 | I. Seven stories, with basement and attic |  |
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.
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