 | IV. Inklings of adventure |  |
4. IV.
While the Count Basil's revenge sped thus merrily,
the just Fates were preparing for him a retribution in
his love. The mortification of the Marchesa del Marmore,
at the Cascine, had been made the subject of
conversation at the prima sera of the Lady Geraldine;
and other details of the same secret drama transpiring
at the same time, the whole secret of Count Basil's
feelings toward that unfortunate woman flashed clearly
have drawn the portrait of the lagoon, for procuring
her an admission to the exclusive suppers of the Pitti,
for a thousand things which had been unaccountable,
or referred to more amiable causes, were at once unveiled.
Even yet, with no suspicion of the extent of
his revenge, the Lady Geraldine felt an indignant pity
for the unconscious victim, and a surprised disapproval
of the character thus unmasked to her eye. Upon
further reflection, her brow flushed to remember that
she herself had been made the most effective tool of
his revenge; and as she recalled circumstance after
circumstance in the last month's history, the attention
and preference he had shown her, and which had gratified
her, perhaps, more than she admitted to herself,
seemed to her sensitive and resentful mind to have
been only the cold instruments of jealousy. Incapable
as she was of an unlawful passion, the unequalled fascinations
of Count Basil had silently found their way
to her heart, and if her indignation was kindled by a
sense of justice and womanly pity, it was fed and fanned
unaware by mortified pride. She rang, and sent
an order to the gate that she was to be denied for the
future to Count Basil Spirifort.
The servant had appeared with his silver tray in his
hand, and before leaving her presence to communicate
the order, he presented her with a letter. Well foreseeing
the eclaircissement which must follow the public
scene in the Cascine, the Count Basil had left the cafe
for his own palazzo, and, in a letter, of which the following
is the passage most important to our story, he
revealed to the lady he loved a secret, which he hoped
would anticipate the common rumor:—
“But these passionate words will have offended
your ear, dearest lady, and I must pass to a
theme on which I shall be less eloquent. You will
hear to-night, perhaps, that which, with all your imagination,
hear to-morrow. The Marchesa del Marmore is the
victim of a revenge which has only been second in my
heart to the love I have for the first time breathed to
you. I can never hope that you will either understand
or forgive the bitterness in which it springs; yet it is a
demon to which I am delivered, soul and body, and no
spirit but my own can know its power. When I have
called it by its name, and told you of its exasperation,
if you do not pardon, you will pity me.
“You know that I am a Russian, and you know the
station my talents have won me; but you do not know
that I was born a serf and a slave! If you could rend
open my heart and see the pool of blackness and bitterness
that lies in its bottom, fallen, drop by drop,
from this accursed remembrance, there would be little
need to explain to you how this woman has offended
me. Had I been honorably born, like yourself, I feel
that I could have been, like you, an angel of light: as
it is, the contumely of a look has stirred me to a revenge
which has in it, I do not need to be told, the
darkest elements of murder.
“My early history is of no importance, yet I may
tell you it was such as to expose to every wind this lacerated
nerve. In a foreign land, and holding an official
rank, it was seldom breathed upon. I wore, mostly,
a gay heart at Paris. In my late exile at Venice I
had time to brood upon my dark remembrance, and it
was revived and fed by the melancholy of my solitude.
The obscurity in which I lived, and the occasional comparison
between myself and some passing noble in the
Piazza, served to remind me, could I have forgotten it.
I never dreamed of love in this humble disguise, and
so never felt the contempt that had most power to
wound me. On receiving the letters of my new appointment,
however, this cautious humility did not wait
to be put off with my sombrero. I started for Florence,
gay mood of a courtier beneath. The first burst of
my newly-released feelings was admiration for a woman
of singular beauty, who stood near me on one of
the most love-awakening and delicious eves that I ever
remember. My heart was overflowing, and she permitted
me to breathe my passionate adoration in her
ear. The Marchesa del Marmore, but for the scorn of
the succeeding day, would, I think, have been the mistress
of my soul. Strangely enough, I had seen you
without loving you.
“I have told you, as a bagatelle that might amuse
you, my rencontre with del Marmore and his dame in
the cathedral of Bologna. The look she gave me there
sealed her doom. It was witnessed by the companions
of my poverty, and the concentrated resentment
of years sprang up at the insult. Had it been a man,
I must have struck him dead where he stood;---she
was a woman, and I swore the downfall of her
pride.”
Thus briefly dismissing the chief topic of his letter,
Count Basil returned to the pleading of his love. It
was dwelt on more eloquently than his revenge; but
as the Lady Geraldine scarce read it to the end, it need
not retard the procession of events in our story. The
fair Englishwoman sat down beneath the Etruscan
lamp, whose soft light illumined a brow, cleared, as if
by a sweep from the wing of her good angel, of the
troubled dream which had overhung it, and in brief
and decided, but kind and warning words, replied to
the letter of Count Basil.
| IV. Inklings of adventure | |