University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.

It was near the hour of morning. The tall and
gaunt Alezzi paced his chamber with impatience.
Now he started at the sound of passing footsteps—
now he stopped and leaned his ear, as if expecting
some one's approach.

“By the saints!” he exclaimed, at length—“how
long he lingers! The old dotard is dead these
eight hours. I told him the instant—the very instant;
and see, the moon is low in the west. This
creature! she has bewitched me, I think, with that
sweet look of hers. How it glances each moment
across me! and ever associated with her father's
wealth. My heart is a whirlpool of, I know not
how many, contending passions—hope, avarice, and
fear. What if he has failed? That world of
treasure falls to the hand of a girl—a weak, unprotected,
unadvised girl, to waste upon that runagate
adventurer Leslie. The old marquis deems me a
saint. It must have been easy for Ambrose to
work upon his feelings in my favour; and she, thus
dispossessed of her fortune, let her marry me or
not, the piasters are mine. What! do I shrink at
grasping them? Are they not better mine than
hers?—mine, who have drained the last of my resources?
What can she do with so much? Her
equipage, her dresses, are all she wants; and these
she shall have, ay, to dazzle the best of them, if
she wishes not this convent. But had she known
the fierce and infinite joy of the gambler! had she
opened in her girlish heart a mine of ecstasy and
fire, so vivid, so immense!—Hark!—yes! no! yes!
Ambrose? Speak—by the gods, man, speak!”

“My breath is exhausted!” cried the priest, sinking
into a chair.

“Then nod your head. Is all right? Has he
signed the will?”

“He has,” cried Ambrose.

The vehement and fiery noble sprang upon his
feet—for, in his anxiety, he had almost knelt in
bending down his haughty height to the priest—
clasped his hands violently and triumphantly together,
and cried,—

“A thousand thanks to the Virgin!”

“And a thousand piasters to me,” said Ambrose,
with one of his quiet smiles.

“Dear Ambrose!—nay, sit, you are tired—you
shall be my friend for ever. Ask what you will, it
is yours. They told me long ago that my worthy
cousin had taken the leap. But whence this delay?”

“Grief and respect for my late honoured master,”
said the priest, with another smile.

“Why, you untoward knave!” cried the marquis.
“You do not seriously mean that grief or respect
had any thing to do with your tarrying?”

Ambrose gave another smile, silently, through
his white teeth, and, as he did so, he took from his
pocket a parchment. Before he proceeded to unfold
it, he said,—

“Yes, grief and respect both kept me; but both
belonged to another and a softer bosom—Antonia
detained me.”

“Tell me hastily, best of friends! tell me all.”

“By the mass, an I can remember it, I will.
Firstly, the old marquis died, and that in the very
moment when about to revoke this precious paper.
As he fell back with his last motion, the girl rushed
in. The death-scene was a Caravaggio. My pencil,
you know, leans towards the warmth and loveliness
of Titian.”

“No matter how your pencil leans, priest; on
with your story.”

“When the poor old nobleman was stiff and cold,
they tore off Antonia with difficulty; she crying
the while that she was now without a friend on the
globe. Seizing this opportunity, I led her into a
secluded apartment, and touched upon the subject
of the will—”

“How? Good Ambrose, quick! I ache! I
burn—”

“I told her how her honourable and lamented
father had spent his last moments with me, at his
own request. That he had spoken of you with the
utmost affection—

“ `The Marquis Alezzi!' interrupted she. `Ah!
I guess to what purpose! I know too well my lamented
father held him highly in his estimation. I
distrust and despise him.' ”

“Humph!” said the marquis.

“I am frank,” cried the priest; “I speak all.
`My lovely child,' said I, `you will not accuse me
of misrepresenting, when I assure you that your
honourable father has better reasons than you know
of for loving the good marquis. I am your friend
and father. I will not deceive you.' She seized
my hand with an impulse of her young, trusting
heart, and kissed it; and—”

“Kissed!” interrupted the marquis, knitting his
brows.

“(You forget,” said the priest, in a parenthesis,
and with another of those expressive smiles for
which he was so remarkable—“you forget my profession)—and
begged me to proceed. I then
touched on your noble character; your generous
recklessness, which had in some degree diminished
your estates—”

“Ay,” echoed the marquis, “diminished indeed!”

“Your pure habits—your amiable character”
(with another deep smile)—“your—”

“Enough!” said the marquis. “To the rest.”

“In fine, then, I told her it was her illustrious
father's last wish and will, knowing none so fit to
protect her youth as you, that she should submit
her actions to your authority, till she saw fit to enter
the convent of St. U_____. I told her, also, that
you had the guardianship of her fortune.”

“And what said my sweet mistress?”

“An your lordship murmured before,” said Ambrose,
“when she but kissed my hand—”

“On! on!” said the marquis, sternly.

“She threw herself at my feet, seized my hand,
covered it with kisses (you know, my lord, she is
but a child, and so full of feeling and affection that
it overflows without bounds upon every surrounding
object—she has a dog which she adores), begged
me, at least, to save her from the fate of wedding
you. Her beauteous eyes were drowned in
tears, and her grief was so beautiful that—”

“Silence, knave! enough! Give me the will!
If I am her guardian, I will mould her tastes differently.”

“My honoured lord, it is here. Behold where
the blind, dark hand of expiring life has rudely traced
the feeble marks. Your lordship is now high
and wealthy again; you will not forget your faithful
Ambrose?”

“Not for worlds, good priest! The thousand
piasters are yours. Return to Antonia to-morrow,
and seek to persuade her to my wishes. So much
beauty were better in these arms than in a convent.
But rather than suffer this princely fortune to elude
me, she shall be buried in a convent; or—”

“In a grave!” said the priest, smiling.

The marquis replied not, but, with a countenance
full of gloating delight and triumph, unfolded the
parchment: but as he cast his eyes over its broad
page, his hard, gaunt countenance took a paler hue;
his lips were pressed closely together, his nostril
dilated with long-drawn breath, his remarkable
brows were knit into a fierce frown, and his eyes
seemed to shoot sparks of fire.

“Fiends! hell! and the raging furies, priest!”
at length he said, in a voice so changed that it

seemed that of another speaker, and stamping his
foot against the tesselated floor with the last imprecation.
“What trash is this?”

“My noble lord, the will—the signed, legal will
of the Marquis Torrini; bequeathing his daughter
to the convent of St. U_____, or to your arms, and
all his estates to your possession.”

“Will! will!” almost howled the marquis, furious
passion blackening his face. “It is no will!”

“My lord—”

“Lord me no lord—villain, knave, wretch! you
have been false! This is a worthless sheet of
parchment, the lease of a house, or some such
tradesman's trash, scrawled on the bottom with the
half-legible characters of that stupid, bigoted old
dotard Torrini. Ambrose—”

He stopped suddenly, and rested his large fierce
eyes full on the face of the priest, while his broad
chest rose and fell with the storm within.

“You have not dared to trifle with me?”

“By St. Dominick! by St. Paul! by the Virgin
Mother! this is some wondrous transmutation! I
—I—”

He stopped in bewildered confusion, while the
noble stood glaring on him with the ferocious eyes
of a tiger, pausing the moment ere he rends his prey.

Ambrose crossed himself, uttered an exclamation
of horror, and dropped upon his knees.

Alezzi seized him by the breast of his black robe,
a flake of foam specked his lips, he shook his
crouching companion with an iron grasp, and, in a
husky, half-suffocated tone, added,—

“Speak, slave! speak!”

“By my hopes of heaven! by earth! by hell!
I am innocent of this.”

“All the hopes of my life blasted in one moment!”
cried the marquis.

“I know naught of the means by which this paper
has been transformed,” said Ambrose; “I swear
by the holy cross and crown—I swear by the bones
of my father! I am myself astonished, bewildered,
and amazed! What has come over me? but
now I held it in my possession, folded it with my
own hands, and placed it in my bosom; and now
again, while, as far as my scattered senses can
speak, it has never left me, I find this worthless
scrawl, foreign from the purpose, yet signed by
Torrini. What thunderbolt has fallen upon me!”

“Ambrose!” cried the marquis, in a calm, deliberate
tone, “if this be error, it is the strangest, stupidest,
d—st error! If, as it sometimes flashes
upon me may be the case, it is fraud—fraud on
your part—double fraud—fraud against me, while
you seem for me to defraud others—I am an indifferent
master of my own language, but I cannot
call up words to name the hot, deadly, swift vengeance
with which I will overwhelm you. I will
stab you at the altar—”

“My honoured, my beloved master!” said the
priest, in a supplicating tone and attitude.

“I thought to-night,” cried the marquis, leaving
his grasp on the throat of Ambrose, and striding
backwards and forwards in deep agitation and excitement,
drawing his breath hard through his nostril,
as at each moment his teeth were clinched together
—“I thought to-night to be the master of princely
riches—to tread over floors of precious marble—to
gaze around upon galleries of matchless and priceless
pictures—to look on woman's beauty, youthful,
ripe, voluptuous beauty, and to say, these, these
are mine! I was to be master of slaves—for all
men are slaves of the rich. I was to send forth
across the seas for luxuries and refinements. I
was to win back from those who have beggared

me, all—all—all my losses! And last, greatest,
the grand scheme would have been ripe at once.
Visions of greatness and bliss—images of warm,
delicious hours, too soft to name, too vast to measure,
floated before me, and in my very grasp!
Monarchs might envy, and queens love me.
Beauty would be at my feet, and power in my
hand. With the wealth of this little soft-faced
girl, I could wield Jove's thunder! These were
my thoughts an hour ago. Now,” he added, stopping
suddenly and folding his arms, “what am I?
—a beggar! the prey of gamblers—the outcast of
his circle—a beggar—a fool—a wretch—a baffled,
useless reptile!”

During this long outburst of passion, Ambrose
had collected his senses, and regained his composure.
He waited till his companion, or his master,
had concluded, and bent his head down moodily
upon his breast, and then spoke in an insinuating
voice,—

“My noble lord will hear his servant. You have
wronged me by your suspicions. How can I have
been false? Had I been so, how could I escape
your knowledge, or your just revenge? What
could I gain by falsehood? But you know well
that my loss is heavy. If I had been treacherous,
would not time at once show?”

“There is reason in your words—you could not
deceive, and you could not escape me.”

“This amazing accident,” said the priest, “for
accident it is, cannot now be accounted for. It is
probable that I myself have changed the paper by
mistake. But, my lord, though this will be lost, all
is not lost. Antonia regards me as her father—as
her confessor—as her only friend; so did the departed
marquis himself. No quackery was too
gross for me to palm off upon the old man. I won

his name to this paper by such a childish device as
I should be ashamed to relate. Antonia is as easily
governed by those who know how to touch the
springs of her character aright. She shall yet
either seek your arms or the convent, leaving her
property to you. This Montfort we shall find
means to be rid of. He away, her actions I could
mould at will; you shall be master of her coffers!”

The marquis regarded him with a look penetrating
and gloomy.

“May my soul never enter the gates of heaven,”
said the priest, “if I am not fidelity itself!”

“Ambrose, if you play me false—”