Barbarossa and Other Tales Part 1

Barbarossa and Other Tales.

by Paul Heyse.

BARBAROSSA.

I had only intended to spend one day up in the mountains, and this one day grew into two weeks, which I found pa.s.s more rapidly in that high-perched ruinous nest on the confines of the Albano and Sabine range--the name I will not give--than was often the case in the whirl of great cities. What I actually did with myself during the sweet long days I hardly know how to tell. But in Rome a mighty hunger after solitude had fallen on me. I could satisfy it here to the full. It was early spring-time, the leaves of the chestnut trees shone in luxuriant freshness; the ravines were filled by the song of birds, and the murmur of brooks; and as of late a large body of banditti who had rendered this wild district insecure, had been in part captured, and in part driven into the Abruzzi, it ensued that a lonely wanderer might without any apprehension climb the remotest crags, and there give himself up undisturbed to profoundest meditations.

From the first I declined all intercourse with the German artists, a good number of whom had taken possession of both miserable inns the village possessed, and as to the desire of every now and then hearing one's own voice, which impels hermits to converse with their domestic animals, I could gratify it quite sufficiently within my own walls. For as it happened I lodged with the apothecary, and he had the utmost indulgence for my very defective Italian. True he indemnified himself for his outlay in patience by not unfrequently taking advantage of mine, for as soon as the first shyness had worn off, he showered a whole cornucopia of his own verses on me, confessing that despite his fifty and five years he was still unable entirely to shake off this childish malady. "What would you have?" he pleaded, "when at evening I step to my window and see the moon coming up behind the rocks, and the fire-flies on the wing about my little garden,--why I must be a brute if it does not set me off poetising." And indeed he was anything but a brute this good Signor Angelo, whom owing to a natural tonsure--a rim of black hair still circling his smooth bald head--his friends were wont to nickname Fra Angelico. He had never indeed left his native place more than twice in his life, nor on either occasion gone further than Rome. But then Rome is the world, he would say. He who has seen Rome, has seen everything. And forthwith he proceeded to speak of everything, partly according to the very miscellaneous and chaotic knowledge he owed to a few books accidentally picked up, partly from the audacity of unbridled poetical fancy. Of all the worthies who according to old Italian custom were wont to gather at evening in his apothecary's shop: priest, schoolmaster, surgeon, tax-gatherer, and a few unofficial well-to-do proprietors, whose faces beamed with the profits of their rich olive and vine yards,--of all these notabilities not one ventured to contradict Fra Angelico, not at least, when previous to one of his longer harangues, he polished his large silver spectacles on his coat-sleeve and began, "_Ecco signori miei_, the matter stands thus." But all the same he was the best and most harmless creature in the world, and the most amiable landlord one could desire, provided one had no wish beyond a hard bed, and two ricketty arm-chairs! He was certainly fond of me, although, or perhaps _because_ he had not the faintest idea that I was a brother poet. I was discreet enough to confine myself to playing the part of a grateful public, and it was not until after the four-and-twentieth sonnet that I would gently lay my hand on his arm and say, "Bravo, Signor Angelo! But I fear this is too much of a good thing. Your poetry, is you know, potent, and flies to the head. To-morrow you shall fill me up a new flask from your Hippocrene." Whereupon with the most good-humoured look imaginable he would close his volume and say, "What avail if I read you to sleep, night after night a whole year through? I should still not have come to an end! Here we have another Peru!" And tapping on his bald forehead he would sigh, offer a pinch of snuff, and wish me a good night.

The majority of these poems were of course devoted to love, and when the little man recited them with sparkling eyes and all the pathos common to his nation, it was easy to forget his five and fifty years.

Nevertheless, he lived a bachelor's life, with one old maid-servant and a boy who helped him with his salves and potions, and it seemed strange that with all his love for the beautiful and his comfortable means, he should never have married, nor even now in his sunny autumn seem inclined to make up for lost time. One evening, when we sat smoking together over the good home-grown wine, and I jokingly asked him why he took his monkish nickname so much in earnest, and whether none of the pretty girls that daily pa.s.sed his shop had contrived to touch his heart, he suddenly looked up at me with a strange expression, and said, "Pretty girls? Well, I daresay they are not so far from it either, and marriage may be better than is reported. But I am too old for a young man, and too young for an old one, or rather let me say too much of a poet. The older the bird, the harder to catch. And then you see, my friend, I was once devoted to a girl who did not care for me--one I tell you the like of whom will never be seen again. So now I am too proud, or whatever it may be called, to be flattered even if some common-place creature--of whom there are twelve to the dozen--were to fancy me. I prefer to dream myself happy in my verses, and to shape myself a perfect beauty out of a hundred incomplete ones, like the Grecian painter--was his name Apelles?--who took for his Venus the eyes of one neighbour, the nose of another, and thus got the best together bit by bit. But as for her who really did unite all perfections, and was so beautiful that you would not believe me if I tried to describe her, she paid dear for her beauty, and many know the story as correctly as I do, though if you were to ask any of the older people in the place about Erminia, they would all bear me out that she was a wonder of the world, and that during the twenty years that have pa.s.sed by since then, nothing has ever happened that made such an impression as her fate and all connected with it. Come now, I will tell it you, as you already know the sonnets to her--I allude to the sixty-seven that I keep in the blue portfolio, of which you said that they really had much of Petrarch's manner; they all date from the time when the wound was still fresh; and when once, you have heard the story you can hear them over again. It is only so that you will thoroughly understand them."

After which, with a sigh that sounded to me rather comic than tragic, he snuffed the candle, leant back in the arm-chair behind his counter, half-closed his eyes, and buried his hands in the side-pockets of his worn-out paletot. It was about nine o'clock in the evening. The Piazza before the house was still as death, one heard only the prattling of the brook, and the heavy breathing of the apprentice asleep in the next room. Then after a long pause he began with his usual exordium.

"_Ecco amico mio_, the matter stands thus. Somewhere about the year '30--you are too young to remember so far back--this said Erminia lived here in the village with a mother and sister who are also dead and buried long ago. If when you leave this door, you turn to the right up the little street leading to the old ruin on the summit of our hill, you will come to a small house, or rather hovel, roofless now except for two worm-eaten beams, and even then it was not much better protected from sun and rain; only that the great fig-tree that is withered now, used at that time to spread its broad thick-leaved branches over it just at the season when shade was most needed. In those bare stone walls that had formerly served as a shelter to wild creatures, Erminia lived. Her father had been dead for years, her mother had no idea of management, so that the family had come down wofully, and were glad enough to be allowed to nestle down in those ruins. There were, indeed, many who would have been glad to support the widow for her husband's sake. But you know how the proverb runs:

'Sacco rotto non tien miglio.

Pover uomo non va a consiglio.'[1]

It was all in vain. The girls who were thoroughly well-behaved, might work their fingers to the bone, spinning and lace-making, and the neighbours might do their part as well as they could, the old woman drank everything up, and if she was not raging like a fury, she would lie on the hearth and sleep, and leave her daughters to find food and clothing for all. I do believe if their next neighbour, the fig-tree, had not done its part so gallantly, that Erminia and her sister Maddalena would both have died of hunger, for they were too proud to beg. Raiment, indeed, the tree could not afford them, since we no longer live in Paradise. Consequently everybody was astonished to see the poor things come to church so neatly dressed, the more that there was not a word to be said against them. True the younger of the two, Maddalena was thoroughly safe from temptation, for she was as ugly as sin, a short, unkempt, club-footed creature, with long arms and short legs, having a gait much like that of a toad, and frightening the children in the street if she came upon them unexpectedly.

"But she knew quite well how unsightly she was, and for the most part kept at home, doing, however, no harm to anyone, which is not often the case with such afflicted creatures, who are generally envious and spiteful by way of revenging themselves for their misfortune. She, on the contrary, seemed to look upon it as in the order of things that her mother, after bringing into the world one child so boundlessly beautiful as Erminia, should have had nothing but nature's refuse left for a second. Instead of looking askance at her elder sister, and wishing to poison her, she made so perfect an idol of her, that none of the young men about were more in love with Erminia than the poor fright Maddalena. And indeed Erminia was one that to see was to love. I for my part had seen all the statues in Rome, Muses, Venuses, Minervas, no small master-pieces, but such triumphs of art as the world cannot equal. And yet, between ourselves, utter failures compared to what nature had done. Look you, friend,"--and so saying the little man jumped up and raised his arm--"she was so tall, about a head taller than I am, but so beautifully formed; her little head so gracefully set on her magnificent bust, that no one found out how tall she was. And then her face, chiselled as it were, with large eyes richly eyelashed, and an expression proud and sweet both; a mouth red as a strawberry, or rather the inside of a white fig, and her brow crowned with thick blue-black curly hair, which she bound up behind into such a heavy nest of ringlets that it needed as stately a throat as hers to bear their burden. And then when she moved, walked, raised her arms to steady the basket she carried on her head, with her taper fingers turned, as it were, out of ivory; and her little feet in their coa.r.s.e wooden shoes--_amico mio_, if I had not been a poet, that girl would have made me one. As for the others who had not a drop of poet blood in their veins, at least she made them mad, which is half-way to the Temple of Apollo. There was not a young fellow in the place who would not have had his left hand cut off, if only he might have worn her ring on the right. But she would listen to none of them, which was the more surprising when you considered the poverty she lived in, and that of the offers made to her, the very worst would at least have saved her, her mother, and her sister from any further distress. Of myself I will not speak. Madly in love as I was, I had still sense enough left to see that I was not worthy of her, and after I had in some degree got over the pain of my rejection, I told her that I would at least be her friend at all times, and she gave me her hand, and thanked me with such a smile. Sir, at that moment I was more crazy than ever! But there was another that everybody thought would outbid us all, and although we might have grudged her to him, still we should not have had a word to say against her choice. This was the son of the landlord of the _Croce d'oro_, a handsome fellow, rolling in money, and about two-and-twenty, a couple of inches taller than Erminia; generally called Barbarossa, or merely _Il Rosso_, on account of his having with light curly hair, a fine red beard of his own; but his real name was Domenico Serone. He paid his court to Erminia in such a way that nothing else was talked of, went on like one distracted, while she dismissed him just as she had done the rest of us, without positive disdain. She only gave him to understand that he might spare himself any further trouble, that she could not marry him, for a good girl like her would not awaken any false hopes. Many thought that her own country-people were not distinguished enough for her, that it must be some foreigner, a milord, or a Russian, and that her mind was set on distant lands and fabulous adventures. But no, sir, that too was a bad shot. I myself knew a rich English count, or marquis, or whatever he might be, who told me that he had thrown a couple of thousand pounds or so into her ap.r.o.n, and implored her on his knees to accompany him to England. But she just shook off the bank-notes as though they had been dead leaves, and threatened if he ever spoke another word to her, to strike him across the face, even if it were on the public market-place. And so we went on exhausting ourselves in conjectures as to what her motives could be; whether she had made a vow to die unmarried; and I even once summoned up courage to ask her--such was the friendly footing we stood on--whether she had a hatred to men in general. Not so, she quietly replied, but as yet she had not found one whom she could love. In this way two years pa.s.sed, she still with the same calm face, Red-beard looking more and more gloomy, and it was plain to see how consumed he was by the fire within, for the handsome youth went creeping about like a ghost.

"One day, however, a stranger came here, a Swedish captain, who had left the service because his promotion had been unfairly delayed, and who, since then, having means of his own, had travelled by land and by sea half over the world, shooting elephants and tigers, crocodiles and sea-serpents, and carrying about with him half-a-dozen most beautiful guns and rifles, and a great Newfoundland dog, who had more than once saved his life. If I remember rightly this stranger's name was _Sture_, or something of the sort, but I myself called him Sor Gustavo, and the village-folk just 'the Captain.' He took up his quarters here because he liked my little garden, had the very room you now occupy, and he and I were soon as thick as thieves. He was not a man of many words, nor indeed would he listen to my verses, for he cared only for one poet, Lord Byron, whose adventures he had set himself to emulate. Well, and he was quite up to the task. He was as brave as a lion, with more money than he knew what to do with, and as for the women, they ran after him go where he would, for he was wonderfully stately in his bearing and figure, and yet had so good-humoured an expression that they all thought it would be easy to play the part of Omphale to this Hercules. In Rome he seemed to have been pretty wild, at least so this one and the other pretended to know; he himself never touched on his love-affairs, and here in our village, he never appeared to care whether there was any other race in the world than that of men. With these he went about continually; would sit--if he were not prowling along the ravines with his rifle--whole afternoons at the cafe, playing billiards to perfection, and when he had won everybody's money, he would order a barrel of the best wine, and insist upon everybody partaking. So all began as with one mouth to sing his praises, and to rejoice that such a travelled gentleman should have taken such a craze for our little spot above all others, that he even talked of buying a vineyard, and of yearly spending a couple of months among us.

"Domenico Serone was the only one who kept aloof from our captain, would get up as soon as ever he saw him enter the cafe, and pa.s.s him by in the street as a thief does the gallows. No one wondered though at this, for to see himself eclipsed by a foreigner--he who was accustomed to be c.o.c.k of the walk--must naturally have mortified him. It never even occurred to me that Erminia might have something to do with it. I had been present when Signor Gustavo met the fair creature for the first time. 'Now look here, _amico mio_,' I had said, 'never--if only you will honestly admit it, never have you seen anything like her in either of the Indies, Turkey, or Golconda.' But he after a mere glance, without a look of surprise, merely said, 'Hum!' biting his blonde moustache so hard, you heard the crunching of the hair. 'Not amiss, Sor Angelo, not amiss indeed.' '_Possareddio_,' said I to myself, 'this is the only man who can look without blinking at the sun.' It crossed me that I would engage Erminia in conversation, that he might see more of her, and be punished for his cold-blooded 'not amiss,' by falling over head and ears into love. But she, usually so calm and unembarra.s.sed when she met any one, turned strangely red, and hurried away, so that I thought at once, 'Hollo! at length her hour has struck,' but I said not a word, and the meeting went out of my head.

"But about a week later, I stood before my shop-door in the twilight deciphering a letter I had just received, in which a friend in Rome told me he had read aloud my sonnets at a meeting of a poetical society--the 'Arcadia'--and that amidst general approval I had been elected honorary member, which so surprised and pleased me, that for the moment I was not aware of what was going on about me, till I heard _Il Rosso's_ voice so loud and threatening that it woke me out of all my cogitations. Looking up I saw him standing by the fountain not ten yards from my door, pale as a corpse, and quite unlike the smart fellow he used to be, and not far from where he was,--the pitcher that she had intended to fill left standing on the edge of the fountain, and her left hand pressing her side,--stood Erminia, and as it happened no one else was in sight. I wondered what both could be about, as they had avoided each other for months past. But _Il Rosso_ did not keep me long in suspense. 'Hear me, Erminia,' he said, as though he were reading out a sentence of death to some convicted criminal in the hearing of all the world: 'It is lucky that we have met here. True we have no longer any dealings with each other, but as I once loved you, even though you trampled my love under your feet, I would still warn you. Take heed to yourself, Erminia, and be careful what you do. I know one who has sworn your death if any stranger ever carries off what you have refused to your own people; and if we are not good enough to make you an honourable wife, we are at least men enough to help a lost girl out of the world; and so tell your fine gentleman to look out against accidents, for the bullets we cast hereabouts can hit as well as those of Swedish lead; and so G.o.d be with you, Erminia. I have nothing further to say.'

"He pressed his hat on his brows, threw a glance around, and went off with a quick step. The girl said not a word, and as for me I was so bewildered by his pa.s.sionate outburst, that not till she had lifted her pitcher to her head, and was preparing to leave, did I regain the power of speech. 'Erminia,' I said, going close up to her, 'who does he mean by the stranger?' 'He is a fool,' she replied without looking at me, but blushing deeply. 'I hope so indeed,' said I, 'for if there were any meaning in his words I should be sorry for you, Erminia.' 'I want no one's pity,' was her curt reply; and then she went off without so much as good night, and from the defiance of her manner I first discovered that she was really implicated. And being sincerely her well-wisher I hurried after her, so as to walk on by her side. 'You know me to be your friend,' said I, 'if you will not believe Domenico, believe me Erminia, it will be your ruin if you have anything to do with the captain. He is a fine fellow, but he will not marry you, Erminia, for all that; indeed, he cannot, for he is a Lutheran, but, in addition, he would not wish it. Therefore, even if Il Rosso did not make good his threat, nothing but mischief could come of the affair,' and so on, according as my friendship for the girl inspired me. She, meanwhile, walked straight on in silence without once raising her eyes. So at length I left her with a faint hope of having made some impression on her mind. The great dog came to meet me at the door of my house, which told me that his master was returned from shooting. I went up to his room at once, and found him with his English rifle in his hand, having taken it to pieces to clean, and a couple of dead birds before him.

'You have lost something, Sor Gustavo,' said I, 'there on the market place your secrets have been discussed so loudly, that all the gossips in the village are acquainted with them.' And I went on to tell him of Redbeard's threats, adding that he did not know our people if he supposed they were not in earnest, and that if he really had triumphed and won Erminia's coy heart, he ought for both their sakes to be on his guard and break it off, and get out of the sc.r.a.pe the best way he could. And being once fairly started I could not refrain from taking Domenico's part, and declaring that all friendship would be at an end between us if he made Erminia unhappy. There were plenty of others who would be no great loss. But to see the Pearl of the whole Sabina trampled in the mire was what I could not endure, and so I told him to his face that if I discovered him going after Erminia, I could no longer be his host, and that he might look out for some other quarters.

To all this he answered nothing further than what Erminia had once told me, 'You are not over wise, Fra Angelico,' and continued polishing up the locks and barrel of his rifle, and puffing the blue smoke of his cigar through his fair moustachios. At last I left him even more disgusted with his cunning cold-bloodedness than with the affair itself, and I did not see him till the noon of the next day, when he entered my room with a letter in his hand which he told me necessitated his immediate departure, and as it was too late for the mail, he requested me to lend him my little vehicle. There was nothing I was more glad to do, not indeed that I laid much stress upon the letter, but rather believed that it was my own eloquence that had induced him to leave us, and to break off that luckless love-affair in good time.

And so I let him have my apprentice, as I myself had no time to drive him to Rome, and we parted the best of friends.

"It was his intention, he told me, to travel to Greece in order to visit Lord Byron's grave, and he promised to write to me as soon as he got there. The rogue! He thought as little of Greece as I of a journey to the moon. But what would you have? A mighty spell was on him, and held him down with a hundred meshes in the Evil One's net, so that he could look me, his best friend, in the face and tell me so confounded a lie as this!

"That evening I went to bed with the consciousness of having done my duty, and saved two human lives. Nay I was even planning a lyric on the subject, which would have been by no means one of my worst, though a convincing proof that poets are no prophets. For would you believe it, on the following afternoon my lad returned home with the vehicle, and the first thing he did after taking the horse to the stable and feeding him, was to ask me if Signor Gustavo had told me they were to take a stranger with them, for that about two miles from the village, where the evergreen oak stands near the old tomb, this stranger had beckoned to them, and then jumped so quickly into the conveyance, that he, Carlino, never got a good look at his features. But in spite of that alacrity, and of the manly attire,--which by the way belonged to Signor Gustavo's wardrobe,--he was ready to take his oath that this stranger was no other than Erminia.

"I will not detain you by describing the effect this discovery had on me. I bound the youth down most solemnly to hold his peace about it.

But what could that avail! The very next day there was not an old woman who entered my shop for a penny-worth of anything who did not inform me that Erminia had gone off to Rome with the captain, and had sent a message to her mother to the effect that she should not indeed return, but would never forget that she was her daughter. And, moreover, she had left behind for her sister Maddalena whom she must have taken into her confidence, all her clothes and other effects, and a bag of money--probably from the Captain--so that their mother might want for nothing.

"That this news should work upon the young village-folk like valerian upon cats, you, my friend, will easily believe. Had we been in the old times of Greeks and Trojans, Domenico would easily have a.s.sembled an army to pursue and recover his lost Helen. But in spite of all that was said and shrieked, spite of fury and curses, nothing came of it, and soon it seemed as though these braggadocios were ashamed of even uttering the name of the girl who had refused them all to go off at last with a heretic and barbarian. There were only two who could not forget her. I was one, and it was in vain I sought consolation from the muses. The other was Domenico Il Rosso, in whose eyes anybody with an insight into human nature might easily have read that he was brooding over desperate deeds.

"And too surely before a month had elapsed since Erminia's flight all my fears were realised. I remember the day as tho' it were yesterday: it was on a Thursday--and the heat was such that the flies on the wall were giddy, and at noon no Christian soul ventured out. I had closed my shop-door, and all the shutters, and lay between sleeping and waking in this very chair where I now sit. There was nothing to be heard but the sleepy drip-drop of the fountain, and the rustling of dry herbs on the counter, over which my tame canary-bird was hopping to-and-fro.

Suddenly I fancied I heard some one knock at the shop-door, and call my name, and annoyed at being disturbed, I rubbed my eyes awake, and prepared to see whether any one had really been taken suddenly ill. The knocking was repeated, louder and quicker, as if in urgent haste, and I had my hand on the door-handle when I heard a dreadful scream, 'Jesus, Maria, have mercy on me!' I tore open the door, and saw a woman sink on the threshold, from whose breast there gushed such a stream of blood, that while I stooped to raise her I was reddened from top to toe. Three steps off with a face like ashes stood Domenico, with eyes wide-opened as though his crime had killed him too. 'Domenico,' I cried, 'what hast thou done? Cursed be thy hand which has wrought this horrible deed.'

'Amen,' he replied, 'it was her fate. Now let him come.' And so saying he turned round--for some horror-stricken faces began to appear at the windows--and slowly traversed the sun-lit piazza till he reached the gateway, where he disappeared like a spectre.

"Meanwhile I held the poor gasping frame in my arms, almost swooning myself from grief and terror. I called to my maid-servant, the neighbours rushed out, and so we carried her in, and laid her on a bed.

But I saw too plainly that there was nothing to be done, and so I sent the lad off as fast as he could go to fetch a priest. I scarcely hoped though that she would live long enough to see him, so bending down I asked her if she had anything to communicate. She husbanded her last breath to ask me how her mother was. 'Just the same as for a month past,' I replied. Then her dying breast heaved a deep sigh, and she gasped out: 'Then he deceived me!' 'Who?' said I. She felt for her pocket, and drew out a letter, the tenor of which was that if she wished to find her mother still alive she must set out without delay, for that the illness was a mortal one. This letter bore the priest's signature, but was not in his handwriting. I made out from the few words that she with difficulty whispered, that a youth from our village had secretly delivered it to her the evening before. How he had found out her lodging in Rome she had no idea, for she was living most privately, and not in the same house as her lover, who had been to see her as usual in the evening, and on reading the letter had forbidden her to go home, saying that it was only a plot to allure her to destruction, and she herself had taken that view of it, and promised him not to go. But in the morning when she was alone, a fear came over her that it might after all turn out to be true, and if so, her mother would die and would curse her own child on her death-bed. So she took a carriage, and promised the driver a double fare if he would take her in half the usual time. She got out, however, at the foot of the hill, wishing to reach her mother's house alone and un.o.bserved. But as soon as she neared the first houses she had a sense of some one following her, and for protection she ran rather than walked towards my door, when suddenly Domenico appeared behind her, and called out, without however looking at her: 'What, Erminia, do we see you here again? That is well, it was time you should come to your senses!' 'What have you to do with my senses?' she replied; 'you have no hold upon me for good or bad.' 'Indeed!' said he, drawing closer and closer, 'all the same one does not like the disgrace to attach to our village of having no young man worthy of such a jewel. Probably you have now found out that your foreigner was but a poor make-believe, like the rest, and that you would do better to remain at home.' And she. 'What I think of _him_ is my affair. Why do you always come after me? You knew long ago what I think of you.' Then seizing her arm he said in a hoa.r.s.e voice, 'For the last time, Erminia, I give you warning. Renounce him, or both you and he will have to rue it. I cannot prevent your loving him, but that he should rob you of honour and happiness, that as sure as G.o.d lives I _will_ prevent and that shortly. Do you understand me?' Then she stood still, looked him full in the face, and said, 'You and no one else wrote that letter.' And he, without answering, went on as before. 'Will you give him up and remain here?' Then when she continued silent, and shook her head resolutely, he three times repeated the same question.

'Will you, Erminia, give him up and remain here?' And when she pretended not even to be aware that any one was speaking to her, but quickened her steps fearing that he might do her some violence in the deserted piazza, she suddenly felt his hand grasp her arm as in a vice, heard the words, 'To h.e.l.l, then, with your Lutheran,' and in the same moment fell down mortally wounded close to my door.

"And now she had no wish, she said, but that her lover should forgive her for leaving him against his will; she expiated it dearly enough. He had meant to make her his wife, and take her to his own home. Instead of that she must go down into the grave, and who could say whether the Virgin Mary would intercede for her; and whether she should ever pa.s.s out of the pains of purgatory into the Heavenly Paradise!

"That was the last sentence that crossed her lips, then her head sank back, and she was dead!"

When the little man had got so far, he stretched himself back in his arm-chair, and closed his eyes with a deep sigh. After some minutes so spent he sprang up, walked several times to and fro in his dark shop, and seemed to make a strong effort to recover his self-control. At length he stood still beside me, laid his hand on my shoulder, and said, "What after all is human life, _amico mio!_ A fleeting nothing!

gra.s.s that is green in the field to-day, and to-morrow dry and withered. Hay, that the insatiable monster death crams his maw with!

_Basta!_ There is no waking the dead! She was a wonder of the world while she lived, she was wondrous still when her fair silent form was no longer warmed by a drop of life-blood, and her soul no more susceptible of joy or of sorrow. There she lay in the room yonder, and until she was buried I never left her night or day. When sleep overcame me, I still held a corner of her dress in my hand, and thought myself highly favoured in that at least in death I was nearer to her than any other. But by the second night another came. The door opened, and the captain stole in on tip-toe, as though he might still run a risk of disturbing her sleep. We did not exchange a word, only I began to weep like a child when he so mutely, and with such a look of despair in his eyes, approached the bier. Then he sat down beside her and gazed steadily upon her face. I went out, I could not endure his presence any more than if I myself had been her murderer.

"The next day when the funeral took place and the whole village was gathered in the church-yard, even before the priest had blessed the coffin, there rose a murmur and a stir among the dense crowd. And the captain, whom no one knew to be in the place, was seen striding through the people with a look on his face that terrified them all. He took his station close beside the grave, and threw two handsfull of earth on the coffin. Then he knelt down, and every one else was on his homeward way while he remained prostrate on the newly-made grave, as though he would force himself through the earth, and make his bed there. I was obliged to drag him away into my house, where for some days he remained as though in a trance, and I could hardly get him to take a spoonful of soup or a drop of wine. Four days pa.s.sed before he seemed to come to himself at all, but even then he continued silent, and it was only in bidding me farewell, before he went off again in my little conveyance, that he begged me to oblige him by buying for him the house with the vineyard that he had once before looked at. In eight days he said he should return, and then make his home with us for life.

"I did not dare to remonstrate, although I could not approve the plan--partly because, of Domenico, of whom it was known that he had fled to the mountains, and joined a party of banditti, and partly because I had always been fond of the Swede; and could have wished that he should not by living near this grave keep the wound in his heart for ever bleeding. But, however, I knew well that he must have his own way, let Heaven or h.e.l.l oppose him, and so I laid myself out to render him any service that I could, for her sake who had been dear to me too, and to whom even beyond the grave I could still prove my good-will by befriending her beloved.

"And in a week's time he actually came and took possession of the house which stood about a mile from the village in a tolerably large vineyard, not far from the ravine where the chestnuts are; a lovely, solitary spot for a man at least who had no fear, good weapons at hand, and a faithful dog for companion. But the latter was not the only living creature that joined him. Erminia's sister Maddalena insisted on doing so, that she might wash and cook for him, and keep his house while he was on his rambles. Nothing could have suited him better, though people in general shunned her. But he knew that her dead sister had bequeathed her own love and fidelity towards him to this poor creature. And so the singular pair lived on in their solitude, and never seemed to concern themselves about the rest of the world.

"I went to see him a few days after his arrival. The house had once belonged to a Roman n.o.ble, and was still in tolerable condition, though the old furniture was covered with dust and cobwebs which Maddalena never disturbed. She had been used to worse in her mother's ruinous hovel under the roof of the fig-tree. But in the neglected garden she had somewhat bestirred herself, and planted a few beds with vegetables, and the locks of all the doors had been repaired and new bolts added.

'She insisted upon it,' said the captain; 'she is continually dreaming of an attack upon us.' 'Dreams are not always mere moonshine,' returned I, but he paid no attention. He went before me up the stone steps, and opened the door of the familiar salon, the balcony of which looked on the garden. This was the only room that he inhabited; he had made a bed out of an old divan, and cleaned the rubbish out of the corners singlehanded, but he could not stop up the countless holes in the walls through which bats and squirrels went in and out. My first glance fell on a stand against the wall, from which his beautiful fire-arms shone out, and as I was always fond of them I fell to examining these master-pieces one by one. 'Just turn round Angelo,' he said; 'there is something in the room that will interest you more.' It was a life-size picture of Erminia, and so strikingly like, that it gave me, as it were, a blow on the heart. During their early days in Rome, a first-rate painter and friend of his had begun this wondrous picture, and finished it with the exception of one hand and part of the dress.

The head, which looked over the shoulder with an indescribable expression of proud bliss--actually beaming with love and beauty--was highly finished, and as I said, one fancied one saw the exquisite creature breathe. I could not speak a word, but I stood a full half-hour motionless before it, from time to time wiping away the tears which obscured the picture. It was then he told me for the first time, that on the very day when she left him he had received a letter from an old uncle, his only remaining relative, on whose consent to his marriage he had laid great stress. Then he tried to tell me something about those happy weeks in Rome, but his voice suddenly gave way, and he went into the next room. I could not venture to follow him, and as he did not return I concluded I was not wished for any longer, and quietly crept down the steps accompanied only by the great dog, who looked into my face as much as to say that he knew all about his master's grief.

"I now resolved to wait until he should seek me out, but I might have waited long! However, I sometimes saw Maddalena in the market or one of the shops, and twice I spoke to her, asked for Signor Gustavo, and heard that he was well, and if not out shooting was always reading books, and allowed no one to enter, not even the priest, who had felt it his duty to enquire for the mourner. In our village, where everyone had been so enraged against him, the tide turned gradually in his favour. People remembered the merry evenings over the wine-barrel, and his courteous and sociable ways, and in time the women who had been the most violent were quite conquered by his solitary sorrow. Many a one, I suspect, would not have required much pressing to lend him her company in that lonely villa, if he had only held up a finger. But month after month pa.s.sed by, and all went on in the old way.

"One night towards the end of August I had a headache, having drunk more wine than usual, and the mosquitoes were more unconscionable than ever: so that I sat up in bed, and began to think whether I had not better strike a light and write some verses. All of a sudden through the stillness of night I heard two shots, then again others, and from the direction in which they came I judged that they must be somewhere near the captain's villa. '_Corpo della Madonna!_' thought I, 'what can he be about! Is he shooting bats or owls?' But they did not sound like the English rifle of Signor Gustavo, and they succeeded each other too rapidly and irregularly to be fired by any one man, and all at once I jumped horrified out of bed, for I no longer had any doubt about it,--what I had long silently feared had happened: Il Rosso and his banditti had fallen upon the lonely man, and they were fighting there in the vineyard for life and death. I got on my clothes, s.n.a.t.c.hed a pair of old pistols from the wall, wakened up my apprentice, and told him to run through the streets, and call out 'help! murder!' as loud as ever he could. I myself knocked up a couple of neighbours, and encouraged all who were already roused to follow me. When we came down from the village we were a party of ten or twelve, each armed with rifle or pistol. And to be sure the firing did come from the vineyard, and we to whom the moon fortunately served instead of lanterns, scrambled over hedge and ditch towards the house, where we saw firing going on from the windows. That comforted me somewhat. He had withdrawn then into his fortress, and those rascals had to content themselves with firing into the room at him at random. I was just about to explain my plan of operations to our party,--how we were to form four divisions, surround the enemy, and attack him in the rear; but some out-post must have observed us, for there was a shrill whistle, and at the same moment the attack came to an end, and here and there where the moon shone on the open s.p.a.ce between the rocks and the wood, we saw the band scatter, some of them so lame that we might have captured them if that had been our aim--over and above defending the captain--to take Il Rosso, our own fellow-citizen, prisoner. But we wished to spare his father the pain of that, and thanked G.o.d that we had come just in time, for at our loud call we saw Signor Gustavo step out on the balcony into the bright moonlight, and wave a white handkerchief to us. But when we saw the handkerchief nearer, it proved by no means pure white, but had large spots of blood, from a bullet having grazed his temple. It was nothing of any consequence, and did not prevent the captain sitting out of doors with me the next morning when all the rest had gone to their homes. Only Maddalena in her pa.s.sionate way, besotted with the man in spite of her sister's story, could not be tranquillised, and went on searching for one healing herb after the other, and he had to apply them all to prevent her becoming quite frantic. The good creature, whose sleep was like a cat's, was aware of footsteps creeping about the house even before the dog heard them; and she ran up to wake her master. On the first bandit who placed a ladder against the balcony, she bestowed such a blow on the head with the barrel of a gun, that he fell backwards, and the ladder with him. And so there she was at hand to load one rifle after the other, and indeed every now and then she herself took a shot through the window, and swore with might and main that she had sent a ball through the coat of the murderous villain Il Rosso himself, and that he gave a great start but went on firing. As for the room, it had a ruinous aspect, not a pane was whole, the plaster had fallen in great sheets from the ceiling, and Erminia's picture had been struck in two places, but fortunately only the dress and the frame were injured. When the day began to break, the Captain and the dog too did get a few hours sleep, but Maddalena would not hear of it, although for the present the cut-throats had been scared away.

"I spent the next day at the villa, and kept imploring my friend to leave the district. Indeed all the reasonable people from the village who came to see the battle-field gave the same advice. He most obstinately refused to do so. It was only on the following day when the Roman Prefect of Police came over to keep up appearances, and draw up a protocol, by way of doing something, that he let himself be turned from his foolhardy resolve. 'I most earnestly advise you,' said the official, a monsignore N----, 'as soon as possible to leave the mountains, and indeed the country itself. A youth who witnessed the attack of the bandits--if indeed he were not one of them--has told me that more than one bullet has been cast for you; that Il Rosso has sworn upon the host that he will pay you off. Were I to remain here I could only protect you so long as you kept by my side. But if you took again to your lonely wanderings through the ravines you might expect out of every bush a shot that would consign you to another world.'

"And so at last he made up his mind to leave, and that at once, in the carriage of the Prefect of Police. When I pressed his hand at parting, 'Now then, Signor Gustavo,' said I, 'this will certainly be the last time we two ever meet on earth.' 'Who knows?' he replied. 'After all I am half a countryman of yours, and have no other home.' Then he gave me some directions with regard to Maddalena. She was not to leave the villa, nor did the captain think of selling it. If he failed to return within a certain number of years, she was to consider the house and garden her own property, and meanwhile to appropriate their profits. To the priest he gave in token of grat.i.tude for the a.s.sistance rendered him by the villagers, a considerable sum for the poor. On me he bestowed a small picture of Lord Byron, which he had always carried about with him. The portrait of Erminia he had rolled up in a tin cylinder, and that and his fire-arms were all that he took away with him. So we parted, and as I believed, never to meet again, and Maddalena, who insisted upon going with him, and clung like a wild cat to the carriage, had to be forcibly dragged off and locked into the house till it had rolled far away.

"However that very night, so soon as they left off watching her, she vanished, and for days ran up and down the streets of Rome like a maniac, looking in vain for her master. At last she returned, and hobbled about the villa alone, but she let everything go to waste; the grapes might rot on the vines, and the fruit on the trees, rather than she take the trouble of gathering them and carrying them to market. She had always been idle, indeed, as a toad--a creature she resembled in appearance too--and it was only when it concerned the captain that she could work and bestir herself like three people in one.

"Of him, however, we heard nothing more; of his mortal foe Barbarossa we heard far too much. Since that night he and his band had lingered about our neighbourhood, and he seemed to have conceived a hatred against his countrymen, because they had gathered to the a.s.sistance of the foreigner. But for the company of papal gendarmes who were sent us as a permanent support from Rome, I do believe he would have fallen upon his own native village and taken a b.l.o.o.d.y revenge.

"Accordingly no one who had been present on the occasion, ever ventured himself a rifle-shot from the last houses without taking his fire-arms with him, and such as had to go into the mountains always begged for two gendarmes as escort. Those were sad times, _amico mio_, and I even lost my pleasure in rhyming, for I knew that he had a special spite against me. Twice there were great expeditions undertaken against the bandits, but not much came of them, for they had their scouts posted everywhere; they knew every crag and cranny of the mountains as intimately as the devil does his own den, and they were merely driven for awhile a little further back into the Sabina.

"However when in the winter old Serone, Domenico's father, died from grief on his son's account, we had an interval of peace. Il Rosso, whom of course the fact reached, may perhaps have felt some remorse, for by nature, as I have said, he was not bad-hearted, only his unfortunate love had hardened and frenzied him. It really seemed as though he meant to keep quiet during his year of mourning, and until midsummer we heard no more of banditti. Whether they were at work further south, or how they kept themselves alive during this holiday, G.o.d knows. But when we took it for granted that our deliverance from them was final we reckoned without our host. Our neighbourhood began all of a sudden to be haunted again. My neighbour, Pizzicarlo, who had been one of us that night at the villa, was captured by these villains while riding his donkey to Nerni, dragged off into their haunts, and only released on payment of a considerable ransom. And so with others, whom they sadly maltreated. This could not go on. The gendarmes obtained reinforcements, the razzia into the mountains began anew, but not with much better success. At that time Barbarossa seemed to be everywhere and nowhere, terrible as a basilisk, and slippery as an eel, and far and wide mothers quieted their screaming children by saying: _Zitto_, Barbarossa is coming! But other stories were told too, more to his credit; how he behaved to the poor and defenceless like a knight in a legend, intent mainly on righting the defective justice of the world, though every now and then robbing the egregiously wealthy just to supply his own needs. As I have before said, he was to be pitied, and if he had not run up so heavy a score that the law could not possibly wink at it, perhaps an amnesty would yet have changed him back into a peaceable honest citizen.

"Under these circ.u.mstances we lived wretchedly enough, much like shipwrecked sailors on a plank, with a shoal of sharks around. Thirteen months had now pa.s.sed since the captain's departure, and no one spoke of him, at least no one said any good of him, fearing to be overheard by somebody who might repeat it to Barbarossa. Imagine, therefore, my horror one afternoon. I had just opened a bottle of castor oil, and was thinking of nothing worse, when Signor Gustavo his own very self entered my room as though nothing had happened. '_Corpo della Madonna!_' I cried, 'What wind has blown you here? Are you so weary of life that you determine to make your villa your mausoleum?' Then he told me that he had not been able to endure either the East or West.

Nowhere had he found any flavour in the wine, everywhere the women were tedious, and since he had fired at men, the chase of lions and hyenas had become insipid. And always too he had been pursued by the feeling that he had, like a contemptible coward, left the field to his foe, instead of waiting to measure his strength against him. And a short time back, when staying at some German Spa, he read a newspaper account of the Sabine mountains being again ravaged by banditti, and of Papal carabinieri having for months pursued the vagabonds, who seemed as inexterminable as toadstools after rain: why then he had found the monotonous elegant world in which he was living, simply intolerable, and taking an extra post, he had travelled day and night without halting, crossed the Alps, and got here. And now here he was again settled in the vineyard. Maddalena had been actually wild with joy, and he himself felt more at home than he had done for a year and a day.

'And what then was he going to do here?' asked I in horror and amazement. 'Oh!' said he, 'I shall have no lack of occupation; I shall join the patrol of gendarmes that are constantly on the mountains, and so as a volunteer and dilettante face my man. When I come to consider it, it was I who hung this mill-stone about your necks, and so it is only fair that I should try to help you off with it. Good-day, Angelo, pay me a visit in my mausoleum.'

"And away he went: he had grown so strangely restless--quite unlike his former self--that he could not stay long in any one place. What I felt about the whole affair, I leave you to imagine. Meanwhile it had never been my wont to play the coward, and indeed here it behoved me to take the initiative, on account of my old acquaintance with Signor Gustavo.

So I boldly visited him in the villa, and found everything just as though he had never left it. Maddalena hobbling about as before, and busy enough now, gathering the grapes with her long arms; the dog, who had grown old and blind of one eye; and in the salon the marks of the bullets still visible, but the holes in Erminia's portrait had been carefully repaired. When I went in, the captain was walking up and down, smoking and reading, but on seeing me he laid aside his book--as usual verses by his English poet--and heartily shook my hand. He had spent the whole night between the rocks and woods, lying out to stalk his game, and only slept a little in the morning. At midnight he was going out again with three stout fellows who did honour to the Pope's uniform. If I liked I might go with him.

"I declined with thanks on this occasion, and did not remain long, for his manner, half fierce and half reckless--as though he were playing a game of chance--gave me an uncomfortable feeling. On my way home, I laid a kind of wager as it were with myself--that if seven days pa.s.sed without his coming to a bad end, I would print my sonnets to Erminia at my own expense; if otherwise I would leave them in ma.n.u.script. And an end did indeed come, but whether it could be called good or bad, G.o.d knows, and so to the present day I am in doubt whether I won the wager or not.

"It was he himself who circ.u.mstantially related to me the way things fell out, so that you can receive my narrative as though you had it from his own lips. He began to wonder much, he said, that Barbarossa did not confront him, for his return was nothing else than a direct and open challenge. Twice when on his rounds with the gendarmes, he had stumbled upon suspicious-looking characters, but they had not held their ground--dived out of sight like frogs when the stork appears. He fancied they did this with the intention of drawing him on further into the mountains in order to attack him with less risk. So he was glad when an expedition on a large scale into the Sabina was planned, although not for the next night, but the next but one, for the soldiers were determined to get their fill of sleep first, so as to be all the fresher.