 | Seven stories, with basement and attic |  |
SIXTH STORY:
THE COUNT PESARO.
I AM living in a garden, in the middle of the water.
Old arbors, made from trellised poles, which are
blackened with storms and with years, stretch down
through the centre of this garden, and are covered over
with the interlacing limbs of Lombard grape-vines.
At the end of this arbor-walk—not, it is true, very long,
but neatly gravelled and cleanly kept—is a low pavilion,
with an embowed window which looks out upon the
Grand Canal of Venice.
A painting of some Venetian artist, who lived before
the garden was planted, hangs upon the wall of the pavilion,
and receives a light,—on one side subdued by the
jutting fragments of a ruined palace, and on the other
reflected brightly from the green surface of the water.
The pavilion is built in the angle of those palace
raised to their full height. They offer, in their broken
and half-ruined state, a mournful commentary upon the
life of that dissolute republic which ended suddenly a
half century ago; since which time no stone has been
added to the palace walls. An iron paling, of flash appearance,
swings where the palace doors should have
hung. The windows are filled with mortar and brick,
save the one where my pavilion looks upon the water.
The huge lion heads that stand out here and there along
the foundation stones, are grimy with the sea-weed which
the salt tide feeds: and what should have been the court
of the palace is given up to the culture of a few sour
grapes of Lombardy, and to the morning strolls of a
stranger from a republic beyond the ocean.
From the pavilion window, I can count the old
homes of five Doges and of twenty noble Venetian families;
but there is no family of either Doge or noble in
any of them now. Two of the grandest are turned
into lodging-houses for strangers; the upper balcony—a
richly-wrought marble balcony—of the palace of the
most noble Ducal family of the Justiniani, is now decorated
with the black and white sign-board of my late
host, Monsieur Marseille, keeper of the Hôtel de l'Europe.
Another grand pile, which rises just opposite to
me, is filled with the degenerate officials of the mouldering
municipality of Venice. I see them day by day sauntering
in the corridors which a century ago echoed
the steps of very noble and very corrupt women. Still
others bear over the rich sculptured cornices of their
doors, among the marble masks and flowers, the painted
double-headed eagle of the Emperor Francis; and the
men I see moving with a stealthy pace over the marble
stairs, are miserable Italian hirelings, who wear the
livery, reverence the power, and chant the praises of their
Austrian master.
All day long the gondolas glide back and forth over
the green water of the canal—so near, that I can distinguish
faces under the sombre canopies of the boats, and
admire the neatly-gloved hands of ladies, or the martial
air of our military rulers. At night, too, when I choose
to linger with the blinds unclosed, I can see the lights
trailing from far down by the Square of St. Mark, when
no sound of the oars is heard; and can watch their
growing glimmer, and presently hear the distant ripple,
and see the lanterns shining brighter and brighter, and
hear the oar dip nearer and nearer, until with a dash—
a blaze, and a shadow of black—they pass.
The bay window of my pavilion, jutting from the
palace ruin, has marble steps leading down to the water.
At ten o'clock of the morning, if the sun is bright, my
gondolier, Guiseppe, is moored at one of the lions' heads,
in his black boat. A half hour's easy sail along the
of the Rialto. A score of palaces fling their shadows
across the way I pass over, between the Rialto and the
garden court; and a score more, catch the sun upon
their fronts, and reflect it dazzlingly. But, apart from
the life which the sun and the water lend to them, they
have all a dead look. The foundations are swayed and
cracked. Gloomy-looking shutters of rough boards
close up the window-openings of sculptured marble.
Newly-washed linen is hung out to dry upon the palace
balconies.
Even the scattered noble families which retain the
larger piles of building are too poor and powerless to
arrest the growing decay, or to keep up any show of
state. A black cockade upon the hat of their gondolier,
with a faded crimson waistcoat for livery, and a box at
the Fenice Theatre, make up the only ostensible signs
of a vain rank and of an expiring fortune.
If the whim or the business of the morning lead me
in an opposite direction, a few strokes of the oar will
carry my gondola under the shadow of those two granite
columns which belong to every picture of Venice,
and which are crowned with the winged lion of St.
Mark, and the patron Saint Theodore. Here is the
gathering-place of all strangers and loiterers; and one
may wander at will under the arcades of the Ducal Palace,
or over the billowy floor of the cathedral church.
and an active commerce in flowers and oranges,
and a business-like effrontery in lame old men, who serve
as valets-de-place, that fatigue me—that seem altogether
out of keeping with the proper gloom and mould and
sloth of the dying city.
My more frequent excursions are in another quarter.
Traversing the garden arbor of which I have spoken,
and passing through the corridor of the house which
skirts the garden, I find myself upon the edge of a narrow
canal, shaded by crumbling houses, which are inhabited
by a ghost-like people, whom you see gliding in
and out only in the gray of the morning or at twilight.
The narrow canal has a foot-way by its side, along which
passes an occasional bawling fish-merchant, who carries
his stock in a small willow crate upon his head; cold-looking,
lean women, with shawls drawn over them like
cowls, and stooping and slip-shod, sometimes shuffle
along the path, with cabbages under their arms, and disappear
down one of the dark courts which open on the
canal.
I think there must be a school in the neighborhood;
for not unfrequently a bevy of boys (a very rare sight
in Venice) passes under my window, under the eye of a
broad-hatted priest in a long black coat. But the boys,
I have observed, are sallow-faced, and have a withered,
mature look, as if they had grown old before their time.
belongs to the desolate city; their laugh, as it comes to
my ear, is very hollow and vague, with none of the rollicking
glee in it which is bred of green fields and sunshine.
A funeral, on the contrary—when it passes, as it
sometimes has done, after twilight, with priests in white
capes, and candles flaunting a yellow, sickly light upon
the still water of the canal—seems to agree with the
place and with the people. The sight does not shock,
as it does in cities which are alive with action or with
sunshine; but, like a burst of laughter at a feast, the
monotonous funeral chant chimes with the mournful
habit of the place, and death seems to be only a louder
echo of the life.
A little distance away, there is a bridge which crosses
this canal; a dingy alley—I find, at its end—conducts
through slumberous houses to a narrow quay and a
broad sheet of water. Beyond the water lies the island
of Giudecca; between which and the quay I am upon,
lie moored the greater part of those sea-going craft
which supply now all the needs of the port of Venice.
Here are quaint vessels from Chioggia, at the other
end of the Lagoon, which have not changed their fashion
in a hundred years. They have the same high peak
and stern which they had in the days of the Doges;
and a painted Virgin at the bow is a constant prayer
the Ionian islands, with Greek sailors half-clad, who
have the same nut-brown faces and lithe limbs you see
in old pictures.
The canal of the Giudecca stretches to the westward,
dividing the island of the same name from the body
of the city, and then loses itself in the wide, lazy sweep
of the Lagoon; there, you see little isles with tall bell-towers,
and scattered lateen-rigged vessels, and square-armed
colliers from England, and low-lying fields of
rushes—all alike seeming to float upon the surface of
the water.
When the sun is near its setting, you cannot imagine
the witching beauty of this scene: the blue mountains
of Treviso rise from the distant edge of the Lagoon
in sharp, pyramidal forms; they grow less and
less in size as they sweep to the south, till finally—where
the smooth water makes the horizon-line—you can see,
five miles away, the trees of the last shore, seeming to
rise from the sea, and standing with all their lines firmly
and darkly drawn against a bright orange sky.
From this quay—a favorite walk of mine—as from
a vessel on the ocean, I see the sun dying each night in
the water. Add only to what I have said of the view a
warm, purple glow to the whole western half of the
heavens—the long shadow of a ship in the middle distance,
and the sound of a hundred sweet-toned vesper
floating, and mellowing, and dying along the placid surface
of the sea—and you will have some notion of a quiet
Venetian evening.
Upon the bridges which spring with a light marble
arch across the side canals are grouped the figures of
loitering gondoliers. Their shaggy brown coats, with
pointed hoods, their tasselled caps, their crimson neckties,
and their attitudes of a lazy grace, as they lean
against the light stone balustrades, are all in happy
keeping with the scene. A marching company of priests,
two by two, with their broad hats nearly touching,
sometimes passes me; and their waving black cloaks stir
the air, like the wings of ill-omened birds. A lean beggar
who has been sunning himself throughout the day
in the lee of a palace wall, steals out cautiously, as he
sees me approach, and doffs his cap, and thrusts forward
his hand, with a cringing side-cast of the head, making
an inimitable pantomime of entreaty; and a coin so small
that I am ashamed to name it, brings a melodious “benedetto”
on my head.
I have come, indeed, to know every face which makes
its appearance along the quay of the Giudecca. A bettle-browed
man, with ragged children and a slatternly wife,
has lost all my sympathy by his perverse constancy in
begging and in asking blessings. A dog in an upper
balcony, which barked at me obstreporously on the first
after a fortnight, and now he makes only an inquiring
thrust of his nose through the balcony bars; and, having
scented an old acquaintance, retires with quiet gravity.
Most of all, I have remarked an old gentleman,
whom I scarce ever fail to meet at about the vesper
hour, in a long brown overcoat, of an antique fashion,
and wearing a hat which must have been the mode at
least forty years ago. His constant companion is a
young woman, with a very sweet, pale face, who clings
timidly to his arm; and who, like her protector, is clad
always in a sober-colored dress of an old date. Her
features are very delicate, and her hair, like that of all
the Venetian women, singularly beautiful. There is no
look of likeness between them, or I should have taken
them for father and daughter. They seem to talk but
little together; and I have sometimes thought that the
poor girl might be the victim of one of those savage
marriages of Europe, by which beauty and youth are
frequently tied—for some reasons of family or property
—to decrepitude and age.
Yet the old gentleman has a very firm step and a
proud look of the eye, which he keeps fixed steadfastly
before him, scarce deigning to notice any passer-by.
The girl, too—or perhaps I should rather say the woman
—seems struggling to maintain the same indifference
with the old gentleman; and all her side-looks are very
furtive and subdued.
They walk rapidly, and always disappear down a
narrow court which is by the farther bridge of the quay,
and which leads into a mouldering quarter of the city.
They speak to no one; they do not even salute, so far
as I have seen, a single one of the parish priests who
glide back and forth upon the walk by the Giudecca.
Once only, a gondolier, with a flimsy black cockade, who
was loitering at the door of a wine-shop, lifted his hat
as they passed in a very respectful manner; but neither
man or woman seemed to acknowledge the salutation.
The steadfast look of the old gentleman, and the
clinging hold of the young woman upon his arm, have
once or twice induced me to believe him blind. But his
assured step upon the uneven surface of the stones, and
the readiness with which he meets the stairs of the successive
bridges, have satisfied me that it cannot be.
I am quite sure there is some mystery about the couple—some
old family story, perhaps, of wrong or of
crime, which, in its small way, might throw a light upon
the tyranny or the license which contributed to the wreck
of the Venetian State. I have hinted as much to my
professor of languages—who is a wiry little man, with
ferret eyes—and who has promised to clear up whatever
mystery may lie in the matter.
I shall hardly see him, however, again—being now
Christmas time—for a week to come.
The Christmas season drags heavily at Venice.
are certainly not cheerful ones. The air, indeed, has a
Christmas-like cold in its breath; but there is no cheer
of blazing fires to quicken one's thankfulness, and to
crackle a Christmas prayer for the bounties of the
year.
The pinched old women steal through the dim and
narrow pass-ways, with little earthen pots of live coals
—the only fire which ever blesses their dismal homes.
No frost lies along the fields with a silvery white coat,
stiffening the grass tips, and making eyes sparkle and
cheeks tingle; but the Venetian winter overtakes you
adrift—cutting you through with cold winds, that howl
among the ancient houses—dampening every blast with
the always present water, and bringing cold tokens
from the land-winter, in huge ice-cakes, which float
wide and drearily down the Lagoon.
There are no Christmas songs, and no Christmas
trees. Only the churches light up their chilly vaults
with a sickly blaze of candles; and the devout poor
ones, finding comfort in the air softened by the burning
of incense, kneel down for hours together. The dust
rests thickly on the tombs of nobles and of Doges, who
lie in the churches; dark pictures of Tintoretto stare at
you from behind the altars; the monotone of a chant
rises in a distant corner; beggars, with filthy blankets
drawn over their heads, thrust their meagre hands at
out into the sunlight again.
One bright streak of this sunshine lies all day long
upon the Riva,[1]
which stretches from the ducal palace
to the arsenal. Here is always gathered a motley
throng of soldiers, of jugglers, of Punch-players, and
of the picturesque Turkish and Cretan sailors. Jostling
through this crowd, and passing the southern arcade of
the Palace, you meet at mid-afternoon of the Christmas
season with troops of ladies, who lounge up and down
over the square of St. Mark's in a kind of solemn saunter,
that I am sure can be seen nowhere else. Gone-by
fashions of Paris flame upon the heads of pale-cheeked
women, and weazen-faced old men struggle through
the mass, with anxious and doubting daughters clinging
closely to their arms.
The officers of the occupying army stride haughtily
upon the Place, eyeing with insolence whatever of beauty
is to be seen, and showing by every look and gesture
that they are the masters, and the others the menials.
I was looking on this strange grouping of people
not long ago, upon a festal day of the Christmas season,
when my eye fell upon the old gentleman whom I had
been accustomed to see upon the quiet Riva of the Zattere
across the Grand Canal. His pretty meek-faced
companion was beside him. They paced up and down
of St. Mark's and of the crowd, which they had worn
in the view of the Lagoon and of the silent, solemn
sunsets.
It is true they had now gala dresses; but so old, so
quaint, that they seemed to belong, as they really did,
to an age gone by. The old gentleman wore a bell-shaped
hat, such as one sees in the pictures of the close
of the last century, and its material was not of the shiny,
silky substance of the present day, but of rich beaver.
The lady, too, showed a face delicate as before, but set
off with a coiffure so long gone by that its very age relieved
it from oddity, and made me think I was looking
at some sweet picture of a half century ago. The richest
of that old Venetian lace, which provokes always
the covetousness of travelling ladies, belonged to her
costume, and agreed charmingly with her quiet manner,
and with the forlorn air which added such a pleasing
mystery to the couple.
I could not observe that they seemed nearer to
friends or to kin in the middle of the crowd, than upon
the silent quay of the Zattere, where I had so often seen
them before. They appeared to be taking their gala
walk in memory of old days, utterly neglectful of all
around them, and living, as it were, an interior life—
sustained only by association,—which clung to the gaunt
shadow of the Campanile, and to the brilliant front of
San Marco, with a loving and a pious fondness.
It is not to be wondered at, indeed, that those of
old Venetian blood should cherish vain and proud regrets.
They are living in the shadows of a great past.
An inferior race of creatures occupy the places of the
rich and the powerful. The very griffins mock at them
from the sculptured walls, and everywhere what is new
is dwarfed by contrast with the old.
I followed the old gentleman after a while into the
church of St. Mark. He walked reverently through the
vestibule, and put on a religious air that startled me.
Passing in at the central door, and slipping softly over
the wavy floor of mosaics, he knelt, with his companion,
at that little altar of the Virgin upon the left, where the
lights are always burning. They both bowed low, and
showed a fervor of devotion which is but rarely seen in
either Protestant or Popish churches.
I felt sure that a great grief of some kind rested on
them, and I hoped with all my heart that the Virgin
might heal it. Presently they raised their heads together,
as if their prayers had been in concert; they
crossed themselves; the old gentleman cast a look of
mournful admiration over the golden ceiling, and into
the obscure depths of the vaulted temple,—beckoned to
his companion, and turned to pass out.
There was something inexpressibly touching in the
manner of both, as they went through the final form of
devotion, at the doorway. It seemed to me that they
traces of the ancient Venetian grandeur; here, indeed,
are the only monuments of the past Venetian splendor
which are still consecrated to their old service. The
Palace has passed into the keeping of strangers, and idle
soldiers, talking a new language, loiter under the arcades;
the basins of the Arsenal are occupied by a few disabled
vessels of foreign build; but in the churches—the same
God is worshiped, the same prayers are said, and the
same saints rule, from among the urns of the fathers
the devotions of the children.
I could not forbear following the old gentleman and
his companion, at a respectful distance, through the
neighboring alleys. They glided before me like some
spectral inhabitants of the ancient city, who had gloried
in its splendor, and who had come back to mourn over
its decay. Without a thought of tracing them to their
home, and indeed without any distinctness of intent,
save only the chase of a phantom thought, I followed
them through alley after alley. The paving stones were
damp and dark; the cornices of the houses almost met
overhead. The murmur of the voices upon the Square
of St. Mark's died away in the distance. The echoes
of a few scattered foot-falls alone broke the silence.
Sometimes I lost sight of them at an angle of the
narrow street, and presently came again in full view of
the old gentleman, resolutely striding on. I cannot tell
tall doorway in the Calle Justiniana. I had passed that
way before, and had remarked an ancient bronze knocker
which hung upon the door, of rich Venetian sculpture.
I had even entertained the sacrilegious thought of negotiating
with the porter, or whoever might be the owner,
for its purchase.
A shrill voice from above responded to the summons
of the old gentleman, and with a click the latch flew
back and the door stood ajar. I came up in time to
catch a glimpse of the little square court within. It was
like that of most of the old houses of Venice. A cistern
curbing, richly wrought out of a single block of Istrian
marble, stood in the centre, set off with grotesque heads
of cherubs and of saints. The paving stones were
green and mossy, save one narrow pathway, which led
over them to the cistern. The stairway, upon one side
of the court, was high and steep; the balustrade was
adorned with battered figures of lions' heads and of griffins;
at the landing-place was an open balcony, from
which lofty windows, with the rich, pointed Venetian
tops, opened upon the principal suite of the house. But
all of these were closed with rough board shutters, here
and there slanting from their hinges, and showing broken
panes of glass, and the disorder of a neglected apartment.
A fragment of a faded fresco still flamed within
the balcony between the windows.
Only upon the floor above was there any sign of life.
There I caught a glimpse of a white curtain, a cat dozing
in a half-opened window, and of a pot of flowers.
I conjectured how it was: proud birth and poverty
were joined in the old man. The great halls of the
house, which were once festive, were utterly deserted.
The sun, which reached only to the upper rooms,
brought a little warmth with it. No fire was made to
drive away the damps below.
A few pictures, it may be, remained upon the walls
of the closed rooms, the work of esteemed artists, showing
forth some scene of battle or of state, in which the
founders of the house had reaped honors from the Republic.
But the richly carved tables and quaint old
chairs, had, I did not doubt, slipped away one by one
to some Jew furniture-vender living near, who had
preyed with fawning and with profit upon the old gentleman's
humbled condition.
The daughter, too—if indeed the young woman were
his daughter—had, I doubted not, slipped old fragments
of Venetian lace into her reticule, on days of bitter cold
or of casual illness, to exchange against some little comfort
for the old gentleman.
I knew, indeed, that in this way much of the rich
cabinet-work, for which the Venetian artisans were so
famous two hundred years ago, had gone to supply the
modern palaces of Russian nobles by Moscow and Novogorod.
Old time friendships, I knew, too often went to wreck
in the midst of such destitution; and there are those of
ancient lineage living in Venice very lonely and deserted,
only because their pride forbids that a friend should
witness the extent of their poverty. Yet even these
make some exterior show of dignity; they put black
cockades upon the hats of their servants, or, by a little
judicious management, they make their solitary fag of
all work do duty in a faded livery at the stern of a gondola.
They have, moreover, many of them, their little
remnants of country property, in the neighborhood of
Oderzo or Padua, where they go to economize the summer
months, and balance a carnival season at the Fenice,
by living upon vegetable diet, and wearing out the faded
finery of the winter.
But the old gentleman about whom I now felt myself
entertaining a deep concern, seemed to be even more
friendless and pitiable than these. He appeared to commune
only with the phantoms of the past; and I must
say that I admired his noble indifference to the degenerate
outcasts around him.
My ferret-eyed Professor made his appearance toward
the close of the Christmas week, in a very hilarious
humor. He is one of those happily constituted
creatures who never thinks of to-morrow, if only his
dinner of to-day is secure. I had contributed to his
cheer by inviting him to a quiet lunch (if quiet can be
of the Vapore. I had a hope of learning something
from him in respect to the old gentleman of the
Zattere.
I recalled my former mention of him, and ordered a
pint of Covegliano, which is a fiery little wine of a very
communicative and cheerful aroma.
“Benissimo,” said the Professor, but whether of the
wine or of the subject of my inquiry I could not tell.
I related to him what I had seen in the Christmas
time upon the Place, and described the parties more
fully.
The Professor was on the alert.
I mentioned that I had traced them to a certain tall
doorway he might remember in the Calle Justiniana.
“Lo cognosco,” said the Professor, twinkling his
eye. “It is the Signor Nobile Pesaro: poor gentleman!”
and he touched his temple significantly, as if the
old noble had a failing in his mind.
“And the lady?” said I.
“La sua figliuóla,” said he, filling his glass; after
which he waved his forefinger back and forth in an expressive
manner, as much as to say, “poor girl, her fate
is hard.”
With that he filled the glass again, and told me this
story of the Count Pesaro and his daughter.
1. I.
PESARO was once a very great name in Venice.
There was in former times a Doge Pesaro, and
there were high ministers of state, and ambassadors
to foreign courts belonging to the house. In the old
church of the Frari, upon the further side of the Grand
Canal, is a painting of Titian's, in which a family of
the Pesaro appears kneeling before the blessed Virgin.
A gorgeously-sculptured palace between the Rialto and
the Golden House is still known as the Pesaro Palace;
but the family which built it, and which dwelt there,
has long since lost all claim to its cherubs and griffins;
only the crumbling mansion where lives the old Count
and his daughter now boasts any living holders of the
Pesaro name.
These keep mostly upon the topmost floor of the
house, where a little sunshine finds its way, and plays
hospitably around the flower-pots which the daughter
has arranged upon a ledge of the window. Below—
as I had thought—the rooms are dark and dismal. The
rich furniture which belonged to them once is gone—
only a painting or two, by famous Venetian artists, now
hang upon the walls. They are portraits of near relations,
and the broken old gentleman, they say, lingers
for hours about them in gloomy silence.
So long ago as the middle of the last century the
family had become small, and reduced in wealth. The
head of the house, however, was an important member
of the State, and was suspected (for such things were
never known in Venice) to have a voice in the terrible
Council of Three.
This man, the Count Giovanni Pesaro, whose manner
was stern, and whose affections seemed all of them
to have become absorbed in the mysteries of the State,
was a widower. There were stories that even the
Countess in her life-time had fallen under the suspicions
of the Council of Inquisition, and that the silent husband
either could not or would not guard her from the
cruel watch which destroyed her happiness and shortened
her days.
She left two sons, Antonio and Enrico. By a rule
of the Venetian State not more than one son of a noble
family was allowed to marry, except their fortune was
great enough to maintain the dignity of a divided household.
The loss of Candia and the gaming-tables of the
Ridotto had together so far diminished the wealth of the
Count Pesaro, that Antonio alone was privileged to
choose a bride, and under the advice of a State which
exercised a more than fatherly interest in those matters
he was very early betrothed to a daughter of the Contarini.
But Antonio wore a careless and dissolute habit of
Venice, and showed little respect for the claims which
bound him to a noble maiden, whom he had scarcely
seen.
Enrico, the younger son, destined at one time for
the Church, had more caution but far less generosity in
his nature; and covering his dissoluteness under the
mask of sanctity, he chafed himself into a bitter jealousy
of the brother whose privileges so far exceeded his own.
Fra Paolo, his priestly tutor and companion, was a monk
of the order of Franciscans, who, like many of the Venetian
priesthood in the latter days of the oligarchy,
paid little heed to his vows, and used the stole and the
mask to conceal the appetites of a debased nature.
With his assistance Enrico took a delight in plotting the
discomfiture of the secret intrigues of his brother, and
in bringing to the ears of the Contarini the scandal attaching
to the affianced lover of their noble daughter.
Affairs stood in this wise in the ancient house of
Pesaro when (it was in the latter part of the eighteenth
century) one of the last royal ambassadors of France
established himself in a palace near to the church of
San Zaccaria, and separated only by a narrow canal
from that occupied by the Count Pesaro.
The life of foreign ambassadors, and most of all of
those accredited from France, was always jealously
watched in Venice, and many a householder who was so
residence received secret orders to quit his
abode, and only found a cause in its speedy occupation
by those masked spies of the Republic who passed secretly
in and out of the Ducal Palace.
The Inquisition, however, had its own reasons for
leaving the Pesaro family undisturbed. Perhaps it
was the design of the mysterious powers of the State to
embroil the house of Pesaro in criminal correspondence
with the envoy of France; perhaps Fra Paolo, who had
free access to the Pesaro Palace, was a spy of St.
Mark's; or perhaps (men whispered it in trembling)
the stern Count Pesaro himself held a place in the terrible
Council of Three.
The side canals of Venice are not wide, and looking
across, where the jealous Venetian blinds do not forbid
the view, one can easily observe the movements of an
opposite neighbor. Most of the rooms of the palace of
the ambassador were carefully screened; but yet the
water-door, the grand hall of entrance, and the marble
stairway were fully exposed, and the quick eyes of Antonio
and Enrico did not fail to notice a lithe figure,
which from day to day glided over the marble steps, or
threw its shadow across the marble hall.
Blanche was the only daughter of the ambassador,
and besides her there remained to him no family. She
had just reached that age when the romance of life is
floating canopies, the masked figures passing like phantoms
under the shadow of palaces, and all the license
and silence of Venice, created for her a wild, strange
charm, both mysterious and dangerous. The very
secrecy of Venetian intrigues contrasted favorably in
her romantic thought with the brilliant profligacy of the
court of Versailles.
Nor was her face or figure such as to pass unnoticed
even among the most attractive of the Venetian beauties.
The brothers Pesaro, wearied of their jealous
strife among the masked intrigantes who frequented the
tables of the Ridotto, were kindled into wholly new
endeavor by a sight of the blooming face of the Western
stranger.
The difficulties which hedged all approach, served
here (as they always serve) to quicken ingenuity and to
multiply resources. The State was jealous of all communication
with the families of ambassadors; marriage
with an alien, on the part of a member of a noble family,
was scrupulously forbidden. Antonio was already betrothed
to the daughter of a noble house which never
failed of means to avenge its wrongs. Enrico, the
younger, was in the eye of the State sworn to celibacy
and to the service of the Church.
But the bright eyes of Blanche, and the piquancy of
her girlish, open look, were stronger than the ties of a
forced betrothal, or the mockery of monastic bonds.
Music from unseen musicians stole at night through
the narrow canal where rose the palace of the Pesaro.
Flowers from unseen hands were floated at morning
upon the marble steps upon which the balconies of the
Pesaro Palace looked down; and always the eager and
girlish Blanche kept strict watch through the kindly
Venetian blinds for the figures which stole by night over
the surface of the water, and for the lights which glimmered
in the patrician house that stood over against the
palace of her father.
A French lady, moreover, brought with her from
her own court more liberty for the revels of the Ducal
Palace, and for the sight of the halls of the Ridotto,
than belonged to the noble maidens of Venice. It was
not strange that the Pesaro brothers followed her
thither, or that the gondoliers who attended at the doors
of the ambassador were accessible to the gold of the
Venetian gallants.
In all his other schemes Enrico had sought merely
to defeat the intrigues of Antonio, and to gratify by
daring and successful gallantries the pride of an offended
brother, and of an offcast of the State. But in the
pursuit of Blanche there was a new and livelier impulse.
His heart was stirred to a depth that had never
before been reached; and to a jealousy of Antonio was
now added a defiance of the State, which had shorn
him of privilege, and virtually condemned him to an
aimless life.
But if Enrico was the more cautious and discreet,
Antonio was the more bold and daring. There never
was a lady young or old, French or Venetian, who did
not prefer boldness to watchfulness, and audacity to caution.
And therefore it was that Enrico—kindled into a
new passion which consumed all the old designs of his
life—lost ground in contention with the more adventurous
approaches of Antonio.
Blanche, with the quick eye of a woman, and from
the near windows of the palace of the ambassador, saw
the admiration of the heirs of the Pesaro house, and
looked with the greater favor upon the bolder adventures
of Antonio. The watchful eyes of Enrico and of the
masked Fra Paolo, in the gatherings of the Ducal hall
or in the saloons of the Ridotto, were not slow to observe
the new and the dangerous favor which the senior
heir of the Pesaro name was winning from the stranger
lady.
“It is well;” said Enrico, as he sat closeted with his
saintly adviser in a chamber of the Pesaro Palace, “the
State will never permit an heir of a noble house to wed
with the daughter of an alien; the Contarini will never
admit this stain upon their honor. Let the favor which
Blanche of France shows to Antonio be known to the
State, and Antonio is —”
“A banished man,” said the Fra Paolo, softening
the danger to the assumed fears of the brother.
“And what then!” pursued Enrico doubtfully.
“And then the discreet Enrico attains to the rights
and privileges of his name.”
“And Blanche!”
“You know the law of the State, my son.”
“A base law!”
“Not so loud,” said the cautious priest; “the law
has its exceptions. The ambassador is reputed rich.
If his wealth could be transferred to the State of Venice
all would be well.”
“It is worth the trial,” said Enrico; and he pressed
a purse of gold into the hand of the devout Fra Paolo.
2. II.
THE three Inquisitors of State were met in their
chamber of the Ducal Palace. Its floor was of alternate
squares of black and white marble, and its walls
tapestried with dark hangings set off with silver fringe.
They were examining, with their masks thrown aside,
the accusations which a servitor had brought in from
the Lion's Mouth, which opened in the wall at the head
of the second stairway.
Two of the inquisitors wre dressed in black, and
the third, who sat between the others—a tall, stern man
—was robed in crimson. The face of the last grew
troubled as his eye fell upon a strange accusation, affecting
this terrible council-chamber had its own law among its
members, and its own punishment for indiscretion.
More than once a patrician of Venice had disappeared
suddenly from the eyes of men, and a mysterious message
came to the Great Council that a seat was vacant
in the chamber of the Inquisition.
The accusation which now startled the member of
the Council was this:
“Let the State beware; the palace of Pesaro is
very near to the palace of France!
“One of the Contarini.”
The Count Pesaro (for the inquisitor was none
other) in a moment collected his thoughts. He had remarked
the beautiful daughter of the ambassador; he
knew of the gallantries which filled the life of his son
Antonio; he recognized the jealousy of the Contarini.
But in the members of the fearful court of Venice
no tie was recognized but the tie which bound them to
the mysterious authority of the State. The Count Pesaro
knew well that the discovery of any secret intercourse
with the palace of the ambassador would be followed
by the grave punishment of his son; he knew
that any conspiracy with that son to shield him from the
State would bring the forfeit of his life. Yet the Inquisitor
said, “Let the spies be doubled?”
And the spies were doubled; but the father, more
not one son only, but both, who held guilty communication
with the servitors of the ambassador's palace. There
was little hope that it would long escape the knowledge
of the Council. But the Count anticipated their action,
by sacrificing the younger to the elder; the gondolier
of Enrico was seized, and brought to the chamber of
torture.
The father could not stay the judgment which pronounced
the exile of the son, and at night Enrico was
arraigned before the three inquisitors: the masks concealed
his judges; and the father penned the order by
which he was conveyed, upon a galley of the State, to
perpetual exile upon the island of Corfu.
The rigor of the watch was now relaxed, and Antonio,
fired by the secret and almost hopeless passion
which he had reason to believe was returned with equal
fervor, renewed his communications in the proscribed
quarter. A double danger, however, awaited him.
The old and constant jealousy of France which existed
in the Venetian councils had gained new force; all intercourse
with her ambassador was narrowly watched.
Enrico, moreover, distracted by the failure of a
forged accusation which had reacted to his own disadvantage,
had found means to communicate with the
scheming Fra Paolo. The suspicions of the Contarini
family were secretly directed against the neglectful Antonio.
and revengeful house. Accusations again found
their way into the Lion's Mouth. Proofs were too
plain and palpable to be rejected. The son of Pesaro
had offended by disregarding engagements authorized
and advised by the State. He had offended in projecting
alliance with an alien; he had offended in holding
secret communication with the household of a foreign
ambassador.
The offence was great, and the punishment imminent.
An inquisitor who alleged excuses for the crimes
of a relative was exposed to the charge of complicity.
He who wore the crimson robe in the Council of the
Inquisition was therefore silent. The mask, no less
than the severe control which every member of the
secret council exerted over his milder nature, concealed
the struggle going on in the bosom of the old
Count Pesaro. The fellow-councillors had already seen
the sacrifice of one son; they could not doubt his consent
to that of the second. But the offence was now
greater, and the punishment would be weightier.
Antonio was the last scion of the noble house of
which the inquisitor was chief, and the father triumphed
at length over the minister of State; yet none in the
secret Council could perceive the triumph. None knew
better than a participant in that mysterious power which
ruled Venice by terror, how difficult would be any
escape from its condemnation.
3. III.
IT was two hours past midnight, and the lights had
gone out along the palace-windows of Venice. The
Count Pesaro had come back from the chamber of the
Council; but there were ears that caught the fall of his
step as he landed at his palace door and passed to his
apartment. Fra Paolo had spread the accusations
which endangered the life of Antonio, and, still an inmate
of the palace, he brooded over his schemes.
He knew the step of the Count; his quick ear
traced it to the accustomed door. Again the step
seemed to him to retrace the corridor stealthily, and to
turn toward the apartment of Antonio. The watchful
priest rose and stole after him. The corridor was dark;
but a glimmer of the moon, reflected from the canal,
showed him the tall figure of the Count entering the
door of his son.
Paternal tenderness had not been characteristic of
the father, and the unusual visit excited the priestly curiosity.
Gliding after, he placed himself by the chamber,
and overheard—what few ever heard in those days
in Venice—the great Inquisitor of State sink to the
level of a man and of a father.
“My son,” said the Count, after the first surprise
of the sleeper was over, “you have offended against the
before the Inquisition.
“It is true,” said Antonio.
“The State never forgets or forgives,” said the
Count.
“Never, when they have detected,” said Antonio.
“They know all,” said the father.
“Who know all?” asked Antonio earnestly.
“The Council of Three.”
“You know it?”
The Count stooped to whisper in his ear.
Antonio started with terror: he knew of the popular
rumor which attributed to his father great influence in
the State, but never until then did the truth come home
to him, that he was living under the very eye of one of
that mysterious Council, whose orders made even the
Doge tremble.
“Already,” pursued the Count, “they determine
your punishment: it will be severe; how severe I can
not tell; perhaps—”
“Banishment?”
“It may be worse, my son;” and the Count was
again the father of his child, folding to his heart, perhaps
for the last time, what was dearer to him now than the
honor or the safety of the State.
But it was not for tearful sympathy only that the
Count had made this midnight visit. There remained
follow in a day, or in two. Meantime the barges of the
State were subject to orders penned by either member
of the Council.
It was arranged that a State barge should be sent
to receive Antonio upon the following night, to convey
him a captive to the Ducal Palace. As if to avoid observation,
the barge should be ordered to pass by an
unfrequented part of the city. The sbirri of the quarter
should receive counter orders to permit no boat to
pass the canals. In the delay and altercation Antonio
should make his way to a given place of refuge, where
a swift gondola (he would know it by a crimson pennant
at the bow) should await him, to transport the
fugitive beyond the Lagoon.
His own prudence would command horses upon the
Padua shore, and escape might be secured. Further
intercourse with the Count would be dangerous, and
open to suspicion.; and father and son bade adieu—it
might be forever.
The priest slipped to his lair, in his corner of the
wide Pesaro Palace; and the Count also went to such
repose as belongs to those on whom rest the cares and
the crimes of empire.
A day more only in Venice, for a young patrician
whose gay life had made thirty years glide fast, was
very short. There were many he feared to leave; and
grew with its pains, for the fair Blanche, had ripened
into a tempest of love. The young stranger had yielded
to its sway; and there lay already that bond between
them which even Venetian honor scorned to undo.
In hurried words, but with the fever of his feelings
spent on the letter, he wrote to Blanche. He told her
of his danger, of the hopelessness of his stay, of the
punishment that threatened. He claimed that sacrifice
of her home which she had already made of her heart.
Her oarsmen were her slaves. The Lagoon was not so
wide as the distance which a day might place between
them forever. He prayed her as she loved him, and by
the oaths already plighted upon the Venetian waters, to
meet him upon the further shore toward Padua. He
asked the old token, from the window of the palace opposite,
which had given him promise in days gone.
The keen eyes even of Fra Paolo did not detect the
little crimson signal which hung on the following day
from a window of the palace of the ambassador: but
the wily priest was not inactive. He plotted the seizure
and ruin of Antonio, and the return of his protector
Enrico. An accusation was drawn that day from the
Lion's Mouth without the chamber of the Inquisition,
which carried fear into the midst of the Council.
“Let the Three beware!” said the accusation;
“true men are banished from Venice, and the guilty
(if traitorous counsels avail him) escapes this
this night.
“Let the Council look well to the gondola with the
crimson pennant, which at midnight crosses to the Padua
shores!”
The inquisitors wore their masks; but there was
doubt and distrust concealed under them.
“If treason be among us, it should be stayed speedily,”
said one.
And the rest said, “Amen!”
Suspicion fell naturally upon the councillor who wore
the crimson robe; the doors were cautiously guarded;
orders were given that none should pass or repass, were
it the Doge himself, without a joint order of the Three.
A State barge was despatched to keep watch upon the
Lagoon; and the official of the Inquisition bore a special
commission. The person of the offender was of little
importance, provided it could be known through what
channel he had been warned of the secret action of the
Great Council. It was felt, that if their secrecy was
once gone, their mysterious power would be at an end.
The Count saw his danger and trembled.
The lights (save one in the chamber where Fra Paolo
watched) had gone out in the Pesaro Palace. The
orders of the father were faithfully observed. The refuge
was gained; and in the gondola with the crimson pennant,
Padua shore, Antonio breathed freely. Venice was left
behind; but the signal of the opposite palace had not
been unnoted, and Blanche would meet him and cheer
his exile.
Half the Lagoon was passed, and the towers of St.
Mark were sinking upon the level sea, when a bright
light blazed up in their wake. It came nearer and
nearer. Antonio grew fearful.
He bade the men pull lustily. Still the strange
boat drew nearer; and presently the flery signal of St.
Mark flamed upon the bow. It was a barge of the
State. His oarsmen were palsied with terror.
A moment more and the barge was beside them; a
masked figure, bearing the symbols of that dreadful
power which none might resist and live, had entered the
gondola. The commission he bore was such as none
might refuse to obey.
The fugitive listened to the masked figure
“To Antonio Pesaro—accused justly of secret dealings
with the ambassadors of France, forgetful of his
oaths and of his duty to the State, and condemned
therefore to die—be it known that the only hope of
escape from a power which has an eye and ear in every
corner of the Republic, rests now in revealing the name
of that one, be he great or small, who has warned him
of his danger and made known a secret resolve of the
State.”
Antonio hesitated; to refuse was death, and perhaps
a torture which might compel his secret. On the other
hand, the Count his father was high in power; it seemed
scarcely possible that harm could come nigh to one
holding place in the Great Council itself. Blanche, too,
had deserted her home, and perilled life and character
upon the chance of his escape. His death, or even his
return, would make sure her ruin.
The masked figure presented to him a tablet, upon
which he wrote, with a faltering hand, the name of his
informant,—“the Count Pesaro.”
But the Great Council was as cautious in those days,
as it was cruel. Antonio possessed a secret which was
safe nowhere in Europe. His oarsmen were bound. The
barge of State was turned toward Venice. The gondola
trailed after;—but Antonio was no longer within. The
plash of a falling body, and a low cry of agony, were
deadened by the brush of the oars, as the boat of St.
Mark swept down toward the silent city.
Three days thereafter the Doge and his privy council
received a verbal message that a chair in the chamber
of Inquisition was vacant, and there was needed a new
wearer for the crimson robe.
But not for weeks did the patricians of Venice miss
the stately Count Pesaro from his haunts at the Broglio
and the tables of the Ridotto. And when they knew at
length, from the closed windows of his palace, and his
heads mysteriously, but said never a word.
The wretched Fra Paolo, in urging his claim for the
absent Enrico, gave token that he knew of the sin and
shame of the Count of Pesaro. Such knowledge no private
man might keep in the Venetian State and live.
The poor priest was buried where no inscription might be
written, and no friend might mourn.
4. IV.
IN those feeble days of Venice which went before the
triumphant entry of Napoleon, when the Council
of Three had themselves learned to tremble, and the
Lion of St. Mark was humbled,—there came to Venice,
from the island of Corfu, a palsied old man whose name
was Enrico Pesaro, bringing with him an only son who
was called Antonio.
The old man sought to gather such remnants of the
ancient Pesaro estate as could be saved from the greedy
hands of the government; and he purchased rich masses
for the rest of the souls of the murdered father and
brother.
He died when Venice died; leaving as a legacy to
his son a broken estate and the bruised heart, with which
he had mourned the wrong done to his kindred. The
boy Antonio had only mournful memories of the old
of great deeds—was cut down; and the new Venice was
a conquered city.
In the train of the triumphant Army of Italy there
came, after a few years, many whose families had been
in times past banished and forgotten. An old love for the
great city, whose banner had floated proudly in all seas,
drew them to the shrine in the water, where the ashes
of their fathers mouldered. Others wandered thither
seeking vestiges of old inheritance; or, it might be,
traces of brothers, or of friends, long parted from them.
Among these, there came, under the guardianship
of a great French general, a pensive girl from Avignon
on the Rhone. She seemed French in tongue, and yet
she spoke well the language of Italy, and her name was
that of a house which was once great in Venice. She
sought both friends and inheritance.
Her story was a singular one. Her grandfather
was once royal ambassador to the State of Venice. Her
mother had fled at night from his house, to meet upon
the shores of the Lagoon a Venetian lover, who was of
noble family, but a culprit of the State. As she approached
the rendezvous, upon the fatal night, she
found in the distance a flaming barge of St. Mark; and
presently after, heard the cry and struggles of some victim
of State cast into the Lagoon.
Her gondola came up in time to save Antonio Pesaro!
The government put no vigor in its search for drowned
men: and the fugitives, made man and wife, journeyed
safely across Piedmont. The arm of St. Mark was very
strong for vengeance, even in distant countries; and the
fugitive ones counted it safe to wear another name,
until years should have made safe again the title of
Pesaro.
The wife had also to contend with the opposition of
a father, whose abhorrence of the Venetian name would
permit no reconciliation, and no royal sanction of the
marriage. Thus they lived, outcasts from Venice, and
outlawed in France, in the valley town of Avignon.
With the death of Pesaro, the royal ambassador relented;
but kindness came too late. The daughter sought him
only to bequeath to his care her child.
But Blanche Pesaro, child as she was, could not love
a parent who had not loved her mother; and the royal
ambassador, who could steel his heart toward a suffering
daughter, could spend little sympathy upon her
Italian child. Therefore Blanche was glad, under the
protection of a republican general of Provence, to seek
what friends or kindred might yet be found in the island
city, where her father had once lived, and her mother
had loved. She found there a young Count (for the
title had been revived) Antonio Pesaro—her own father's
name; and her heart warmed toward him, as to her
nearest of kin. And the young Count Antonio Pesaro,
heart warming toward one whose story seemed to lift
a crime from off the memory of his father. There was
no question of inheritance, for the two parties joined
their claim, and Blanche became Countess of Pesaro.
But the pensive face which had bloomed among the
olives by Avignon, drooped under the harsh winds that
whistle among the leaning houses of Venice. And the
Count, who had inherited sadness, found other and
stronger grief in the wasting away, and the death of
Blanche, his wife.
She died on a November day, in the tall, dismal
house where the widowed Count now lives. And there
the daughter, Blanche left him, arranges flowers on the
the ledge of the topmost windows, where a little of the
sunshine finds its way.
The broken gentleman lingers for hours beside the
portraits of the old Count, who was Inquisitor, and of
Antonio, who had such wonderful escape; and they say
that he has inherited the deep self-reproaches which his
father nourished, and that with stern and silent mourning
for the sins and the weaknesses which have stained
his family name, he strides, with his vacant air, through
the ways of the ancient city, expecting no friend but
death.
Such was the story which my garrulous little Professor,
in the Locanda del Vapore.
And, judging as well as I can from the air of the old
gentleman, and his daughter, whom I first saw upon the
Quay of the Zattere, and from what I can learn through
books of the ancient government of Venice, I think the
story may be true.
My lively little Professor says it is verissimo; which
means, that it as true as anything (in Italian) can be.
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