University of Virginia Library

1. PART I.

It was in the golden month of August, not very long
ago, that the steamer which plies between St. Mark's
Stairs, at Venice, and the river into which Phaeton
turned a somerset with the horses of the Sun, started
on its course over the lagoon with an unusual Godsend
of passengers. The moon was rising from the
unchaste bed of the Adriatic, (wedded every year to
Venice, yet every day and night sending the sun and
moon from her lovely bosom to the sky,) and while the
gold of the west was still glowing on the landward side
of the Campanile, a silver gleam was brightening momently
on the other, and the Arabic domes of St.
Marc and the flying Mercury on the Dogana paled to
the setting orb and kindled to the rising with the same
Talleyrand-esque facility.

For the first hour the Mangia-foco sputtered on her
way with a silent company; the poetry of the scene,
or the regrets at leaving the delicious city lessening in
the distance, affecting all alike with a thoughtful incommunicativeness.

Gradually, however, the dolphin hues
over the Brenta faded away—the marble city sank into
the sea, with its turrets and bright spires—the still lagoon
became a sheet of polished glass—and the silent
groups leaning over the rails found tongues and feet,
and began to stir and murmur.

With the usual unconscious crystallization of society,
the passengers of the Mangia-foco had yielded
one side of the deck to a party of some rank, who had
left their carriages at Ferrara in coming from Florence
to Venice, and were now upon their return to the city
of Tasso, stomaching, with what grace they might, the
contact of a vulgar conveyance, which saved them the
hundred miles of posting between Ferrara and the
Brenta. In the centre of the aristocratic circle stood
a lady enveloped in a cashmere, but with her bonnet
hung by the string over her arm—one of those women
of Italy upon whom the divinest gifts of loveliness are
showered with a profusion which apparently improverishes
the sex of the whole nation. A beautiful woman
in that land is rarely met; but when she does appear,
she is what Venus would have been after the contest
for beauty on Ida, had the weapons of her antagonists,
as in the tournaments of chivalry, been added to the
palm of victory. The Marchesa del Marmore was apparently
twenty-three, and she might have been an incarnation
of the morning-star for pride and brightness.

On the other side of the deck stood a group of young
men, who, by their careless and rather shabby dress,
but pale and intellectual faces, were of that class met
in every public conveyance of Italy.—The portfolios
under their arms, ready for a sketch, would have removed
a doubt of their profession, had one existed;
and with that proud independence for which the class
is remarkable, they had separated themselves equally
from the noble and ignoble—disqualified by inward superiority
from association with the one, and by accidental

poverty from the claims cultivation might give
them upon the other. Their glances at the divine face
turned toward them from the party I have alluded to,
were less constant than those of the vulgar, who could
not offend; but they were evidently occupied more
with it than with the fishing-boats lying asleep on the
lagoon; and one of them, half-buried in the coil of
rope, and looking under the arm of another, had already
made a sketch of her that might some day make
the world wonder from what Seventh Heaven of fancy
such an angelic vision of a head had descended upon
the painter's dream.

In the rear of this group, with the air of one who
would conceal himself from view, stood a young man
who belonged to the party, but who, with less of the
pallor of intellectual habits in his face, was much better
dressed than his companions, and had, in spite of
the portfolio under his arm, and a hat of the Salvator
breadth of rim, the undisguisable air of a person accustomed
to the best society. While maintaining a
straggling conversation with his friends, with whom he
seemed a favorite, Signor Basil employed himself in
looking over the sketch of the lovely Marchesa going
on at his elbow, occasionally as if to compare it with
the original, stealing a long look from between his
hand and his slouched hat at the radiant creature sitting
so unconsciously for her picture, and in a low
voice correcting, as by the result of his gaze, the rapid
touches of the artist.

“Take a finer pencil for the nostril, caro mio!” said
he; “it is as thin as the edge of a violet, and its transparent
curve---—”

“Cospetto!” said the youth; “but you see by this
faint light better than I; if she would but turn to the
moon------”

The Signor Basil suddenly flung his handkerchief
into the lagoon, bringing its shadow between the Queen

of Night and the Marchesa del Marmore; and, attracted
from her reverie by the passing object, the lady
moved her head quickly to the light, and in that
moment the spirited lip and nostril were transferred to
the painter's sketch.

“Thanks, mio bravo!” enthusiastically exclaimed
the looker on; “Giorgione would not have beaten
thee with the crayon!” and with a rudeness which
surprised the artist, he seized the paper from beneath
his hand, walked away with it to the stern, and leaning
far over the rails, perused it fixedly by the mellow
lustre of the moon. The youth presently followed
him, and after a few words exchanged in an undertone,
Signor Basil slipped a piece of gold into his
hand, and carefully placed the sketch in his own portfolio.

2. II.

It was toward midnight when the Mangia-foco entered
the Adige, and keeping its steady way between
the low banks of the river, made for the grass-grown
and flowery canal which connects its waters with the
Po. Most of the passengers had yielded to the drowsy
influence of the night air, and, of the aristocratic party
on the larboard side, the young Marchesa, alone was
waking; her friends had made couches of their cloaks
and baggage, and were reclining at her feet, while the
artists, all except the Signor Basil, were stretched fairly
on the deck, their portfolios beneath their heads,
and their large hats covering their faces from the powerful
rays of the moon.

“Miladi does justice to the beauty of the night,”
said the waking artist, in a low and respectful tone,
as he rose from her with a cluster of tuberoses she
had let fall from her hand.

“It is indeed lovely, Signor pittore,” responded the
Marchesa, glancing at his portfolio, and receiving the

flowers with a gracious inclination; “have you touched
Venice from the lagoon to-night?”

The Signor Basil opened his portfolio, and replied
to the indirect request of the lady by showing her a
very indifferent sketch of Venice from the island of St.
Lazzaro. As if to escape from the necessity of praising
what had evidently disappointed her, she turned the
cartoon hastily, and exposed, on the sheet beneath, the
spirited and admirable outline of her own matchless
features.

A slight start alone betrayed the surmise of the high-born
lady, and raising the cartoon to examine it more
closely, she said with a smile, “You may easier tread
on Titian's heels than Canaletti's. Bezzuoli has painted
me, and not so well. I will awake the Marquis,
and he shall purchase it of you.”

“Not for the wealth of the Medici, Madam!” said
the young man, clasping his portfolio hastily, “pray do
not disturb Monsignore! The picture is dear to me!”

The Marchesa looking into his face, and with a
glance around, which the aceomplished courtier before
her read better than she dreamed, she drew her shawl
over her blanched shoulders, and settled herself to listen
to the conversation of her new acquaintance.

“You would be less gracious if you were observed,
proud beauty,” thought Basil: “but while you think
the poor painter may while away the tediousness of a
vigil, he may feed his eye on your beauty as well.”

The Mangia-foco turned into the canal, threaded
its lily-paved waters for a mile or two, and then, putting
forth upon the broad bosom of the Po, went on
her course against the stream, and, with retarded pace,
penetrated toward the sun-beloved heart of Italy. And
while the later hours performed their procession with
the stars, the Marchesa del Marmore leaned sleepless
and unfatigued against the railing, listening with mingled
curiosity and scorn to the passionate love-murmur

of the enamored painter. His hat was thrown aside,
his fair and curling locks were flowing in the night air,
his form was bent earnestly but respectfully towards
her, and on its lip, with all its submissive tenderness,
there sat a shadow of something she could not define,
but which rebuked ever and anon, as with the fierce
regard of a noble, the condescension she felt towards
him as an artist.

3. III.

Upon the lofty dome of the altar in the cathedral of
Bologna stands poised an angel in marble, not spoken
of in the books of travelers, but perhaps the loveliest
incarnation of a blessed cherub that ever lay in the
veined bosom of Pentelicus. Lost and unobserved on
the vast floor of the nave, the group of artists, who had
made a day's journey from Ferrara, sat in the wicker
chairs hired for a baioch the vesper, and drew silently
from this angel, while the devout people of Bologna
murmured their Ave Marias around. Signor Basil
alone was content to look over the work of his companions,
and the twilight had already begun to brighten
the undying lamps at the shrine, when he started from
the pillar against which he leaned, and crossed hastily
toward a group issuing from a private chapel in the
western aisle. A lady walked between two gentlemen
of noble mien, and behind her, attended by an equally
distinguished company, followed that lady's husband,
the Marchese del Marmore. They were strangers
passing through Bologna, and had been attended to
vespers by some noble friends.

The companions of the Signor Basil looked on with
some surprise as their enamored friend stepped confidently
before the two nobles in attendance upon the
lady, and arrested her steps with a salutation which,
though respectful as became a gentleman, was marked

with the easy politeness of one accustomed to a favorable
reception.

“May I congratulate Miladi,” he said, rising slowly
from his bow, and fixing his eyes with unembarrassed
admiration on her own liquid but now frowning orbs,
upon her safe journey over the Marches. “Bologna,”
he continued, glancing at the nobles with a courteous
smile, “welcomes her fittingly.”

The lady listened with a look of surprise, and the
Bolognese glanced from the dusty boots of the artist to
his portfolio.

“Has the painter the honor to know La Signora?”
asked the cavalier on her right.

“Signor, si!” said the painter, fiercely, as a curl
arched the lady's lip, and she prepared to answer.

The color mounted to the temples of the Marchesa,
and her hushand, who had loitered beneath the Madonna
of Domenichino, coming up at the instant, she
bowed coldly to the Signor Basil, and continued down
the aisle. The artist followed to her carriage, and
lifted his hat respectfully as the lumbering equipage took
its way by the famous statue of Neptune, and then with
a confident smile, which seemed to his companions
somewhat mistimed, he muttered between his teeth,
“Ciascuno son bel' giorno!” and strolled loitering on
with them to the trattoria.

4. IV.

The court of the Grand Duke of Florence is perhaps
the most cosmopolitan and the most easy of access
in all Europe. The Austrian-born Monarch himself,
adopting in some degree the frank and joyous
character of the people over whom he reigns, throws
open his parks and palaces, his gardens and galleries,
to the strangers passing through; and, in the season of
gaiety, almost any presentable person, resident at Florence,
may procure the entree to the court balls, and

start fair with noble dames and gentlemen for grace in
courtly favor. The fetes at the Palazzo Pitti, albeit not
always exempt from a leaven of vulgarity, are always
brilliant and amusing, and the exclusives of the court,
though they draw the line distinctly enough to their
own eye, mix with apparent abandonment in the motley
waltz and mazurka, and either from good-nature or a
haughty conviction of their superiority, never suffer the
offensive cordon to be felt, scarce to be suspected, by
the multitude who divert them. The Grand Duke, to
common eyes is a grave and rather timid person, with
more of the appearance of the scholar than of the
sovereign, courteous in public, and benevolent and
earnest in his personal attentions to his guests at the
palace. The royal quadrille may be shared without
permission of the grand chamberlain, and the royal eye,
after the first one or two dances of ceremony, searches
for partners by the lamp of beauty, heedless of the diamonds
on the brow, or the star of nobility on the shoulder.
The grand supper is scarce more exclusive, and
on the disappearance of the royal cortege, the delighted
crowd take their departure, having seen no class more
favored than themselves, and enchanted with the gracious
absence of pretension in the nobilita of Tuscany.

Built against the side of a steep hill, the Palazzo
Pitti encloses its rooms of state within massive and
sombre walls in front, while in the rear the higher stories
of the palace open forth on a level with the delicious
gardens of the Boboli, and contain suites of
smaller apartments, fitted up with a cost and luxury
which would beggar the dream of a Sybarite. Here
lives the monarch, in a seclusion rendered deeper and
more sacred by the propinquity of the admitted world
in the apartments below; and in this sanctuary of royalty
is enclosed a tide of life, as silent and unsuspected
by the common inhabitant of Florence, as the flow of
the ocean-veiled Arethusa by the mariner of the Ionian

main. Here the invention of the fiery genius of Italy
is exhausted in poetical luxury,—here the reserved and
silent sovereign throws off his maintien of royal condescension,
and enters with equal arms into the lists of
love and wit,—here burn (as if upon an altar fed with
spice-woods and precious gums) the fervent and uncalculating
passions of this glowing clime, in senses refined
by noble nurture, and hearts prompted by the
haughty pulses of noble blood,—and here—to the
threshold of this sanctuary of royal pleasure—press all
who know its secrets, and who imagine a claim to it in
their birth and attractions, while the lascia-passare is
accorded with a difficulty which alone preserves its
splendor.

Some two or three days after the repulse of the
Signor Basil in the cathedral of Bologna, the group of
traveling artists were on their way from the grand gallery
at Florence to their noon-day meal. Loitering
with slow feet through the crowded and narrow Via
Calzaiole, they emerged into the sunny Piazza, and
looking up with understanding eyes at the slender shaft
of the Campanile, (than which a fairer finger of religious
architecture points not to heaven,) they took
their way toward the church of Santa Trinita, proposing
to eat their early dinner at a house named, from its
excellence in a certain temperate beverage, La Birra.
The traveler should be advised also, that by paying an
extra paul in the bottle, he may have at this renowned
eating-house, an old wine sunned on the southern
shoulder of Fiesole, that hath in its flavor a certain redolence
of Boccaccio, scarce remarkable since it grew
in the scene of the Decameron, but of a virtue which,
to the Hundred Tales of Love, (read drinking,) is what
the Gradus ad Parnassum should be to the building of
a dithyrambic. The oil of two crazie upon the palm of
the fat waiter Giuseppe will assist in calling the vintage
to his memory.

A thundering rap upon the gate of the adjoining Palazzo
arrested the attention of the artists as they were
about to enter the Birra, and in the occupant of a dark
green cabriolet, drawn by a pampered horse of the
Duke's breed, they recognised, elegantly dressed and
posed on his seat a la D'Orsay, the Signor Basil. His
coat was of an undecided cut and color, and his gloves
were of primrose purity.

The recognition was immediate, and the cordiality
of the greeting mutual. They had parted from their
companion at the gate of Florence, as travelers part,
without question, and they met without reserve to part
as questionless again. The artists were surprised at
the Signor Basil's transformation, but no follower of
their refined art would have been so ill bred as to express
it. He wished them the bon appetito, as a tall
chasseur came out to say that her ladyship was at
home; and with a slacked rein the fiery horse sprang
through the gateway, and the marble court of the
palace rang with his prancing hoofs.

He who has idled and bought flowers at the Cafe of
the Colonna at Florence will have remarked, as he sat
in his chair upon the street in the sultry evening the
richly ornamented terrace and balustrade of the Palazzo
Corsi giving upon the Piazza Trinita. The dark old
Ghibelline palace of the Strozzi lets the eye down upon
it, as it might pass from a helmeted knight with closed
vizor to his unbonneted and laughing page. The crimson
curtains of the window opening upon the terrace,
at the time of our story, reminded every passing Florentine
of the lady who dwelt within—a descendant of
one of the haughtiest lines of English chivalry—resident
in Italy since many years for health, but bearing
in her delicate frame and exquisitely transparent features,
the loftiest type of patrician beauty that had ever
filled the eye that looked upon her. In the inner heaven
of royal exclusiveness at the Pitti—in its constellation

of rank and wit—the Lady Geraldine had long
been the worshipped and ascendant cynosure. Happy
in a husband without rank and but of moderate fortune,
she maintained the spotless character of an English
wife in this sphere of conventional corruption; and
though the idol of the Duke and his nobles, it would
have been like a whisper against the purity of the
brightest Pleiad, to have linked her name with love.

With her feet upon a sofa covered with a gossamer
cashmere, her lovely head pillowed on a cushion of
silk, and a slight stand within arm's length holding a
vase of flowers and the volume from which she had
been reading, the Lady Geraldine received the Count
Basil Spirifort, some time attache to the Russian embassy
at Paris, (where he had first sunned his eyes in
her beauty,) and at present the newly appointed secretary
to the minister of the same monarch near the
court of Tuscany.

Without a bow, but with the hasty step and gesture
of a long absent and favored friend, the Count Basil
ran to the proffered hand, and pressed its alabaster
fingers to his lips. Had the more common acquaintances
of the diplomate seen him at this moment, they
would have marvelled how the mask of manhood may
drop, and disclose the ingenuous features of the boy.
The secretary knew his species, and the Lady Geraldine
was one of those women for whom the soul is unwilling
to possess a secret.

After the first inquiries were over, the lady questioned
her recovered favorite of his history since they
had parted. “I left you,” she said, “swimming the
dangerous tide of life at Paris. How have you come
to shore?”

“Thanks, perhaps, to your friendship, which made
life worth the struggle! For the two extremes, however,
you know what I was at Paris—and yesterday I
was a wandering artist in velveteen and a sombrero!”

Lady Geraldine laughed.

“Ah! you look at my curls—but Macassar is at a
discount! It is the only grace I cherished in my incognito.
A resumer—I got terribly out of love by the
end of the year after we parted, and as terribly in
debt. My promotion in diplomacy did not arrive, and
the extreme hour for my credit did. Pozzo di Borgo
kindly procured me conge for a couple of years, and I
dived presently under a broad-rimmed hat, got into a
vetturino with portfolio and pencils, joined a troop of
wandering artists, and with my patrimony at nurse,
have been two years looking at life witout spectacles
at Venice.”

“And painting?”

“Painting!”

“Might one see a specimen?” asked the Lady Geraldine,
with an incredulous smile.

“I regret that my immortal efforts in oils are in the
possession of a certain Venetian, who lets the fifth floor
of a tenement washed by the narrowest canal in that
fair city. But if your ladyship cares to see a drawing
or two—”

He rang the bell, and his jocki Anglais presently
brought from the pocket of his cabriolet a way-worn
and thinly furnished portfolio. The Lady Geraldine
turned over a half-dozen indifferent views of Venice,
but the last cartoon in the portfolio made her start.

“La Marchesa del Marmore!” she exclaimed, looking
at Count Basil with an inquiring and half uneasy
eye.

“Is it well drawn?” he asked quietly.

“Well drawn? It is a sketch worthy of Raphael.
Do you really draw so well as this, or”—she added,
after a slight hesitation—“is it a miracle of love?”

“It is a divine head,” soliloquized the Russian, half
closing his eyes, and looking at the drawing from a

distance, as if to fill up the imperfect outline from his
memory.

The Lady Geraldine laid her hand on his arm. “My
dear Basil,” she said seriously, “I should be wretched
if I thought your happiness was in the power of this
woman. Do you love her?”

“The portrait was not drawn by me,” he answered,
“though I have a reason for wishing her to think so.
It was done by a fellow traveler of mine, whom I wish
to make a sketch of yourself, and I have brought it
here to interest you in him as an artist. Mais revenons
a nos moutons—La Marchesa was also a fellow traveler
of mine, and without loving her too violently, I owe
her a certain debt of courtesy contracted on the way.
Will you assist me to pay it?”

Relieved of her fears, and not at all suspecting the
good faith of the diplomatist in his acknowledgments of
gratitude, the Lady Geraldine inquired simply how she
could serve him.

“In the twenty-four hours since my arrival at Florence,”
he said, “I have put myself, as you will see,
au courant of the minor politics of the Pitti. Thanks
to my Parisian renown, the Duke has enrolled me already
under the back-stairs oligarchy, and to-morrow
night I shall sup with you in the Saloon of Hercules
after the ball is over. La Marchesa, as you well know,
has, with all her rank and beauty, never been able to
set foot within those guarded penetralia—soit her malicious
tongue, soit the interest against her of the men
she has played upon her hook too freely. The road
to her heart, if there be one, lies over that threshold,
and I would take the toll. Do you understand me,
most beautiful Lady Geraldine?”

The Count Basil imprinted another kiss upon the
fingers of the fair Englishwoman, as she promised to
put into his hand the following night the illuminated
ticket which was to repay, as she thought, too generously,

a debt of gratitude; and plucking a flower from
her vase for his bosom, he took his leave to return at
twilight to dinner. Dismissing his cabriolet at the gate,
he turned on foot toward the church of San Gaetano,
and with an expression of unusual elation in his step
and countenance, entered the trattoria, where dined at
that moment his companions of the pencil.

5. V.

The green lamps glittering by thousands amid the
foliage of the Boboli had attained their full brightness,
and the long-lived Italian day had died over the distant
mountains of Carrara, leaving its inheritance of light
apparently to the stars, who, on their fields of deepening
blue, sparkled, each one like the leader of an unseen
host in the depths of heaven, himself the foremost
and the most radaint. The night was balmy and voluptuous.
The music of the Ducal band swelled forth
from the perfumed apartments on the air. A single
nightingale, far back in the wilderness of the garden,
poured from his melodious heart a chant of the most
passionate melancholy. The sentinel of the bodyguard
stationed at the limit of the spray of the fountain
leaned on his halberd and felt his rude senses melt in
the united spells of luxury and nature. The ministers
of a monarch's pleasure had done their utmost to prepare
a scene of royal delight, and night and summer
had flung in their enchantments when ingenuity was
exhausted.

The dark architectural mass of the Pitti, pouring a
blaze of light scarce endurable from its deeply sunk
windows, looked like the side of an enchanted mountain
laid open for the revels of sorcery. The aigrette
and plume passed by; the tiara and the jewel upon
the breast; the gaily dressed courtiers and glittering
dames; and to that soldier at his dewy post, it seemed
like the realized raving of the improvisatore when he

is lost in some fable of Araby. Yet within walked
Malice and Hate, and the light and perfume that might
have fed an angel's heart with love, but deepened in
many a beating bosom the consuming fires of Envy.

With the gold key of office on his cape, the Grand
Chamberlain stood at the feet of the Dowager Grand
Duchess, and by a sign to the musicians, hidden in a
latticed gallery behind the Corinthian capital of the
hall, retarded or accelerated the soft measure of the
waltz. On a raised seat in the rear of the chairs of
state, sat the ladies of honor and the noble dames
nearest allied to royal blood; one solitary and privileged
intruder alone sharing the elevated place—the
Lady Geraldine. Dressed in white, her hair wound
about her head in the simplest form, yet developing
its divine shape with the clear outline of statuary, her
eyes lambent with purity and sweetness, heavily fringed
with lashes a shade darker than the light auburn
braided on her temples, and the tint of the summer's
most glowing rose turned out from the thread-like
parting of her lips; she was a vision of loveliness to
take into the memory, as the poet enshrines in his soul
the impossible shape of his ideal, and consumes youth
and age searching in vain for its like. Fair Lady Geraldine!
thou wilt read these passionate words from
one whose worship of thy intoxicating loveliness has
never before found utterance, but if this truly told tale
should betray the hand that has dared to describe thy
beauty, in thy next orisons to St. Mary of Pity, breathe
from those bright lips a prayer that he may forget
thee!

By the side of the Lady Geraldine, but behind the
chair of the Grand Duchess, who listened to his conversation
with singular delight, stood a slight young
man of uncommon personal beauty, a stranger apparently
to every other person present. His brilliant uniform
alone betrayed him to be in the Russian diplomacy,

and the marked distinction shown him both by the
reigning Queen of the court, and the more powerful
and inaccessible queen of beauty, marked him as an
object of keen and universal curiosity. By the time
the fifth mazurka had concluded its pendulous refrain,
the Grand Chamberlain had tolerably well circulated
the name and rank of Count Basil Spirifort, the renowned
wit and elegant of Paris, newly appointed to
the Court of His Royal Highness of Tuscany. Fair
eyes wandered amid his sunny curls, and beating bosoms
hushed their pulses as he passed.

Count Basil knew the weight of a first impression.
Count Basil knew also the uses of contempt. Upon
the first principle he kept his place between the Grand
Duchess and Lady Geraldine, exerting his deeply studied
art of pleasing to draw upon himself their exclusive
attention. Upon the second principle, he was perfectly
unconscious of the presence of another human
being, and neither the gliding step of the small-eared
Princess S— in the waltz, nor the stately advance
of the last female of the Medici in the mazurka, distracted
his large blue eyes a moment from their idleness.
With one hand on the eagle-hilt of his sword,
and his side leant against the high cushion of red velvet
honored by the pressure of the Lady Geraldine, he
gazed up into that beaming face, when not bending
respectfully to the Duchess, and drank steadfastly from
her beauty, as the lotus cup drinks light from the sun.

The new Secretary had calculated well. In the
deep recess of the window looking toward San Miniato,
stood a lady nearly hidden from view by the muslin
curtains just stirring with the vibration of the music,
who gazed on the immediate circle of the Grand Duchess
with an interest that was not attempted to be disguised.
On her first entrance into the hall, the Marchesa
del Marmore had recognised in the new minion
of favor her impassioned lover of the lagoon, her slighted

acquaintance of the cathedral. When the first shock
of surprise was over, she looked on the form which
she had found beautiful even in the disguise of poverty,
and, forgetting her insulting repulse when he would
have claimed in public the smile she had given him
when unobserved, she recalled with delight every syllable
he had murmured in her ear, and every look she
had called forth in the light of a Venetian moon. The
man who had burned upon the altar of her vanity the
most intoxicating incense—who had broken through
the iron rules of convention and ceremony, to throw
his homage at her feet—who had portrayed so incomparably
(she believed) with his love-inspired pencil
the features imprinted on his heart---this chancewon
worshipper, this daring but gifted plebeian, as she
had thought him, had suddenly shot into her sphere
and become a legitimate object of love; and, beautified
by the splendor of dress, and distinguished by the
preference and favor of those incomparably above her,
he seemed tenfold, to her eyes, the perfection of adorable
beauty. As she remembered his eloquent devotion
to herself, and saw the interest taken in him by a woman
whom she hated and had calumniated—a woman who
she believed stood between her and all the light of existence—she
anticipated the triumph of taking him from
her side—of exhibiting him to the world as a falcon seduced
from his first quarry—and never doubting that
so brilliant a favorite would control the talisman of the
paradise she had so long wished to enter, she panted
for the moment when she should catch his eye and
draw him from his lure, and already heard the Chamberlain's
voice in her ear commanding her presence
after the ball in the saloon of Hercules.

The Marchesa had been well observed from the first
by the wily diplomate. A thorough adept in the art
(so necessary to his profession) of seeing without appearing
to see, he had scarce lost a shade of the varying

expressions of her countenance; and while she
fancied him perfectly unconscious of her presence, he
read her tell-tale features as if they had given utterance
to her thoughts. He saw, with secret triumph,
the effect of his brilliant position upon her proud and
vain heart; watched her while she made use of her
throng of despised admirers to create a sensation near
him and attract his notice; and when the ball wore on,
and he was still in unwearied and exclusive attendance
upon the Lady Geraldine, he gazed after her with a
momentary curl of triumph on his lip, as she took up
her concealed position in the embayed window, and
abandoned herself to the bitter occupation of watching
the happiness of her rival. The Lady Geraldine had
never been so animated since her first appearance at
the Court of Tuscany.

It was past midnight when the Grand Duke, flushed
and tired with dancing, came to the side of the Lady
Geraldine. Count Basil gave place, and, remaining a
moment in nominal obedience to the Sovereign's polite
request which he was too politic to construe literally,
he looked down the dance with the air of one who has
turned his back on all that could interest him, and,
passing close to the concealed position of the Marchesa,
stepped out upon the balcony.

The air was cool, and the fountain played refreshingly
below. The Count Basil was one of those minds
which never have so much leisure for digression as
when they are most occupied. A love, as deep and
profound as the abysses of his soul, was weaving thread
for thread with a revenge worthy of a Mohican; yet,
after trying in vain to count eight in the Pleiades, he
raised himself upon the marble balustrade, and perfectly
anticipating the interruption to his solitude which
presently occurred, began to speculate aloud on the
dead and living at that hour beneath the roof of the
Pitti.

“A painter's mistress,” he said, “immortal in the
touch of her paramour's pencil, is worshipped for centuries
on these walls by the pilgrims of art; while the
warm perfection of all loveliness---the purest and divinest
of high-born women---will perish utterly with the
eyes that have seen her! The Bella of Titian, the
Fornarina of Raffaelle---peasant-girls of Italy---have,
at this moment, more value in this royal palace than
the breathing forms that inhabit it! The Lady Geraldine
herself, to whom the Sovereign offers at this moment
his most flattering homage, would be less a loss
to him than either! Yet they despise the gods of the
pencil who may thus make them immortal! The dull
blood in their noble veins, that never bred a thought
beyond the instincts of their kind, would look down,
forsooth, on the inventive and celestial ichor that inflames
the brain, and prompts the fiery hand of the
painter! How long will this very sovereign live in the
memories of men? The murderous Medici, the ambitious
cardinals, the abandoned women of an age gone
by, hang in imperishable colors on his walls; while of
him, the lord of this land of genius, there is not a bust
or a picture that would bring a sequin in the market-place!
They would buy genius in these days like
wine, and throw aside the flask in which it ripened.
Raffaelle and Buonarotti were companions for a pope
and his cardinals;---Titian was an honored guest for
the Doge. The stimulus to immortalize these noble
friends was in the love they bore them; and the secret
of their power to do it lay half in the knowledge of their
characters, gained by daily intimacy. Painters were
princes then, as they are beggars now; and the princely
art is beggared as well!”

The Marchesa del Marmore stepped out upon the
balcony, leaning on the arm of the Grand Chamberlain.
The soliloquizing Secretary had foretold to himself
both her coming and her companion.

“Monsieur le Comte,” said the Chamberlain, “La
Marchesa del Marmore wishes for the pleasure of your
acquaintance.”

Count Basil bowed low, and in that low and musical
tone of respectful devotion which, real or counterfeit,
made him irresistible to a woman who had a soul to be
thrilled, he repeated the usual nothings upon the beauty
of the night; and when the Chamberlain returned to
his duties, the Marchesa walked forth with her companion
to the cool and fragrant alleys of the garden,
and, under the silent and listening stars, implored forgiveness
for her pride; and, with the sudden abandonment
peculiar to the clime, poured into his ear the
passionate and weeping avowal of her sorrow and love.

“Those hours of penitence in the embayed window,”
thought Count Basil, “were healthy for your soul.”
And as she walked by his side, leaning heavily on his
arm, and half-dissolved in a confiding tenderness, his
thoughts reverted to another and a far sweeter voice;
and while the caressing words of the Marchesa fell on
an un-listening ear, his footsteps insensibly turned back
to the lighted hall.

6. VI.

As the daylight stole softly over Vallombrosa, the
luxurious chariot of the Marchesa del Marmore stopped
at the door of Count Basil. The Lady Geraldine's
suit had been successful; and the hitherto excluded
Florentine had received, from the hand of the man she
had once so ignorantly scorned, a privilege for which
she would have bartered her salvation;—she had supped
at his side in the saloon of Hercules. With many
faults of character, she was an Italian in feeling, and
had a capacity, like all her country-women, for a consuming
and headlong passion. She had better have
been born of marble.

“I have lifted you to heaven,” said Count Basil, as
her chariot wheels rolled from his door; “but it is as
the eagle soars into the clouds with the serpent. We
will see how you will relish the fall!”