University of Virginia Library

VIOLANTA CESARINI.

1. CHAPTER 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 artists' 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 a fair and noble
maid of seventeen summers to a gentleman whose
character you shall learn, if we come safe to the sequel.

“The cardinal has offered me a thousand scudi for
my Giorgione, said the old count Malaspina, at last,
changing his attitude and the subject at the same
time.

“Anima di porco!” exclaimed the other, “what stirs
the curtain? The wind is changing, Malaspina. Let
us in! So, he offers but a thousand! I shall feel my
rheumatism to-morrow with this change. But a thousand!—ha!
ha! Let us in, let us in!”

“Let us out, say I!” murmured two lips that were
never made of cherries, though a bird would have
pecked at them; and stealing from behind the curtain,
whose agitation had persuaded her father that the wind
was rising, Violanta Cesarini, countess in her own right,
and beautiful by Heaven's rare grace, stepped forth
into the moonlight.

She drew a long breath as she looked down into the
Corso. The carriages were creeping up and down at
a foot-pace, and the luxurious dames, thrown back on
their soft cushions, nodded to the passers-by, as they
recognised friends and acquaintances where the moonlight
broke through; crowds of slow promenaders loitered
indolently on, now turning to look at the berry-brown
back of a contadini, with her stride like a tragedy-queen,
and her eyes like wells of jet, and 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 dawn, looked
like festas out of doors, with their groups of gayly-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 Cesarim, 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 upward, and her face grew
radiant with hope—not such as is fed with star-gazing!

Like a white dove shooting with slant wings downward
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 upward, 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 up, 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 discolored
cloths, surmounted with a clean palette; 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 the 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 resemblance 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 heroine'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
death-bed injunction, in the charge of her own constant
attendant, a faithful servant from Romagno, supposed
to be distant kinswoman 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 marquis, 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
marquis had grown to listen with amused familiarity
to his daughter's prattle about the deformed youth,
and no incident had varied the pleasant tenor 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 Violanti, 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 honors 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 marquis

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. CHAPTER 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 language
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 alond:—

“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 Savior 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 be 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 human 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. CHAPTER 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 can not 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 forgotton 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
neighborhood, 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. Malaspina 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 slanderer!” cried Amieri, and
striking the sword from his bosom, he aimed a blow
at Malaspina, which by a backward movement, was
received 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. CHAPTER 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 boatman 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 graven images, 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 music, 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 scallopshells,
followed by a masked hunchback whose 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 elasticity
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 count Cesarini arrived a few minutes after
in one of the equipages of the Malaspina, accompanied
by a red-cross knight in a magnificent armor, 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 alms 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 suite, 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 honorable 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, Violanta 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 cardinal 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, with Cesarini's permission,
he would find opportunities 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 Lamba
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 entire 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 gayety 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, Violanta!”

“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 bunchback—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. CHAPTER 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 been 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, for 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 defect,
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 gayly 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 disguised voice.
“You need sympathy in this mood, and I am your
good angel. Is your wrist painful to-night?”

“I can not 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
toward the hunchback, who, seated by the red-cross
knight, 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. CHAPTER 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 Guilio),
“did I refuse invitation so sweetly toned. Yet my
Milan armor 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 tremor 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 can not bear this deformity, my Violanta!” he
said, “you look so unlike my child with it; I need
this little hand to reassure 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 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 can not 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 hunchback
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.