate cadences upon the breath of night and
the pope's band. A platform was built out over the
river, forming a continuation of the stage, the pit was
floored over, and all draped like a Persian harem;
and thus began a masquerade at the Teatro della
Pergola at Rome, which stands, if you will take the
trouble to remember, close by the bridge and castle
of St. Angelo upon the bank of the “yellow Tiber.”

The entrance of the crowd to the theatre was like
a procession intended to represent the things of which
we are commanded, not to make gravenimages, nor
to bow down and worship them. There was the
likeness of everything in heaven above and on the
earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth.
There were angels, devils, serpents, birds, beasts,
fishes and fair women—of which none except the
last occasioned much transgression of the commandment.
Oddly enough, the fishes waltzed—
and so did the beasts and fair women, the serpents
and birds—pairing off as they came within sound of
the musick, with a defiance of natural antipathies
which would have driven a naturalist out of his
senses.

A chariot drove up with the crest of the Cesarini

on the pannel, and out of it stepped rather a stiff
figure dressed as a wandering palmer, with serge
and scallop-shells, followed by a masked hunchback
whosê costume, even to the threadbare spot on the
ridge of his deformity, was approved, by the loungers
at the door, in a general “bravissimo.” They entered
the dressing-room, and the cloak-keeper was not
surprised when the lump was withdrawn in the
shape of a pad of wool, and by the aid of a hood
and petticoat of black silk, the deformed was transformed
into a slender domino, undistinguished but
for the grace and elasiticity of her movements. The
attendant was surprised, however, when having
stepped aside to deposite the pad given in charge to
her, she turned and saw the domino flitting from the
room, but the hunchback with his threadbare hump
still leaning on the palmer's arm!

“Santissima Vergine!” she exclaimed, pulling out
her cross and holding it between herself and Giulio,
“the Fiend—the unholy Fiend!”

Donna Bettina laughed under her palmer's cowl,
and drawing Giulio's arm within her own, they
mingled in the masquerade.

The old Oount Cesarini arrived a few minutes
after in one of the equipages of the Malaspina,
accompanied by a red-cross knight in a magnificent
armour, his sword-hilt sparkling with diamonds, and
the bars of his visor half drawn, yet showing a

beard of jetty and curling black, and a mouth of the
most regular, yet unpleasant beauty. The upper
part of his face was quite concealed, yet the sneer
on his lips promised a cold and unfeeling eye.

“As a hunchback, did you say, count?”

“It was her whim,” answered Cesarini. “She
has given arms to a poor sculptor with that deformity
till her brain is filled with it. Pray the saints to
affect not your offspring, Lamba!”

Malaspina surveyed himself in the long mirror at
the entrance of the saloon, and smiled back incredulously
with his white teeth.

“I gave Bettina strict orders not to leave her side,”
said Cesarini. “You will find the old donna by her
palmer's dress. The saints speed your suit, Lamba!
I will await you in the card-room when the dance
wearies you!”

It was not for some time after the two old nobles
had affianced their children, that Cesarini had found
a fitting opportunity to break the subject to his
daughter. When he did so, somewhat to his embarrassment,
Violanta listened to it without surprise;—
and after hearing all he had to say upon the honourable
descent, large fortune and courtly accomplishments
of the young Count Lamba, she only permitted
her father to entertain any future hope on the subject,
upon the condition, that, till she was of age, her
proposed husband should not even be presented to

her. For this victory over the most cherished
ambition of the old count, Violonta was indebted
partly to the Holy See, and partly to some qualities
in her own character, of which her father knew the
force. He was aware with what readiness the cardinals
would seize upon the slightest wish she might
express to take the veil and bring her possessions
into the church, and he was sufficiently acquainted
with the qualities of a Cesarini, not to drive one of
their daughters to extremity.

With some embarrassment the old count made a
clean breast to Malaspina and his son, and was
exhausting language in regrets, when he was relieved
by an assurance from Lamba that the difficulty
increased his zest for the match, and that, Cesarini's
permission, he would find opportunitie to encounter
her in her walks as a stranger, and make his way
after the romantic taste which he supposed was
alone at the bottom of her refusal. For success in
this, Count Lambo relied on his personal beauty and
on that address in the arts of adventure which is
acquired by a residence in France.

Since his duel, Amieri had been confined to his
bed with a violent fever, dangerously aggravated by
the peculiar nature of his calamity. The love of
the pencil was the breath of his soul, and in
all his thoughts of Violanta, it was only as a rival
of the lofty fame of painters who had made themselves

the companions of kings, that he could imagine
himself a claimant for her love. It seemed
to him that his nerveless hand had shut out heaven's
intire light.

Giulio had watched by his friend with the faithful
fondness of a woman, and had gathered from his
moments of delirium, what Biondo had from delicacy
to Violanta never revealed to his second, Lenzoni—
the cause of his quarrel with Malaspina. Touched
with this chivalric tenderness toward his sister the
kind Giulio hung over him with renewed affection,
and when, in subsequent ravings, the maimed
youth betrayed the real sting of his misfortune—
the death of his hopes of her love—the unambitious
brother resolved in his heart that if he could aid him
by service or sacrifice, by influence with Violanta,
or by making the almost desperate attempt to establish
his own claims to the name and fortunes of
Cesarini, he would devote himself to his service
heart and soul.

During the confinement of Amieri to his room, the
young countess had of course, been unable to visit
her brother, and as he scarce left the patient's side
for a moment, their intercourse for two or three
weeks had been entirely interrupted. On the first
day the convalescent youth could walk out, she had
stolen to the studio, and heard from Giulio the whole
history of the duel and its consequences. When he

had finished his narrative, Violanta sat, for a few
minutes, lost in thought.

“Giulio!” she said at last, with a gaiety of tone,
which startled him.

Violanta!”

“Did you ever remark that our voices are very
much alike?”

“Biondo often says so.”

“And you have a foot almost as small as mine.”

“I have not the proportions of a man, Violanta!”

“Nay, brother, but I mean that—that—we might
pass for each other, if we were masked. Our
height is the same. Stand up, Giulio!”

“You would not mock me!” said the melancholy
youth with a faint smile, as he rose and set his bent
back beside the straight and lithe form of his sister.

“Listen to me, amato-bene!” she replied, sitting
down and drawing him upon her knee, after satisfying
himself that there was no perceptible difference
in their height. “Put your arm about my neck, and
love me while I tell you of my little plot.”

Giulio impressed a kiss upon the clear, alabaster
forehead of the beautiful girl, and looked into her
face inquiringly.

“There is to be a masquerade at La Pergola,”
she said—“a superb masquerade given to some
prince! And I am to go, Giulio mio!”

“Well,” answered the listener, sadly.

“But do you not seem surprised that I am permitted
to go! Shall I tell you the reason why papa
gave me permission?”

“If you will, Violonta!”

“A little bird told me that Malaspina means to
be there!”

“And you will go to meet him?”

“You shall go to meet him, and I—” she
hesitated and cast down the long dark fringes of her
eyes. “I will meet Biondo!”

“Giulio clasped her passionately to his heart.

“I see!—I see!” he cried, springing upon his feet,
as he anticipated the remaining circumstances of
the plot. “We shall be two hunchbacks—they will
little think that we are two Cesarini. Dear, noble
Violanta! you will speak kindly to Biondo. Send
Bettina for the clothes, carina mia! You will get
twin masks in the Corso. And, Violanta?”

“What, Giulio?”

“Tell Bettina to breathe no word of our project
to Amieri! I will persuade him to go but to see you
dance! Poor Amieri! Dear, dear sister! Farewell
now! He will be returning, and you must be gone.
The Holy Virgin guard you, my Violanta!”

5. CHAP. V.

The reader will long since have been reminded,
by the trouble we have to whip in and flog up the
lagging and straggling members of our story, of a
flock of sheep driven unwillingly to market. Indeed,
to stop at the confessional, (as you will see
many a shepherd of the Campagna, on his way to
Rome,) this tale of many tails should have been a
novel. You have, in brief, what should have
heen well elaborated, embarrassed with difficulties,
relieved by digressions, tipped with a moral, and
bound in two volumes, with a portrait of the author.
We are sacrificed to the spirit of the age. The
eighteenth century will be known in hieroglyphics
by a pair of shears. But, “to return to our muttons.”

The masquerade went merrily on, or, if there
were more than one heavy heart among those light
heels, it was not known, as the newspapers say, “to
our reporter.” One, there certainly was—heavy
as Etna on the breast of Enceladus. Biondo Amieri
sat in a corner of the gallery, with his swathed
hand laid before him, pale as a new statue, and with
a melancholy in his soft dark eyes, which would have
touched the executioners of St. Agatha. Beside
him sat Lenzoni, who was content to forego the

waltz for a while, and keep company for pity with a
friend who was too busy with his own thoughts to
give him word or look, but still keeping sharp watch
on the scene below, and betraying by unconscious
ejaculations how great a penance he had put on himself
for love and charity.

“Ah, la bella musica, Biondo!” he exclaimed
drumming on the banquette, while his friend held
up his wounded hand to escape the jar, “listen to that
waltz, that might set fire to the heels of St. Peter.
Corpo di Bacco! look at the dragon!—a dragon
making love to a nun, Amieri! Ah! San Pietro!
what a foot! Wait till I come, sweet goblin! That
a goblin's tail should follow such ankles, Biondo!
Eh! bellissimo! the knight! Look at the red-cross
knight, Amieri! and—what?—il gobbo, by St. Anthony!
and the red-cross takes him for a woman!
It is Giulio, or there never were two hunchbacks so
wondrous like! Ecco, Biondo!”

But there was little need to cry “look” to Amieri,
now. A hunchback, closely masked, and leaning
on a palmer's arm, made his way slowly through
the crowd, and a red-cross knight, a figure gallant
enough to have made a monarch jealous, whispered
with courteous and courtly deference in his ear.

“Cielo! it is she!” said Biondo, with mournful
earnestness, not heeding his companion, and laying

his hand upon his wounded wrist, as if the sight he
looked on gave it a fresher pang.

“She?” answered Lenzoni, with a laugh. “If it
is not he—not gobbo Giulio—I'll eat that cross-hilted
rapier! What `she' should it be, caro Biondo!”

“I tell thee,” said Amieri, “Giulio is asleep at the
foot of his marred statue! I left him but now, he is
too ill with his late vigils to be here—but his clothes,
I may tell thee, are borrowed by one who wears
them as you see. Look at the foot, Lenzoni!”

“A woman, true enough, if the shoe were all!
But I'll have a close look! Stay for me, dear Amieri!
I will return ere you have looked twice at
them!”

And happy, with all his kind sympathy, to find a
fair apology to be free, Lenzoni leaped over the
benches and mingled in the crowd below.

Left alone, Biondo devoured with his eyes, every
movement of the group in which he was so deeply
interested, and the wound in his hand seemed burning
with a throb of fire, while he tried in vain to detect,
in the manner of the hunchback, that coyness
which might show, even through a mask, dislike or
indifference. There was even, he thought, (and he
delivered his soul over to Apollyon in the usual phrase
for thinking such ill of such an angel;) there was
even in her manner a levity and freedom of gesture
for which the mask she wore should be no apology.

He was about to curse Malaspina for having spared
his life at the fountain, when some one jumped
lightly over the seat, and took a place beside him.
It was a female in a black domino, closely masked,
and through the pasteboard mouth protruded the bit
of ivory, commonly held in the teeth by maskers
to disguise the voice.

“Good evening to you, fair signor!”

“Good even to you, lady!”

“I am come to share your melancholy, signor!”

“I have none to give away unless you will take
all; and just now, my fair one, it is rather anger
than sadness. If it please you, leave me!”

“What if I am more pleased to stay!”

“Briefly, I would be alone! I am not of the festa.
I but look on, here!” And Biondo turned his
shoulder to the mask, and fixed his eyes again on
the hunchback, who having taken the knight's arm,
was talking and promenading most gaily between
him and the palmer.

“You have a wounded hand, signor!” resumed
his importunate neighbor.

“A useless one, lady. Would it were well!'

“Signor Melancholy, repine not against providence.
I that am no witch, tell thee that thou wilt
yet bless heaven that this hand is disabled.”

Biondo turned and looked at the bold prophetess,
but her disguise was impenetrable.

“You are a masker, lady, and talk at random!”

“No! I will tell you the thought uppermost in
your bosom!”

“What is it?”

“A longing for a pluck at the red-cross, yonder!”

“True, by St. Mary!” said Biondo, starting energetically:
“but you read it in my eyes!”

“I have told you your first thought, signor, and I
will give you a hint of the second. Is there a likeness
between a nymph on canvass, and a gobbo in a
mask!”

“Giulio!” exclaimed Amieri, turning suddenly
round; but the straight back of the domino met his
eye, and totally bewildered, he resumed his seat,
and slowly perused the stranger from head to foot.

“Talk to me as if my mask were the mirror of
your soul, Amieri,” said the soft but undisguised
voice. “You need sympathy in this mood, and I am
your good angel. Is your wrist painful to-night?”

“I cannot talk to you,” he said, turning to resume
his observation on the scene below. “If you know
the face beneath the gobbo's mask, you know the
heaven from which I am shut out. But I must gaze
on it still.”

“Is it a woman?”

“No! an angel.”

“And encourages the devil in the shape of Malaspina?
You miscall her, Amieri!”

The answer was interrupted by Lenzoni, who ran
into the gallery, but seeing his friend beset by a
mask, he gave him joy of his good luck, and refusing
to interrupt the tête-à-tête, disappeared with a
laugh.

“Brave, kind Lenzoni!” said the stranger.

“Are you his good angel, too?” asked Amieri,
surprised again at the knowledge so mysteriously
displayed.

“No! Little as you know of me you would not
be willing to share me with another! Say, Amieri!
love you the gobbo on the knight's arm?”

“You have read me riddles less clear, my fair
incognita! I would die at morn but to say farewell
to her at midnight!”

“Do you despair of her love?”

“Do I despair of excelling Raphael with these
unstrung fingers? I never hoped—but in my
dreams, lady!”

“Then hope, waking! For as there is truth in
heaven, Violanta Cesarini loves you, Biondo!”

Laying his left hand sternly on the arm of the
stranger, Biondo raised his helpless wrist and pointed
towards the hunchback, who, seated by the red-cross
night, played with the diamond cross of his
sword-hilt, while the palmer turned his back, as if
to give two lovers an opportunity.

With a heart overwhelmed with bitterness, he
then turned to the mocking incognito. Violanta sat
beside him!

Holding her mask between her and the crowd
below, the maiden blush mounted to her temples,
and the long sweeping lashes dropped over her eyes
their veiling and silken fringes. And while the red-cross
knight still made eloquent love to Giulio in the
saloon of the masquerade, Amieri and Violanta, in
their unobserved retreat, exchanged vows, faint and
choked with emotion on his part, but all hope, encouragement
and assurance on hers.

6. CHAP. VI.

“Will you waltz?” said a merry-voiced domino
to the red-cross knight, a few minutes after tapping
him smartly on the corslet with her black fan, and
pointing, for the first step, a foot that would have
tempted St. Anthony.

“By the mass!” answered Malaspina, “I should
pay an ill compliment to the sweetest voice that
ever enchanted human ear,” (and he bowed low to
Giulio) “did I refuse invitation so sweetly toned.
Yet my Milan armour is not light!”

“I have been refusing his entreaties this hour,”
said Giulio, as the knight whirled away with Violanta,

“for though I can chatter like a woman, I
should dance like myself. He is not unwilling to
show his grace to `his lady-mistress!' Ha! ha!
It is worth while to sham the petticoat for once to
see what fools men are when they would please a
woman! But, close mask! Here comes the Count
Cesarini!”

“How fares my child?” said the old noble, leaning
over the masked Giulio, and touching with his
lips the glossy curl which concealed his temple.
“Are you amused, idolo mio?”

A sudden tremour shot through the frame of poor
Giulio at the first endearment ever addressed to his
ear by the voice of a parent. The tears coursed
down under his mask, and for all answer to the question,
he could only lay his small soft hand in his
father's and return his pressure with irresistible
strength and emotion.

“You are not well, my child!” he said, surprised
at not receiving an answer, “this ugly hump
oppresses you! Come to the air! So—lean on me,
caro tesoro! We will remove the hump presently.
A Cesarini with a hump indeed! Straighten yourself,
my life, my child, and you will breathe more
freely!”

Thus entered, at one wound, daggers and balm
into the heart of the deformed youth; and while
Bettina, trembling in every limb, grew giddy with

fear as they made their way through the crowd,
Giulio, relieved by his tears, nerved himself with
a strong effort and prepared to play out his difficult
part with calmness.

They threaded slowly the crowded maze of
waltzers, and, emerging from the close saloons,
stood at last in the gallery overhanging the river.
The moon was rising, and touched with a pale light
the dark face of the Tiber; the music came faintly
out to the night air, and a fresh west wind, cool and
balmy from the verdant campagna, breathed softly
through the lattices.

Refusing a chair, Giulio leaned over the balustrade,
and the count stood by his side and encircled his
waist with his arm.

“I cannot bear this deformity, my Violanta!” he
said, “you look so unlike my child with it; I need
this little hand to re-assure me.”

“Should you know that was my hand, father?”
said Giulio.

“Should I not! I have told you a thousand times
that the nails of a Cesarini were marked—let me see
you again—by the arch of this rosy line! See, my
little Gobbo! They are like four pink fairy shells
of India laid over rolled leaves of roses. What was
the poet's name who said that of the old Countess
Giulia Cesarini—la bella Giulia?”

“Should you have known my voice, father?” asked
Giulio, evading the question.

“Yes my darling, why ask me?”

“But, father!—if I had been stolen by brigands
from the cradle—or you had not seen me for many,
many years—and I had met you to night as a gobbo
and had spoken to you—only in sport—and had
called you `father, dear father!' should you have
known my voice? would you have owned me for a
Cesarini?”

“Instantly, my fair child!”

“But suppose my back had been broken—suppose
I were a gobbo—a deformed hunchback indeed, indeed—but
had still nails with a rosy arch, and the
same voice with which I speak to you now—and
pressed your hand thus—and loved you—would
you disown me, father?”

Giulio had raised himself while he spoke, and taken
his hand from his father's with a feeling that life
or death would be in his answer to that question.

Cesarini was disturbed, and did not reply for a
moment.

“My child!” said he at last “there is that in
your voice that would convince me you are mine,
against all the evidence in the universe. I cannot
imagine the dreadful image you have conjured up,
for the Cesarini are beautiful and straight by long
inheritance. But if a monster spoke to me thus, I
should love him! Come to my bosom, my blessed
child! and dispel those wild dreams! Come, Violanta!”

“Giulio attempted to raise his arms to his father's
neck, but the strength that had sustained him so
well, began to ebb from him. He uttered some indistinct
words, lifted his hand to his mask as if to
remove it for breath, and sunk slowly to the floor.

“It is your son, my lord!” cried Bettina. “Lift
him, Count Cesarini! Lift your child to the air before
he dies!”

She tore off his mask and disclosed to the thunder-stricken
count the face of the stranger! As he
stood pale and aghast, too much confounded for utterance
or action, the black domino tripped into the
gallery, followed by the red-cross knight, panting
under his armor.

“Giulio! my own Giulio!” cried Violanta, throwing
herself on her knees beside her pale and insensible
brother, and covering his forehead and lips
with kisses. “Is he hurt? Is he dead? Water!
for the love of heaven! Will no one bring water?”
And tearing away her own mask, she lifted him
from the ground, and totally regardless of the astonished
group who looked on in petrified silence,
fanned and caressed him into life and consciousness.

“Come away, Violanta!' said her father at last,
in a hoarse voice.

“Never, my father! he is our own blood! How
feel you now, Giulio?”

“Better, sweet! where is Biondo?”

“Near by! But you shall go home with me.
Signor Malaspina, as you hope for my favor, lend
my brother an arm. Bettina, call up the chariot.
Nay, father! he goes home with me, or I with him.
we never part more!”

The red-cross knight gave Giulio an arm, and
leaning on him and Violanta, the poor youth made
his way to the carriage. Amieri sat at the door,
and received only a look as she passed, and helping
Giulio tenderly in, she gave the order to drive swiftly
home, and in a few minutes they entered together
the palace of their common inheritance.

It would be superfluous to dwell on the incidents
of the sequel, which were detailed in the Diario di
Roma, and are known to all the world. The hunch-back
Count Cesarini has succeeded his father in his
title and estates, and is beloved of all Rome. The
next heir to the title is a son (now two years of age)
of the Countess Amieri, who is to take the name of
Cesarini on coming to his majority. They live together
in the old palazzo, and all strangers go to see
their gallery of pictures, of which none are bad, except
some well intended but not very felicitously executed
compositions by one Lenzoni.

Count Lamba Malaspina is at present in exile
having been convicted of drawing a sword on a
disabled gentleman, on his way from a masquerade

at La Pergola. His seclusion is rendered the more
tolerable by the loss of his teeth, which were rudely
thrust down his throat by this same Lenzoni (fated
to have a finger in every pie) in defence of the attacked
party on that occasion. You will hear Lenzoni's
address (should you wish to purchase a picture
of his painting) at the Caffé del Gioco, opposite
the trattoria of La Bella Donna in the Corso.