The Italians Part 13

Trenta gave a conscious smile, and nodded. This was done with a certain reserve, but still graciously. "To be sure; it was easy to see how much he admired her, but I did not know that the lady--"

"Oh, yes, the lady is all right--she will agree," rejoined Trenta.

"She knows no one else; she will obey her aunt's commands and my wishes."

"I am delighted!" cried Balda.s.sare. "Why, there will be a ball at Palazzo Guinigi--a ball, after all!"

"But the marchesa must never hear this scandal about n.o.bili," added Trenta, suddenly relapsing into gravity. "She hates him so much, it might give her a fit. Have a care, Balda.s.sare--have a care, or you may yet incur my severest displeasure."

"I am sure I don't want the marchesa or any one else to know it,"

replied Balda.s.sare, greatly rea.s.sured as to the manner in which he would pa.s.s his day by the change in Trenta's manner. "I would not annoy her or injure the signorina for all the world. I am sure you know that, cavaliere. No word shall pa.s.s my lips, I promise you."

"Good! good!" responded Trenta, now quite pacified (it was not in Trenta's nature to be angry long). Now he moved forward, and as he did so he took Balda.s.sare's arm, in token of forgiveness. "No names must be mentioned," he continued, tripping along--"mind, no names; but I authorize you, on my authority, if you hear this abominable nonsense repeated--I authorize you to say that you have it from me--that Enrica Guinigi is to be married, _and not to n.o.bili_. He! he! That will surprise them--those chattering young blackguards at the club."

Thus, once more on the most amiable terms, the cavaliere and Balda.s.sare proceeded leisurely arm-in-arm toward the street of San Simone.

CHAPTER II.

CHURCH OF SAN FREDIANO.

Count Marescotti was walking rapidly up and down in the shade before the Guinigi Palace when the cavaliere and Balda.s.sare appeared. He was so absorbed in his own thoughts that he did not perceive them.

"I must speak to him as soon as possible about Enrica," was Trenta's thought on seeing him. "With this report going about, there is not an hour to lose."

"You have kept your appointment punctually, count," he said, laying his hand on Marescotti's shoulder.

"Punctual, my dear cavaliere? I never missed an appointment in my life when made with a lady. I was up long before daylight, looking over some books I have with me, in order to be able the better to describe any object of interest to the Signorina Enrica."

"An opportunity for you, my boy," said Trenta, nodding his head roguishly at Balda.s.sare. "You will have a lesson in Lucchese history.

Of course, you know nothing about it."

"Every man has his forte," observed the count, good-naturedly, seeing Balda.s.sare's embarra.s.sment at having his ignorance exposed. (The cavaliere never could leave poor Adonis alone.) "We all know your forte is the ballroom; there you beat us all."

"Taught by me, taught by me," muttered the cavaliere; "he owes it all to me."

Leaving the count and Balda.s.sare standing together in the street, the cavaliere knocked at the door of the Guinigi Palace. When it was opened he entered the gloomy court. Within he found Enrica and Teresa awaiting his arrival.

At the sight of her whom he so much loved, and of whom he had just heard what he conceived to be such an atrocious calumny, the cavaliere was quite overcome. Tears gathered in his eyes; he could hardly reply to her when she addressed him.

"My Enrica," he said at last, taking her by the hand and imprinting a kiss upon her forehead, "you are a good child. Heaven bless you, and keep you always as you are!" A conscious blush overspread Enrica's face.

"If he knew all, would he say this?" she asked herself; and her pretty head with the soft curls dropped involuntarily.

Enrica was very simply attired, but the flowing lines of her graceful figure were not to be disguised by any mere accident of dress. A black veil, fastened upon her hair like a mantilla (a style much affected by the Lucca ladies), fell in thick folds upon her shoulders, and partially shaded her face.

Teresa stood by her young mistress, prepared to follow her. Trenta perceived this. He did not like Teresa. If she went with them, the whole conversation might be repeated in Casa Guinigi. This, with Count Marescotti in the company, would be--to say the least of it--inconvenient.

"You may retire," he said to Teresa. "I will take charge of the signorina."

"But--Signore Cavaliere"--and Teresa, feeling the affront, colored scarlet--"the marchesa's positive orders were, I was not to leave the signorina."

"Never mind," answered the cavaliere, authoritatively, "I will take that on myself. You can retire."

Teresa, swelling with anger, remained in the court. The cavaliere offered his arm to Enrica. She turned and addressed a few words to the exasperated Teresa; then, led by Trenta, she pa.s.sed into the street.

Upon the threshold, Count Marescotti met them.

"This is indeed an honor," he said, addressing Enrica--his face beamed, and he bowed to the ground. "I trembled lest the marchesa should have forbidden your coming."

"So did I," answered Enrica, frankly. "I am so glad. I fear that my aunt is not altogether pleased; but she has said nothing, and I came."

She spoke with such eagerness, she saw that the count was surprised.

This made her blush. At any other time such an expedition as that they were about to make would have been delightful to her for its own sake, Enrica was so shut up within the palace, except on the rare occasions when she accompanied Teresa to ma.s.s, or took a formal drive on the ramparts at sundown with her aunt. But now she was full of anxiety about n.o.bili. They had not met for a week--he had not written to her even. Should she see him in the street? Should she see him from the top of the tower? Perhaps he was at home at that very moment watching her. She gave a furtive glance upward at the stern old palace before her. The thick walls of sun-dried bricks looked cruel; the ma.s.sive Venetian cas.e.m.e.nts mocked her. The outer blinds shut out all hope.

Alas! there was not a c.h.i.n.k anywhere. Even the great doors were closed.

"Ah! if Teresa could have warned him that I was coming!"--and she gave a great sigh. "If he only knew that I was here, standing in the very street! Oh, for one glimpse of his dear, bright face!"

Again Enrica sighed, and again she gazed up wistfully at the closed facade.

Meanwhile the cavaliere and Balda.s.sare were engaged in a violent altercation. Balda.s.sare had proposed walking to the church of San Frediano, which, in consideration of the cavaliere's wishes, they were to visit first. "No one would think of driving such a short distance,"

he insisted. "The sun was not hot, and the streets were all in shade."

The cavaliere retorted that "it was too hot for any lady to walk,"

swung his stick menacingly in the air, called Balda.s.sare "an imbecile," and peremptorily ordered him to call a _fiacre_. Balda.s.sare turned scarlet in the face, and rudely refused to move.

"He was not a servant," he said. "He would do nothing unless treated like a gentleman."

This was spoken as he hurled what he intended to be a tremendous glance of indignation at the cavaliere. It produced no effect whatever. With an exasperating smile, the cavaliere again desired Balda.s.sare to do as he was bid, or else to go home. The count interposed, a _fiacre_ was called, in which they all seated themselves.

San Frediano, a basilica in the Lombard style, is the most ancient church in Lucca. The mid-day sun now flashed full upon the front, and lighted up the wondrous colors of a mosaic on a gold ground, over the entrance. At one corner of the building a marble campanile, formed by successive tiers of delicate arcades, springs upward into the azure sky. Flocks of gray pigeons circled about the upper gallery (where hang the bells), or rested, cooing softly in the warm air, upon the sculptured cornice bordering the white arches. It was a quiet scene of tranquil beauty, significant of repose in life and of peace in death--the church, with its wide portals, offering an everlasting home to all who sought shelter within its walls.

The cavaliere was so impatient to do the honors that he actually jumped unaided from the carriage.

"This, dear Enrica, is my parish church," he said, as he handed her out, pointing upward to the richly-tinted pile, which the suns of many centuries had dyed of a golden hue. "I know every stone in the building. From a child I have played in this piazza, under these venerable walls. My earliest prayers were said at the altar of the Sacrament within. Here I confessed my youthful sins. Here I received my first communion. Here I hope to lay my bones, when it shall please G.o.d to call me."

Trenta spoke with a tranquil smile. It was clear neither life nor death had any terrors for him. "The very pigeons know me," he added, placidly. He looked up to the campanile, gave a peculiar whistle, and, putting his hand into his pocket, threw down some grains of corn upon the pavement. The pigeons, whirling round in many circles (the sunlight flashing upon their burnished b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and upon the soft gray and purple feathers of their wings), gradually--in little groups of twos and threes--flew down, and finally settled themselves in a knot upon the pavement, to peck up the corn.

"Good, pious old man, how I honor you!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Count Marescotti, fervently, as he watched the timid gray-coated pigeons gathering round the cavaliere's feet, as he stood apart from the rest, serenely smiling as he fed them. "May thy placid spirit be unruffled in time and in eternity!"

The interior of the church, in the Longobardic style, is bare almost to plainness. On entering, the eye ranges through a long broad nave with rounded arches, the arches surmounted by narrow windows; these dividing arches, supported on single columns with monumental capitals, forming two dark and rather narrow aisles. The high altar is raised on three broad steps. Here burn a few lights, dimmed into solitary specks by the brightness of the sun. The walls on either side of the aisles are broken by various chapels. These lie in deep shadow. The roof, formed of open rafters, bearing marks of having once been elaborately gilded, is now but a ma.s.s of blackened timbers. The floor is of brick, save where oft-recurring sepulchral slabs are cut into the surface.

These slabs, of black-and-white marble, or of alabaster stained and worn from its native whiteness into a dingy brown, are almost obliterated by the many footsteps which have come and gone upon them for so many centuries. Not a single name remains to record whom they commemorate. Dimly seen under a covering of dirt and dust deposited by the living, lie the records of these unknown dead: here a black lion rampant on a white shield; there a coat-of-arms on an escutcheon, with the fragment of a princely coronet; beyond, a life-sized monk, his shadowy head resting on a cushion--a matron with her robes soberly gathered about her feet, her hands crossed on her bosom--a bishop, under a painted canopy, mitre on head and staff in hand--a warrior, grimly helmeted, carrying his drawn sword in his hand. Who are these?

Whence came they? None can tell.

Beside one of the most worn and defaced of these slabs the cavaliere stopped.

"On this stone," he said, his smiling countenance suddenly grown solemn--"on this very stone, where you see the remains of a mosaic"--and he pointed to some morsels of color still visible, crossing himself as he did so--"a notable miracle was performed.