The Fortunes Of Glencore Part 30

"Yes, you are right; he has fallen in love,--so desperately in love that he is incessant in his appeals to the d.u.c.h.ess to intercede with his family and grant him leave to marry."

"To marry whom?" asked Sir Horace.

"That's the very question which he cannot answer himself; and when pressed for information, can only reply that 'she is an angel.' Now, angels are not always of good family; they have sometimes very humble parents, and very small fortunes."

"_Helas!_" sighed the diplomatist, pitifully.

"This angel, it would seem, is untraceable. She arrived with her mother, or what is supposed to be her mother, from Corsica; they landed at Spezzia, with an English pa.s.sport, calling them Madame and Mademoiselle Harley. On arriving at Ma.s.sa they took a villa close to the town, and established themselves with all the circ.u.mstance of people well-off as to means. They, however, neither received visits nor made acquaintance with any one. They even so far withdrew themselves from public view that they rarely left their own grounds, and usually took their carriage-airing at night. You are not attending, I see."

"On the contrary, I am an eager listener; only, it is a story one has heard so often. I never heard of any one preserving the incognito except where disclosure would have revealed a shame."

"Your Excellency mistakes," replied she; "the incognito is sometimes, like a feigned despatch in diplomacy, a means of awakening curiosity."

"_Ces ruses ne se font plus_, Princess,--they were the fashion in Talleyrand's time; now we are satisfied to mystify by no meaning."

"If the weapons of the old school are not employed, there is another reason, perhaps," said she, with a dubious smile.

"That modern arms are too feeble to wield them, you mean," said he, bowing courteously. "Ah! it is but too true, Princess;" and he sighed what might mean regret over the fact, or devotion to herself,--perhaps both. At all events, his submission served as a treaty of peace, and she resumed.

"And now, _revenons a nos moutons_," said she, "or at least to our lambs. This Wahnsdorf is quite capable of contracting a marriage without any permission, if they appear inclined to thwart him; and the question is, What can be done? The Duke would send these people away out of his territory, only that, if they be English, as their pa.s.sports imply, he knows that there will be no end of trouble with your amiable Government, which is never paternal till some one corrects one of her children.

If Wahnsdorf be sent away, where are they to send him? Besides, in all these cases the creature carries his malady with him, and is sure to marry the first who sympathizes with him. In a word, there were difficulties on all sides, and the d.u.c.h.ess sent me over, in observation, as they say, rather than with any direct plan of extrication."

"And you went?"

"Yes; I pa.s.sed twenty-four hours. I couldn't stay longer, for I promised the Cardinal Caraffa to be in Rome on the 18th, about those Polish nunneries. As to Ma.s.sa, I gathered little more than I had heard beforehand. I saw their villa; I even penetrated as far as the orangery in my capacity of traveller,--the whole a perfect Paradise. I 'm not sure I did not get a peep at Eve herself,--at a distance, however. I made great efforts to obtain an interview, but all unsuccessfully. The police authorities managed to summon two of the servants to the Podesta, on pretence of some irregularity in their papers, but we obtained nothing out of them; and, what is more, I saw clearly that nothing could be effected by a _coup de main_. The place requires a long siege, and I had not time for that."

"Did you see Wahnsdorf?"

"Yes; I had him to dinner with me alone at the hotel, for, to avoid all observation, I only went to the Palace after nightfall. He confessed all his sins to me, and, like every other scapegrace, thought marriage was a grand absolution for past wickedness. He told me, too, how he made the acquaintance of these strangers. They were crossing the Magra with their carriage on a raft, when the cable snapped, and they were all carried down the torrent. He happened to be a pa.s.senger at the time, and did something very heroic, I 've no doubt, but I cannot exactly remember what; but it amounted to either being, or being supposed to be, their deliverer. He thus obtained leave to pay his respects at the villa. But even this grat.i.tude was very measured; they only admitted him at rare intervals, and for a very brief visit. In fact, it was plain he had to deal with consummate tacticians, who turned the mystery of their seclusion and the honor vouchsafed him to an ample profit."

"He told them his name and his rank?"

"Yes; and he owned that they did not seem at all impressed by the revelation. He describes them as very naughty, very condescending in manner, _tres grandes dames_, in fact, but unquestionably born to the cla.s.s they represent. They never dropped a hint of whence they had come, or any circ.u.mstance of their past lives, but seemed entirely engrossed by the present, which they spent princ.i.p.ally in cultivating the arts; they both drew admirably, and the young lady had become a most skilful modellist in clay, her whole day being pa.s.sed in a studio which they had just built. I urged him strongly to try and obtain permission for me to see it, but he a.s.sured me it was hopeless,--the request might even endanger his own position with them.

"I could perceive that, though very much in love, Wahns-dorf was equally taken with the romance of this adventure. He had never been a hero to himself before, and he was perfectly enchanted by the novelty of the sensation. He never affected to say that he had made the least impression on the young lady's heart; but he gave me to understand that the nephew of an Emperor need not trouble his head much on that score.

He is a very good-looking, well-mannered, weak boy, who, if he only reach the age of thirty without some great blunder, will pa.s.s for a very dignified Prince for the rest of his life."

"Did you give him any hopes?"

"Of course, if he only promised to follow my counsels; and as these same counsels are yet in the oven, he must needs wait for them. In a word, he is to write to me everything, and I to him; and so we parted."

"I should like to see these people," said Upton, languidly.

"I'm sure of it," rejoined she; "but it is perhaps unnecessary;" and there was that in the tone which made the words very significant.

"Chelmsford--he 's now Secretary at Turin--might perhaps trace them,"

said he; "he always knows everything of those people who are secrets to the rest of the world."

"For the present, I am disposed to think it were better not to direct attention towards them," replied she. "What we do here must be done adroitly, and in such a way as that it can be disavowed if necessary, or abandoned if unsuccessful."

"Said with all your own tact, Princess," said Sir Horace, smiling. "I can perceive, however, that you have a plan in your head already. Is it not so?"

"No," said she, with a faint sigh; "I took wonderfully little interest in the affair. It was one of those games where the combinations are so few you don't condescend to learn it. Are you aware of the hour?"

"Actually three o'clock," said he, standing up. "Really, Princess, I am quite shocked."

"And so am I," said she, smiling; "_on se compromet si facilement dans ce bas monde_. Good night." And she courtesied and withdrew before he had time to take his hat and retire.

CHAPTER XXV. A DUKE AND HIS MINISTER

In this age of the world, when everybody has been everywhere, seen everything, and talked with everybody, it may savor of an impertinence if we ask of our reader if he has ever been at Ma.s.sa. It may so chance that he has not, and, if so, as a.s.suredly has he yet an untasted pleasure before him.

Now, to be sure, Ma.s.sa is not as it once was. The little Duchy, whose capital it formed, has been united to a larger state. The distinctive features of a metropolis, and the residence of a sovereign prince, are gone. The life and stir and animation which surround a court have subsided; gra.s.s-grown streets and deserted squares replace the busy movement of former days; a dreamy weariness seems to have fallen over every one, as though life offered no more prizes for exertion, and that the day of ambition was set forever. Yet are there features about the spot which all the chances and changes of political fortune cannot touch. Dynasties may fall, and thrones crumble, but the eternal Apennines will still rear their snow-clad summits towards the sky. Along the vast plain of ancient olives the perfumed wind will still steal at evening, and the blue waters of the Mediterranean plash lazily among the rocks, over which the myrtle and the arbutus are hanging. There, amidst them all, half hid in cl.u.s.tering vines, bathed in soft odors from orange-groves, with plashing fountains glittering in the sun, and foaming streams gushing from the sides of marble mountains,--there stands Ma.s.sa, ruined, decayed, and deserted, but beautiful in all its desolation, and fairer to gaze on than many a scene where the tide of human fortune is at the flood.

As you wander there now, pa.s.sing the deep arch over which, hundreds of feet above you, the ancient fortress frowns, and enter the silent streets, you would find it somewhat difficult to believe how, a very few years back, this was the brilliant residence of a court,--the gay resort of strangers from every land of Europe,--that showy equipages traversed these weed-grown squares, and highborn dames swept proudly beneath these leafy alleys. Hard, indeed, to fancy the glittering throng of courtiers, the merry laughter of light-hearted beauty, beneath these trellised shades, where, moodily and slow, some solitary figure now steals along, "pondering sad thoughts over the bygone!"

But a few, a very few years ago, and Ma.s.sa was in the plenitude of its prosperity. The revenues of the state were large,--more than sufficient to have maintained all that such a city could require, and nearly enough to gratify every caprice of a prince whose costly tastes ranged over every theme, and found in each a pretext for reckless expenditure. He was one of those men whom Nature, having gifted largely, "takes out" the compensation by a disposition of instability and fickleness that renders every acquirement valueless. He could have been anything,--orator, poet, artist, soldier, statesman; and yet, in the very diversity of his abilities there was that want of fixity of purpose that left him ever short of success, till he himself, wearied by repeated failures, distrusted his own powers, and ceased to exert them.

Such a man, under the hard pressure of a necessity, might have done great things; as it was, born to a princely station, and with a vast fortune, he became a reckless spendthrift,--a dreamy visionary at one time, an enthusiastic dilettante at another. There was not a scheme of government he had not eagerly embraced and abandoned in turn. He had attracted to his little capital all that Europe could boast of artistic excellence, and as suddenly he had thrown himself into the most intolerant zeal of Papal persecution,--denouncing every species of pleasure, and ordaining a more than monastic self-denial and strictness.

There was only one mode of calculating what he might be, which was, by imagining the very opposite to what he then was. Extremes were his delight, and he undulated between Austrian tyranny and democratic licentiousness in politics, just as he vacillated between the darkest bigotry of his church and open infidelity.

At the time when we desire to present him to our readers (the exact year is not material), he was fast beginning to weary of an interregnum of asceticism and severity. He had closed theatres, and suppressed all public rejoicings; and for an entire winter he had sentenced his faithful subjects to the unbroken sway of the Priest and the Friar,--a species of rule which had banished all strangers from the Duchy, and threatened, by the injury to trade, the direst consequences to his capital. To have brought the question formally before him in all its details would have ensured the downfall of any minister rash enough for such daring. There was, indeed, but one man about the court who had courage for the enterprise; and to him we would devote a few lines as we pa.s.s. He was an Englishman, named Stubber. He had originally come out to Italy with horses for his Highness, and been induced, by good offers of employment, to remain. He was not exactly stable-groom, nor trainer, nor was he of the dignity of master of the stables; but he was something whose attributes included a little of all, and something more. One thing he a.s.suredly was,--a consummately clever fellow, who could apply all his native Yorkshire shrewdness to a new sphere, and make of his homespun faculties the keen intelligence by which he could guide himself in novel and difficult circ.u.mstances.

A certain freedom of speech, with a bold hardihood of character, based, it is true, upon a conscious sense of honor, had brought him more than once under the notice of the Prince. His Highness felt such pleasure in the outspoken frankness of the man that he frequently took opportunities of conversing with him, and even asking his advice. Never deterred by the subject, whatever it was, Stubber spoke out his mind; and by the very force of strong native sense, and an unswerving power of determination, soon impressed his master that his best counsels were to be had from the Yorkshire jockey, and not from the decorated and gilded throng who filled the antechambers.

To elevate the groom to the rank of personal attendant, to create him a Chevalier, and then a Count, were all easy steps to such a Prince.

At the time we speak of, Stubber was chief of the Cabinet,--the trusted adviser of his master in knottiest questions of foreign politics, the arbiter of the most difficult points with other states, the highest authority in home affairs, and the absolute ruler over the Duke's household and all who belonged to it. He was one of those men of action who speedily distinguish themselves wherever the game of life is being played. Smart to discern the character of those around him, prompt to avail himself of their knowledge, little hampered by the scruples which conventionalities impose on men bred in a higher station, he generally attained his object before others had arranged their plans to oppose him. To these qualities he added a rugged, unflinching honesty, and a loyal attachment to the person of his Prince. Strong in his own conscious rect.i.tude, and in the confiding regard of his sovereign, Stubber stood alone against all the wiles and machinations of his formidable rivals.

Were we giving a history of this curious court and its intrigues, we could relate some strange stories of the mechanism by which states are ruled. We have, however, no other business with the subject than as it enters into the domain of our own story, and to this we return.

It was a calm evening of the early autumn, as the Prince, accompanied by Stubber alone, and unattended by even a groom, rode along one of the alleys of the olive wood which skirts the sea-sh.o.r.e beneath Ma.s.sa.

His Highness was unusually moody and thoughtful, and as he sauntered carelessly along, seemed scarcely to notice the objects about him.

"What month are we in, Stubber?" asked he, at length.

"September, Altezza," was the short reply.

"_Per Bacco!_ so it is; and in this very month we were to have been in Bohemia with the Archduke Stephen,--the best shooting in all Europe, and the largest stock of pheasants in the whole world, perhaps; and I, that love field-sports as no man ever loved them! Eh, Stubber?" and he turned abruptly round to seek a confirmation of what he a.s.serted.

Either Stubber did not fully agree in the judgment, or did not deem it necessary to record his concurrence; but the Prince was obliged to reiterate his statement, adding, "I might say, indeed, it is the one solitary dissipation I have ever permitted myself."

Now, this was a stereotyped phrase of his Highness, and employed by him respecting music, literature, field-sports, picture-buying, equipage, play, and a number of other pursuits not quite so pardonable, in each of which, for the time, his zeal would seem to be exclusive.

A scarcely audible e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n--a something like a grunt--from Stubber, was the only a.s.sent to this proposition.

"And here I am," added the Prince, testily, "the only man of my rank in Europe, perhaps, without society, amus.e.m.e.nt, or pleasure, condemned to the wearisome details of a petty administration, and actually a slave,--yes, sir, I say, a slave--What the deuce is this? My horse is sinking above his pasterns. Where are we, Stubber?" and with a vigorous dash of the spurs he extricated himself from the deep ground.

"I often told your Highness that these lands were ruined for want of drainage. You may remark how poor the trees are along here; the fruit, too, is all deteriorated,--all for want of a little skill and industry.