University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.

The face of that priest haunted Norman's very
slumber with a dark and ominous meaning, as inexplicable
as it was unpleasant. He could not
banish from his mind the impression that they had
met before. Where? He had been in all quarters
of the globe; and images of the remarkable climes
where his foot had lingered, and his eyes and his
soul been dazzled, rolled through his imagination—
but none touched upon this newly-awakened chord.
Beneath the lofty peaks of Asia, where the Assyrian,
the Mede, the Greek, the Roman, and the Saracen
had left their footmarks, he had strayed. Had
this singular face there greeted him? No. Had
those eyes glanced on him beneath the turban of
the dusky Moor? No. He could reach no recollection
from the brilliant shadows of the past; nor,
amid all that his memory presented of the varied
zones and people of Europe, could he detect any
link connected with him. America? A dim conception
rested on him that there their paths had
crossed; that those eyes had been on him there, at
some of the terrible moments of which he had suffered

so many. He inquired particularly into his
history; but all that he learned contradicted completely,
incontrovertibly, every suspicion.

Ambrose had spent his life in Italy. For more
than twenty years he had been an inmate in the
family of Torrini. He was trusted by all; and if
remarkable for any thing, it was for his character
of holiness. Norman, therefore, forced himself to
believe that his interest in him was merely an accidental
coincidence.

But, driven from the idea that he was connected
himself with this man, his disappointment was relieved
in some measure by the fact that the character
of the priest grew on him, the more he studied
it, with deeper hues. He could not help hating
him. He had thought of himself that he was gifted
with a keen sense of human character—that he
read men's souls by intuition—that towards some
his very heart yearned in love, while from others
he recoiled with an instinctive dislike. Some will
smile at the idea of this novel one among the
senses; but there are secret affinities in our nature,
and hidden repulsions, and voices that call out to
us with tones that will not be hushed—at least that
was the theory of Leslie, and he yielded to his
distrust.

The holy father was in the habit of giving lessons
to Antonia in her little boudoir. It was a
lovely place; and the bright girl chose often to sit
and read there, and warble her favourite melodies,
and to receive also her most intimate friends.
Among these very soon she learned to rank Norman.
He grew accustomed to her guileless and
affectionate ways, and imperceptibly glided into a
brother's friendship and familiarity.

It is not true that men—I speak of the thoughtful
and the pure (are there not such in this bad world?)

—cannot pass beyond the limits of mere ordinary
friendship with the more lovely and enchanting of
the other sex without entering into the realms of
love—without yielding to the earthlier whirl and
current of a feverish and absorbing passion. Nothing
could be further from Norman's breast than
love for the unshadowed Italian girl—love in the
acceptation of the word most familiar to romance-readers.
Years, misery, and meditation had made
him prematurely old; and his heart was the heart
of a wanderer over every zone—of one, like those
birds which sleep in the air on their unresting
and outspread wings, doomed to be ever afloat and
ever alone. But he loved her with the purified
and disinterested tenderness of paternal affection.
He saw into the crystal depths of her unsullied and
sunshiny mind and character. He beheld in her
one whose unconscious power over his feelings
was that of awakening mournful memories, but no
selfish passion—memories which subdued, chastened,
and exalted his nature. If her young
voice ever thrilled through his soul, it was of another
that he thought; and in her presence he ever
found himself more softened to his old impressions.

“Oh!” he one day thought, when the atless
grace of her character and person had struck upon
him with peculiar force, in some of the thousand
little offices and kind communions which each passing
day seemed to increase between them—“oh!
had I some young, beloved brother—some bright
boy, yet untouched with care—just awakening to
the dream of love—with what delight would I behold
him by her side, to trace the unfoldings of their
fairy loves; to watch their glances drink the light
of each other's gaze; to see him wander spell-bound
where her young foot had been; and at
length, from the visionary lover, deepen into the
adoring, the blest husband.”

He was passing the boudoir of her who thus occupied
his thoughts. The door was a-jar. He was
about to enter, when a sight met his eyes that arrested
him. Antonia was in the act of receiving a
lesson. By her side was the priest. She had
dropped her eyes intently over her book, and sat in
an attitude of careless grace and exquisite girlhood.
Beautiful student! Close to her the priest had
drawn his seat, and had fixed his eyes intently upon
the radiant face which, lost in the earnestness of a
new thought, was all unconscious of his gaze. His
arm, which had been thrown, apparently by accident,
across the back of her chair, gradually fell
from its remoter position, till it almost clasped her
waist, while his vivacious features expressed any
thing but their usual meek and holy humility.

As Norman stood regarding the group—picturesque
and beautiful as it was—a feeling, not of
jealousy, but of alarm, shot through his soul. So
pure, artless, and confiding was this rare creature—
dreaming no ill, believing ever the promises of outward
semblance, so ignorant of the world, and
placing such implicit faith in Ambrose—that he
trembled for her opinions, if not for her happiness
and virtue. There was to him, also, about this
priest something quiet, sly, deep, and devilish; and
now, as he sat thus near, thus trusted, pouring into
her young soul his monstrous dogmas—and who
can tell what more dangerous poison beside—he
looked like the tempter watching by Eve and studying
her ruin. It is probable that his surprise was
visible in his face and manner; for Father Ambrose,
after a long breath and the fading away of an absorbed
smile, on looking up, started perceptibly as
their eyes met, but immediately regained his oily
smoothness of manner.

Why did he start? It was the act of a hypocrite—of

a devil, who feared lest the cloak might
have fallen from the cloven hoof: and then Norman
smiled at the importance which every trifle assumed
in the strange mood which had lately come over
him.

On conversing with Torrini, he found him, although
perfectly doting on his child, yet abandoning
her education entirely to the Father Ambrose.
Torrini, as he grew old and ill, had fallen into the
very lowest abysses of superstition, and had conceived
a project, Norman discovered some days after,
of consigning Antonia to a convent. On expressing
his surprise, and probably his abhorrence,
the marquis had betrayed that the priest had first
suggested the measure. In the course of his subsequent
interviews with Antonia, Norman turned
the subject upon this point. He found her steeped
in the prejudices and unnatural hopes of an education
the most warped and erroneous.

If a young fawn could speak, it would not more
unguardedly confide its wild thoughts and wishes to
the forest breeze, than Antonia to all whom she
loved, and who sought her thoughts. One day after
Norman had spoken to her of life—of the great
world—of human destiny and human happiness—
she told him, with a light tear glittering from her
long lashes, that a convent was her refuge; and she
knew it would prove a sweet one from a dreadful
fate. It seemed she had been wooed in marriage
by a proud and haughty cousin of her father's—
one on whom, from her infancy, she had looked with
terror. But Ambrose and her father both loved
him, and she knew it would grieve their hearts were
she ever to think of another. Nothing, she said,
filled her with more pleasure than the thoughts of
the holy and secure life led by the sister of St.
U—. Those tranquil walls were the port where

every vessel reposed in safety. She had been told
that the world was as the terrible sea, smooth to
betray, and merciless in its fury—wrecking with
equal ease the tallest vessel and the lightest bark;
that beneath every wave lurked a rock, and in every
silver cloud hung a tempest.

If there was something mournful in the sight of
one so unsuspecting and light-hearted thus entangled
in the meshes of superstition, Norman's interest
was much enhanced by discovering the secret,
passionate, almost hopeless love entertained for her
by the sculptor Angelo. To the acquaintance of
this youth Norman had been attracted by many
nameless allurements of person, mind, and character.
So pure, high, aspiring, and gentle-hearted
was the melancholy artist, that Norman learned to
love him before he was aware. His own princely
fortune enabled him, in the most delicate way, to
relieve the embarrassment of his friend by affording
frequent employment for his chisel. This brought
them often together, until at length something of a
kindred spirit united them in the bands of sincere
friendship. Angelo found in Norman wealth without
pride or ostentation; a heart sympathizing with
the impulses and recoilings, the pride and the despair,
of unfriended merit: while the more matured
and experienced student discovered in the artist
genius and virtue rarely seen: and the more he
studied his character, the more he admired its chaste
symmetry and classic proportions. It stood among
other men like a Grecian temple reared amid the
homely and discoloured mansions of modern business.
Imbued with poetry—imbued with passion
—he was dangerously gifted with capacities both
for happiness and misery. By a series of casual
trifles Norman had learned his love for Antonia.
We will not detain the reader with it; nor with the

fulness of his bliss when he discovered that Leslie
was not a lover. From that moment their friendship
had become cemented.

One day Norman lounged from the palace after
a half hour of sportive study with Antonia. He had
ordered a Psyche from Angelo, and the latter had
promised him the first sight of it on this morning.
It was his custom to note down, in a kind of diary,
the leading events of the day, with such reflections
as they chanced to elicit, and to sketch in rude outlines
the most remarkable characters he encountered.
These were treasures to his father and sister;
and for their eyes they were intended. On the
present morning, after he left the palace, he remembered
that he had sallied forth without closing the
volume which lay open on the table. He returned,
therefore, with a hasty step; and mounting suddenly
to his apartment, was surprised, as he entered,
to hear a slight stir and rustle, as if some one,
startled by his approach, had abruptly quitted the
room. But how? Certainly no one had passed
him by the door; and yet the noise had been too
distinctly audible for fancy. He glanced his eyes
around, all was lonely and quiet; but a heavy piece
of silken drapery in one corner seemed to stir, and
gradually settle itself into repose. He walked up
to it and examined it closely, and the wall behind
it. Nothing could he find. His note-book lay, as
he had left it, open upon the table; but, upon approaching
to take it, he perceived, to his increasing
surprise, that it was upside down—not the position
in which he had left it, certainly, for he had written
in it the moment before his departure. It was
plain that some one had been in his room. Was
there a secret door? He began to fancy the old
days of romance had come back upon him. A

palace—a priest—a lovely girl, and a private panel
—they were the very materials for a novel.

But the incident left an impression on him too
distinctly unpleasant to be the theme of jest. The
idea of being watched made his blood boil. He
had heard of the numerous spies with which Italy
abounds. Perchance the priest acted in that capacity.
From a floating conjecture the idea soon
grew into a confirmed truth. It by no means softened
his feelings of dislike towards his reverend
friend: he resolved to be more wary in future.
But he had nothing to fear from the Tuscan government.
He knew Italy too well to be linked with
any attempt at reform or revolution; and he knew,
too, that such attempts, unsuccessful, only increase
her distress.

With these thoughts he resumed his walk. It
led him, in the way to the sculptor's, by the square
of the Duomo, and the glittering and airy tower
with its gorgeous tracery. The doors of the immense
edifice were open, and, with that feeling of
solemn awe with which these gigantic, time-worn,
and magnificent monuments of ages rolled away
ever inspired him, he entered. Its vast, huge, naked
interior—dim, gloomy, stupendous—for a moment,
often as he had before seen it, hushed and
absorbed him. It was on this broad marble floor
that the great Lorenzo had been so nearly assassinated;
and here other historical incidents, conclaves
and councils, had occurred, which forcibly
linked the long aisles and airy dome and vaults with
the splendour, romance, and grandeur of the past.
He pictured the immortal forms in whose steps he
was treading—Michael Angelo and Dante—Petrarch,
Boccacio, and Galileo. His eye now fell on
the deep-stained windows, and now upon the statues,
yellow with age. A procession of priests, followed

by another composed only of boys, some almost
infants, and clothed in long black robes hung
with white lace, went shuffling by. Then a sudden
burst of voices chanted behind the altar, and all
again was lonely and still.

As he lingered a moment by a column, he heard,
or thought he heard, the sound of his own name.
Turning suddenly, a tall and athletic man, wrapped
in a long cloak, stood gazing on him; and near, but
moving away, with a quiet, stealthy pace, he discovered
one resembling the priest. It struck him that
the two had been engaged in conversation, but that,
on the sudden sight of him, they had parted. To
ascertain whether it was indeed the holy man—
who began now to occupy a large portion of his
thoughts—he followed, with a quickened step; but,
entering a side-door, the object of his pursuit disappeared
before he could actually determine his
identity. On returning, the other also was gone.
He stood alone on the mighty floor, amid the cold
marbles and dusky tombs. Then a sudden peal of
the organ heaved its rolling waves of harmony along
the far-reaching roof—dying away—swelling up—
and dying away again upon his startled ear.