University of Virginia Library

THE REVENGE OF THE SIGNOR BASIL.

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
God-send 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.
Mark 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 impoverishes
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 revery 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 feet 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 surprise of the
highborn 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 accomplished 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 eyes 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 toward
her, and on his 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 toward
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 travellers, 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 during 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 husband, 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 gayety
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 fêtes 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 maintein 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
travelling artists were on their way from the grand gallery
at Florence to their noonday 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 figure 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 traveller 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 travellers 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 was idle and bought flowers at the Café 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 Spiriford, some time attaché 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 without 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 wayworn
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-traveller 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-traveller
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 radiant. 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
body-guard 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 gayly-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
dutchess, 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 threadlike 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 dutchess, 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
dutchess 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 leaned 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 dutchess, 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 dutchess
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 pover
ty, 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 chance-won
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 her
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 highborn 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 marketplace!
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 companon.

“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 unlistening 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 countrywomen, 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!”

2. PART II.

The grand-duke's carriages, with their six horses
and outriders, had turned down the Borg'ognisanti,
and the “City of the Red Lily,” waking from her
noonday slumber, was alive with the sound of wheels.
The sun was sinking over the Apennine which kneels
at the gate of Florence; the streets were cool and
shadowy; the old women, with the bambina between
their knees, braided straw at the doors; the booted
guardsman paced his black charger slowly over the
jeweller's bridge; the picture-dealer brought forward
his brightest “master” to the fading light; and while
the famous churches of that fairest city of the earth
called to the Ave-Maria with impatient bell, the gallantry
and beauty of Tuscany sped through the dampening
air with their swift horses, meeting and passing
with gay greetings amid the green alleys of the Cascine.

The twilight had become gray, when the carriages
and horsemen, scattered in hundreds through the interlaced
roads of this loveliest of parks, turned by common
consent toward the spacious square in the centre,
and drawing up in thickly-serried ranks, the soirée on
wheels, the reunion en plein air, which is one of the
most delightful of the peculiar customs of Florence,
commenced its healthful gayeties. The showy carriages
of the grand-duke and the ex-king of Wurtemberg
(whose rank would not permit them to share in
the familiarities of the hour) disappeared by the avenue
skirting the bank of the Arno, and with much delicate
and some desperate specimens of skill, the coachmen
of the more exclusive nobility threaded the embarrassed
press of vehicles, and laid their wheels together
on the southern edge of the piazza. The beaux in the
saddle, disembarrassed of ladies and axletrees, enjoyed
their usual butterfly privilege of roving, and with light
rein and ready spur pushed their impatient horses to
the coronetted panels of the loveliest or most powerful;
the laugh of the giddy was heard here and there
over the pawing of restless hoofs; an occasional scream
—half of apprehension, half of admiration—rewarded
the daring caracole of some young and bold rider;
and while the first star sprang to its place, and the dew
of heaven dropped into the false flowers in the hat of
the belle, and into the thirsting lips of the violet in the
field (simplicity, like virtue, is its own reward!), the
low murmur of calumny and compliment, of love and
lightheartedness, of politeness, politics, puns, and poetry,
arose over that assembly upon wheels: and if it
was not a scene and an hour of happiness, it was the
fault neither of the fragrant eve nor of the provisions
of nature and fortune. The material for happiness
was there.

A showy calêche with panels of dusky crimson, the
hammer-cloth of the same shade, edged with a broad
fringe of white, the wheels slightly picked out with the
same colors, and the coachman and footman in corresponding
liveries, was drawn up near the southern edge
of the Piazzi. A narrow alley had been left for horsemen
between this equipage and the adjoining ones,
closed up at the extremity, however, by a dark-green
and very plain chariot, placed with a bold violation of
etiquette directly across the line, and surrounded just
now by two or three persons of the highest rank leaning
from their saddles in earnest conversation with the
occupant. Not far from the calêche, mounted upon
an English blood-horse of great beauty, a young man
had just drawn rein as if interrupted only for a moment
on some pressing errand, and with his hat slightly
raised, was paying his compliments to the venerable
Prince Poniatowski, at that time the Amphytrion of
Florence. From moment to moment, as the pauses
occurred in the exchange of courteous phrases, the
rider, whose spurred heel was close at his saddle-girths,
stole an impatient glance up the avenue of

carriages to the dark-green chariot, and, excited by
the lifted rein and the proximity of the spur, the graceful
horse fretted on his minion feet, and the bending
figures from a hundred vehicles, and the focus of
bright eyes radiating from all sides to the spot, would
have betrayed, even to a stranger, that the horseman
was of no common mark. Around his uncovered temples
floated fair and well-cherished locks of the sunniest
auburn; and if there was beauty in the finely-drawn
lines of his lips, there was an inexpressibly fierce spirit
as well.

2. II.

The count Basil had been a month at Florence. In
that time he had contrived to place himself between
the duke's ear and all the avenues of favor, and had
approached as near, perhaps nearer, to the hearts of
the women of his court. A singular and instinctive
knowledge of the weaknesses of human nature, perfected
and concealed by conversance with the consummate
refinement of life at Paris, remarkable personal
beauty, and a quality of scornful bitterness for which
no one could divine a reason in a character and fate
else so happily mingled, but which at the same time
added to his fascination, had given Count Basil a command
over the varied stops of society, equalled by few
players on that difficult and capricious instrument.
His worldly ambition went swimmingly on, and the
same wind filled the sails of his lighter ventures as
well. The love of the marchesa del Marmore, as he
had very well anticipated, grew with his influence and
renown. A woman's pride, he perfectly knew, is difficult
to wake after she has once believed herself adored;
and, satisfied that the portrait taken on the lagoon, and
the introduction he had given her to the exclusive penetralia
of the Pitti, would hold her till his revenge was
complete, he left her love for him to find its own food
in his successes, and never approached her but to lay
to her heart more mordently the serpents of jealousy
and despair.

For the lady Geraldine the count Basil had conceived
a love, the deepest of which his nature was capable.
Long as he had known her, it was a passion
born in Italy, and while it partook of the qualities of
the clime, it had for its basis the habitual and well-founded
respect of a virtuous and sincere friendship.
At their first acquaintance at Paris, the lovely Englishwoman,
newly arrived from the purer moral atmosphere
of her own country, was moving in the dissolute,
but skilfully disguised society of the Faubourg
St. Germain, with the simple unconsciousness of the
pure in heart, innocent herself, and naturally unsuspicious
of others. The perfect frankness with which
she established an intimacy with the clever and accomplished
attaché, had soon satisfied that clear-sighted
person that there was no passion in her preference,
and, giddy with the thousand pleasures of that metropolis
of delight, he had readily sunk his first startled
admiration of her beauty in an affectionate and confiding
friendship. He had thus shown her the better
qualities of his character only, and, charmed with his
wit and penetration, and something flattered, perhaps,
with the devotion of so acknowledged an autocrat of
fashion and talent, she had formed an attachment for
him that had all the earnestness of love without its
passion. They met at Florence, but the “knowledge
of good and evil” had by this time driven the lady
Geraldine from her Eden of unconsciousness. Still
as irreproachable in conduct, and perhaps as pure in
heart as before, an acquaintance with the forms of vice
had introduced into her manners those ostensible cautions
which, while they protect, suggest also what is
to be feared.

A change had taken place also in Count Basil. He
had left the vitreous and mercurial clime of France,
with its volatile and superficial occupations, for the
voluptuous and indolent air of Italy, and the study of
its impassioned deifications of beauty. That which
had before been in him an instinct of gay pleasure—a
pursuit which palled in the first moment of success,
and was second to his ambition or his vanity—had become,
in those two years of a painter's life, a thirst
both of the senses and the imagination, which had
usurped the very throne of his soul. Like the Hindoo
youth, who finds the gilded plaything of his childhood
elevated in his maturer years into a god, he bowed his
heart to what he held so lightly, and brought the
costly sacrifice of time and thought to its altars. He
had fed his eyes upon the divine glories of the pencil,
and upon the breathing wonders of love in marble, beneath
the sky and in the dissolving air in which they
rose to the hand of inspiration; and with his eye disciplined,
and his blood fused with taste and enthusiasm,
that idolatry of beauty, which had before seemed
sensual or unreal, kindled its first fires in his mind,
and his senses were intoxicated with the incense.
There is a kind of compromise in the effects of the
atmosphere and arts of Italy. If the intellect takes
a warmer hue in its study of the fair models of antiquity,
the senses in turn become more refined and
intellectual. In other latitudes and lands woman is
loved more coldly. After the brief reign of a passion
of instinct, she is happy if she can retain her empire
by habit, or the qualities of the heart. That divine
form, meant to assimilate her to the angels, has never
been recognised by the dull eye that should have
seen in it a type of her soul. To the love of the painter
or the statuary, or to his who has made himself conversant
with their models, is added the imperishable
enthusiasm of a captivating and exalted study. The
mistress of his heart is the mistress of his mind. She
is the breathing realization of that secret ideal which
exists in every mind, but which, in men ignorant of the
fine arts, takes another form, and becomes a woman's
rival and usurper. She is like nothing in ambition—
she is like nothing in science or business—nothing in
out-of-door pleasures. If politics, or the chase, or the
acquisition of wealth, is the form of this ruling passion,
she is unassociated with that which is nearest his heart,
and he returns to her with an exhausted interest and a
flagging fancy. It is her strongest tie upon his affection,
even, that she is his refuge when unfit for that
which occupies him most—in his fatigue, his disappointment,
his vacuity of head and heart. He thinks
of her only as she receives him in his most worthless
hours; and, as his refreshed intellects awake, she is
forgotten with the first thought of his favorite theme—
for what has a woman's loveliness to do with that?

Count Basil had not concluded his first interview
with the lady Geraldine, without marvelling at the new
feelings with which he looked upon her. He had
never before realized her singular and adorable beauty.
The exquisitely turned head, the small and pearly
ears, the spiritual nostril, the softly moulded chin, the
clear loftiness of expression yet inexpressible delicacy
and brightness in the lips, and a throat and bust than
which those of Faustina in the delicious marble of the
Gallery of Florence might be less envied by the queen
of love—his gaze wandered over these, and followed
her in the harmony of her motions, and the native and
unapproachable grace of every attitude; and the pictures
he had so passionately studied seemed to fade in
his mind, and the statues he had half worshipped
seemed to descend from their pedestals depreciated.
The lady Geraldine, for the first time, felt his eye.
For the first time in their acquaintance, she was offended
with its regard. Her embarrassment was read
by the quick diplomate, and at that moment sprang
into being a passion, which perhaps had died but for
the conscious acknowledgment of her rebuke.

Up to the evening in the Cascine, with which the

second chapter of this simply true tale commences,
but one of the two leading threads in the count Basil's
woof had woven well. “The jealous are the damned,”
and the daily and deadly agony of the marchesa del
Marmore was a dark ground from which his love to
the lady Geraldine rose to his own eye in heightened
relief. His dearest joy forwarded with equal step his
dearest revenge; and while he could watch the working
of his slow torture in the fascinated heart of his
victim, he was content to suspend a blow to which
that of death would be a mercy. “The law,” said
Count Basil, as he watched her quivering and imploring
lip, “takes cognizance but of the murder of
the body. It has no retribution for the keener dagger
of the soul.”

3. III.

The conversation between the Russian secretary
and the prince Poniatowski ended at last in a graceful
bow from the former to his horse's neck; and the
quicker rattling of the small hoofs on the ground, as
the fine creature felt the movement in the saddle and
prepared to bound away, drew all eyes once more
upon the handsomest and most idolized gallant of
Florence. The narrow lane of carriages, commencing
with the showy calêche of the marchesa del Marmore,
and closed up by the plain chariot of the lady Geraldine,
was still open, and with a glance at the latter
which sufficiently indicated his destination. Count
Basil raised his spurred heel, and with a smile of delight
and the quickness of a barb in the desert, galloped
toward the opening. In the same instant the
marchesa del Marmore gave a convulsive spring forward,
and, in obedience to an imperative order, her
coachman violently drew rein and shot the back and
forward wheels of the calĉhe directly across his path.
Met in full career by this sudden obstacle, the horse
of the Russian reared high in air; but ere the screams
of apprehension had arisen from the adjacent carriages,
the silken bridle was slacked, and with a low bow to
the foiled and beautiful marchesa as he shot past, he
brushed the hammer-cloths of the two scarce separated
carriages, and at the same instant stood at the
chariot window of the lady Geraldine, as calm and
respectful as if he had never known danger or emotion.

A hundred eyes had seen the expression of his face
as he leaped past the unhappy woman, and the drama
of which that look was the key was understood in Florence.
The lady Geraldine alone, seated far back in
her chariot, was unconscious of the risk run for the
smile with which she greeted its hero; and unconscious,
as well, of the poignant jealousy and open mortification
she had innocently assisted to inflict, she
stretched her fair and transparent hand from the carriage,
and stroked the glossy neck of his horse, and
while the marchesa del Marmore drove past with a
look of inexpressible anguish and hate, and the dispersing
nobles and dames took their way to the city
gates, Count Basil leaned close to the ear of that loveliest
of breathing creatures, and forgot, as she forgot
in listening to the bewildering music of his voice, that
the stars had risen, or that the night was closing
around them.

The Cascine had long been silent when the chariot
of the lady Geraldine took its way to the town, and,
with the reins loose upon his horse's neck, Count
Basil followed at a slower pace, lost in the revery of a
tumultuous passion. The sparkling and unobstructed
stars broke through the leafy roof of the avenue whose
silence was disturbed by those fine and light-stepping
hoofs, and the challenge of the duke's forester, going
his rounds ere the gates closed, had its own deep-throated
echo for its answer. The Arno rippled
among the rushes on its banks; the occasional roll of
wheels passing the paved arch of the Ponte Seraglio,
came faintly down the river upon the moist wind, the
pointed cypresses of the convent of Bello Sguardo
laid their slender fingers against the lowest stars in the
southern horizon, and with his feet pressed, carelessly,
far through his stirrups, and his head dropped on his
bosom, the softened diplomate turned instinctively to
the left in the last diverging point of the green alleys,
and his horse's ears were already pricked at
the tread, before the gate, of the watchful and idle
doganieri.

Close under the city wall on this side Florence,
the traveller will remember that the trees are more
thickly serried, and the stone seats, for the comfort
and pleasure of those who would step forth from the
hot streets for an hour of fresh air and rest, are mossy
with the depth of the perpetual shade. In the midst
of this dark avenue, the unguided animal beneath the
careless and forgetful rider suddenly stood still, and
the next moment starting aside, a female sprang high
against his neck, and Count Basil, ere awake from his
revery, felt the glance of a dagger-blade across his bosom.

With the slender wrist that had given the blow
firmly arrested in his left hand, the count Basil slowly
dismounted, and after a steadfast look, by the dim
light, into the face of the lovely assassin, he pressed
her fingers respectfully, and with well counterfeited
emotion, to his lips.

“Twice since the Ave-Maria!” he said in a tone of
reproachful tenderness, “and against a life that is your
own!”

He could see, even in that faint light, the stern compression
of those haughty lips, and the flash of the
darkest eyes of the Val d'Arno. But leading her gently
to a seat, he sat beside her, and with scarce ten
brief moments of low-toned and consummate eloquence,
he once more deluded her soul!

“We meet to-morrow,” she said, as, after a burst
of irrepressible tears, she disengaged herself from his
neck, and looked toward the end of the avenue, where
Count Basil had already heard the pawing of her impatient
horses.

“To-morrow!” he answered; “but, mia carissima!”
he continued, opening his breast to stanch the blood of
his wound, “you owe me a concession after this rude
evidence of your love.”

She looked into his face as if answer were superfluous.

“Drive to my palazzo at noon, and remain with me
till the Ave-Maria.”

For but half a moment the impassioned Italian hesitated.
Though the step he demanded of her was apparently
without motive or reason—though it was one
that sacrificed to a whim her station, her fortune, and
her friends—she hesitated but to question her reason
if the wretched price of this sacrifice would be paid—
if the love, to which she fled from this world and heaven,
was her own. In other countries, the crime of infidelity
is punished: in Italy it is the appearance only
that is criminal. In proportion as the sin is overlooked,
the violation of the outward proprieties of life is
severely visited; and while a lover is stipulated for is
the marriage-contract, an open visit to that lover's
house is an offence which brands the perpetrator with
irremediable shame. The marchesa del Marmore
well knew that in going forth from the ancestral palace
of her husband on a visit to Count Basil, she took
leave of it for ever. The equipage that would bear
her to him would never return for her; the protection,
the fortune, the noble relations, the troops of friends,
would all drop from her. In the pride of her youth
and beauty—from the highest pinnacle of rank—from
the shelter of fortune and esteem—she would descend,
by a single step, to be a beggar for life and love from
the mercy of the heart she fled to!

“I will come,” she said, in a firm voice, looking

close into his face, as if she would read in his dim features
the prophetic answer of his soul.

The count Basil strained her to his bosom, and starting
back as if with the pain of his wound, he pleaded
the necessity of a surgeon, and bade her a hasty good-night.
And while she gained her own carriage in secrecy,
he rode round to the other gate, which opens
upon the Borg'ognisanti, and dismounting at the
Café Colonna, where the artists were at this hour usually
assembled, he sought out his fellow-traveller,
Giannino Speranza, who had sketched the marchesa
upon the lagoon, and made an appointment with him
for the morrow.

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
and fully upon her. His motives for pretending to
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 café 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,
will scarce prepare you for what you will
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, clad in the habiliments of poverty, but
with the 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.

5. V.

It was noon on the following day, and the Contadini
from the hills were settling to their siesta on the steps
of the churches, and against the columns of the Piazza
del Gran' Duca. The artists alone, in the cool gallery,
and in the tempered halls of the Pitti, shook off
the drowsiness of the hour, and strained sight and
thought upon the immortal canvass from which they
drew; while the sculptor, in his brightening studio,
weary of the mallet, yet excited by the bolder light,
leaned on the rough block behind him, and with listless
body but wakeful and fervent eye, studied the last
touches upon his marble.

Prancing hoofs, and the sharp quick roll peculiar to
the wheels of carriages of pleasure, awakened the aristocratic
sleepers of the Via del Servi, and with a lash
and jerk of violence, the coachman of the marchesa
del Marmore, enraged at the loss of his noonday repose,
brought up her showy calêche at the door of
Count Basil Spirifort. The fair occupant of that luxu

rious vehicle was pale, but the brightness of joy and
hope burned almost fiercely in her eye.

The doors flew open as the marchesa descended,
and following a servant in the count's livery, of whom
she asked no question, she found herself in a small saloon,
furnished with the peculiar luxury which marks
the apartment of a bachelor, and darkened like a painter's
room. The light came in from a single tall window,
curtained below, and under it stood an easel, at
which, on her first entrance, a young man stood
sketching the outline of a female head. As she advanced,
looking eagerly around for another face, the
artist laid down his palette, and with a low reverence
presented her with a note from Count Basil. It informed
her that political news of the highest importance
had called him suddenly to the cabinet of his
chef, but that he hoped to be with her soon; and,
meantime, he begged of her, as a first favor in his
newly-prospered love, to bless him with the possession
of her portrait, done by the incomparable artist who
would receive her.

Disappointment and vexation overwhelmed the heart
of the marchesa, and she burst into tears. She read
the letter again, and grew calmer; for it was laden with
epithets of endearment, and seemed to her written in
the most sudden haste. Never doubting for an instant
the truth of his apology, she removed her hat, and
with a look at the deeply-shaded mirror, while she
shook out from their confinement the masses of her
luxuriant hair, she approached the painter's easel, and
with a forced cheerfulness inquired in what attitude
she should sit to him.

“If the signora will amuse herself,” he replied,
with a bow, “it will be easy to compose the picture,
and seize the expression without annoying her with a
pose.”

Relieved thus of any imperative occupation, the unhappy
marchesa seated herself by a table of intaglios
and prints, and while she apparently occupied herself
in the examination of these specimens of art, she was
delivered, as her tormentor had well anticipated, to the
alternate tortures of impatience and remorse. And
while the hours wore on, and her face paled, and her
eyes grew bloodshot with doubt and fear, the skilful
painter, forgetting everything in the enthusiasm of his
art, and forgotten utterly by his unconscious subject,
transferred too faithfully to the canvass that picture of
agonized expectation.

The afternoon, meantime, had worn away, and the
gay world of Florence, from the side toward Fiesole,
rolled past the Via dei Servi on their circuitous way
to the Cascine, and saw, with dumb astonishment, the
carriage and liveries of the marchesa del Marmore at
the door of Count Basil Spirifort. On they swept by
the Via Mercata Nova to the Lung' Arno, and there
their astonishment redoubled: for in the window of
the Casino del Nobili, playing with a billiard-cue, and
laughing with a group of lounging exquisites, stood
Count Basil himself, the most unoccupied and listless
of sunset idlers. There was but one deduction to be
drawn from this sequence of events; and when they
remembered the demonstration of passionate jealousy
on the previous evening in the Cascine, Count Basil,
evidently innocent of participation in her passion, was
deemed a persecuted man, and the marchesa del Marmore
was lost to herself and the world!

Three days after this well-remembered circumstance
in the history of Florence, an order was received from
the grand-duke to admit into the exhibition of modern
artists a picture by a young Venetian painter, an
elève of Count Basil Spirifort. It was called “The
Lady expecting an Inconstant,” and had been pronounced
by a virtuoso, who had seen it on private
view, to be a masterpiece of expression and color. It
was instantly and indignantly recognised as the portrait
of the unfortunate marchesa, whose late aban
donment of her husband was fresh on the lips of common
rumor; but ere it could be officially removed,
the circumstance had been noised abroad, and the
picture had been seen by all the curious in Florence.
The order for its removal was given; but the purpose
of Count Basil had been effected, and the name of the
unhappy marchesa had become a jest on the vulgar
tongue.

This tale had not been told, had there not been
more than a common justice in its sequel. The worse
passions of men, in common life, are sometimes inscrutably
prospered. The revenge of Count Basil,
however, was betrayed by the last which completed
it; and while the victim of his fiendish resentment
finds a peaceful asylum in England under the roof of
the compassionate Lady Geraldine, the once gay and
admired Russian wanders from city to city, followed
by an evil reputation, and stamped unaccountably as a
jattatore.[1]