The Italians Part 5

Trenta's benignant face had gradually a.s.sumed as severe an aspect as it was capable of bearing. He pointed to Enrica, of whom he had up to this time taken no notice beyond a friendly smile--the marchesa did not like Enrica to be noticed--now he pointed to her, and shook his head deprecatingly. Could he have read Enrica's thoughts, he need have feared no contamination to her from the marchesa; her thoughts were far away--she had not listened to a single word.

"Dio Santo!" he exclaimed at last, clasping his hands together and speaking low, so as not to be overheard by Enrica--"that I should live to hear a Guinigi talk so! Do you forget, marchesa, that it was under the banner of the blessed Holy Countenance (_Vulturum di Lucca_), miraculously cast on the sh.o.r.es of the Ligurian Sea, that your great ancestor Castruccio Castracani degli Antimelli overcame the Florentines at Alto Pa.s.so?"

"The banner didn't help him, nor St. Nicodemus either--I affirm that," answered she, angrily. Her temper was rising. "I will not be contradicted, cavaliere--don't attempt it. I never allow it. Even my husband never contradicted me--and he was a Guinigi. Is the city to go mad, eat, drink, and hang out old curtains because the priests bid them? Did _you_ see n.o.bili's house?" She asked this question so eagerly, she suddenly forgot her anger in the desire she felt to relate her injuries. "A Guinigi palace dressed out like a booth at a fair!--What a scandal! This comes of usury and banking. He will be a deputy soon. Will no one tell him he is a presumptuous young idiot?"

she cried, with a burst of sudden rage, remembering the crowds that filled the streets, and the admiration and display excited. Then, turning round and looking Trenta full in the face, she added spitefully, "You may worship painted dolls, and kiss black crucifixes, if you like: I would not give them house-room."

"Mercy!" cried poor Trenta, putting his hands to his ears. "For pity's sake--the palace _will_ fall about your ears! Remember your niece is present."

And again he pointed to Enrica, whose head was bent down over her work.

"Ha! ha!" was all the reply vouchsafed by the marchesa, followed by a scornful laugh. "I shall say what I please in my own house. Poor Cesarino! You are very ignorant. I pity you!"

But Trenta was not there--he had rushed down-stairs as quickly as his old legs and his stick would carry him, and was out of hearing. At the mention of n.o.bili's name Enrica looked stealthily from under her long eyelashes, and turned very white. The sharp eyes of her aunt might have detected it had she been less engrossed by her pa.s.sage of arms with the cavaliere.

"Ha! ha!" she repeated, grimly laughing to herself. "He is gone! Poor old soul! But I am going to have my rubber for all that.--Ring the bell, Enrica. He must come back. Trenta takes too much upon himself; he is always interfering."

As Enrica rose to obey her aunt, the sound of feet was heard in the anteroom. The marchesa made a sign to her to reseat herself, which she did in the same place as before, behind the thick cotton curtains of the Venetian cas.e.m.e.nt.

CHAPTER VII.

COUNT MARESCOTTI.

Count Marescotti, the Red count (the marchesa had said _sans-culotte_; Trenta had spoken of him as an atheist), was, unhappily, something of all this, but he was much more. He was a poet, an orator, and a patriot. Nature had gifted him with qualities for each vocation. He had a rich, melodious voice, with soft inflections; large dark eyes, that kindled with the impress of every emotion; finely-cut features, and a pale, bloodless face, that tells of a pa.s.sionate nature. His manners were gracious, and he had a commanding presence. He was born to be a leader among men. Not only did he converse with ease and readiness on every conceivable topic--not only did strophe after strophe of musical verse flow from his lips with the facility of an _improvisatore_, but he possessed the supreme art of moving the mult.i.tude by an eloquence born of his own impa.s.sioned soul. While that suave voice rung in men's ears, it was impossible not to be convinced by his arguments. As a patriot, he worshiped Italy. His fervid imagination reveled in her natural beauties--art, music, history, poetry. He worshiped Italy, and he devoted his whole life to what he conceived to be her good.

Marescotti was no atheist; he was a religious reformer, sincerely and profoundly pious, and conscientious to the point of honor. Indeed, his conscience was so sensitive, that he had been known to confess two and three times on the same day. The cavaliere called him an atheist because he was a believer in Savonarola, and because he positively refused to bind himself to any priestly dogma, or special form of worship whatever. But he had never renounced the creed of his ancestors. The precepts of Savonarola did, indeed, afford him infinite consolation; they were to him a _via media_ between Protestant lat.i.tude and dogmatic belief.

The republican simplicity, stern morals, and sweeping reforms both in Church and state preached by Savonarola (reforms, indeed, as radical as were consistent with Catholicism), were the objects of his special reverence. Savonarola had died at the stake for practising and for teaching them; Marescotti declared, with characteristic enthusiasm, that he was ready to do likewise. Wrong or right, he believed that, if Savonarola had lived in the nineteenth century, he would have acted as he himself had done. In the same manner, although an avowed republican, he was no _sans-culotte._ His strong sense of personal independence and of freedom, political and religious, caused him to revolt against what he conceived tyranny or coercion of any kind. Even const.i.tutional monarchy was not sufficiently free for him. A king and a court, the royal prerogative of ministers, patent places, pensions, favors, the unacknowledged influence of a reigning house--represented to his mind a modified system of tyranny--therefore of corruption.

Constant appeals to the sovereign people, a form of government where the few yielded to the many, and the rich divided their riches voluntarily with the poor--was in theory what he advocated.

Yet with these lofty views, these grand aspirations, with unbounded faith, and unbounded energy and generosity, Marescotti achieved nothing. He wanted the power of concentration, of bringing his energies to bear on any one particular object. His mind was like an old cabinet, crowded with artistic rubbish--gems and rarities, jewels of price and pearls of the purest water, hidden among faded flowers; old letters, locks of hair, daggers, tinsel reliquaries, crosses, and modern grimcracks--all that was incongruous, piled together pell-mell in hopeless confusion.

His countrymen, singularly timid and conventional, and always unwilling to admit new ideas upon any subject unless imperatively forced upon them, did not understand him. They did not appreciate either his originality or the real strength of his character. He differed from them and their mediaeval usages--therefore he must be wrong. He was called eccentric by his friends, a lunatic by his enemies. He was neither. But he lived much alone; he had dreamed rather than reflected, and he had planned instead of acting.

"Count Marescotti," said the marchesa, holding out her hand, "I salute you.--Balda.s.sare, you are welcome."

The intonation of her voice, the change in her manner, gave the exact degree of consideration proper to accord to the head of an ancient Roman family, and the dandy son of a Lucca chemist. And, lest it should be thought strange that the Marchesa Guinigi should admit Balda.s.sare at all to her presence, I must explain that Balda.s.sare was a _protege_, almost a double, of the cavaliere, who insisted upon taking him wherever he went. If you received the cavaliere, you must, perforce, receive Balda.s.sare also. No one could explain why this was so. They were continually quarreling, yet they were always together.

Their intimacy had been the subject of many jokes and some gossip; but the character of the cavaliere was immaculate, and Balda.s.sare's mother (now dead) had never lived at Lucca. Trenta, when spoken to on the subject of his partiality, said he was "educating him" to fill his place as master of the ceremonies in Lucchese society. Except when specially bullied by the cavaliere--who greatly enjoyed tormenting him in public--Balda.s.sare was inoffensive and useful.

Now he pressed forward to the front.

"Signora Marchesa," he said, eagerly, "allow me to make my excuses to you."

The marchesa turned a surprised and distant gaze upon him; but Balda.s.sare was not to be discouraged. He had that tough skin of true vulgarity which is impervious to any thing but downright hard blows.

"Allow me to make my excuses," he continued. "The cavaliere here has been scolding me all the way up-stairs for not bringing Count Marescotti sooner to you. I could not."

Marescotti bowed an acquiescence.

"While we were standing in the street, waiting to know if the n.o.ble lady received, an old beggar, known in Lucca as the Hermit of Pizzorna, come down from the mountains for the festival, pa.s.sed by."

"Yes, it was a providence," broke in the count--"a real hermit, not one of those fat friars, with shaven crowns, we have in Rome, but a genuine recluse, a man whose life is one long act of practical piety."

When Marescotti had entered, he seemed only the calm, high-bred gentleman; now, as he spoke, his eye sparkled, and his pale cheeks flushed.

"Yes, I addressed the hermit," he continued, and he raised his fine head and crossed his hands on his breast as if he were still before him. "I kissed his bare feet, road-stained with errands of charity.

'My father,' I said to him, 'bless me'--"

"Not only so," interrupted Balda.s.sare, "but, would you believe it, madame, the count cast himself down on the dusty street to receive his blessing!"

"And why not?" asked the count, looking at him severely. "It came to me like a voice from heaven. The hermit is a holy man. Would I were like him! I have heard of him for thirty years past. Winter after winter, among those savage mountains, in roaring winds, in sweeping storms, in frost and snow, and water-floods, he has a.s.sisted hundreds, who, but for him, must infallibly have perished. What courage! what devotion! It is a poem." Marescotti spoke hurriedly and in a low voice. "Yes, I craved his blessing. I kissed his hands, his feet.

I would have kissed the ground on which he stood." As he proceeded, Marescotti grew more and more abstracted. All that he described was pa.s.sing like a vision before him. "Those venerable hands--yes, I kissed them."

"How much money did you leave in them, count?" asked the marchesa, with a sneer.

"Great is the mercy of G.o.d!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the count, earnestly, not heeding her. "Sinner as I am, the touch of those hands--that blessing--purified me. I feel it."

"Incredible! Well," cried Balda.s.sare, "the price of that blessing will keep the good man in bread and meat for a year. Let the old beggar go to the devil, count, his own way. He must soon appear there, anyhow.

A good-for-nothing old cheat! His blessing, indeed! I can get you a dozen begging friars who will bless you all day for a few farthings."

The count's brow darkened.

"Balda.s.sare," said he, very gravely, "you are young, and, like your age, inconsiderate. I request that, in my presence, you speak with becoming respect of this holy man."

"Per Bacco!" exclaimed the cavaliere, advancing from where he had been standing behind the marchesa's chair, and patting Balda.s.sare patronizingly on the shoulder, "I never heard you talk so much before at one time, Balda.s.sare. Now, you had better have held your tongue, and listened to Count Marescotti. Leading the cotillon last night has turned your head. Take my advice, however--an old man's advice--stick to your dancing. You understand that. Every man has his _forte_--yours is the ballroom."

Balda.s.sare smiled complaisantly at this allusion to the swiftness of his heels.

"Out of the ballroom," continued Trenta, eying him with quiet scorn, "I advise caution--great caution. Out of the ballroom you are capable of any imbecility."

"Cavaliere!" cried Balda.s.sare, turning very red and looking at him reproachfully.

"You have deserved this reproof, young man," said the marchesa, harshly. "Learn your place in addressing the Count Marescotti."

That the son of a shopkeeper should presume to dispute in her presence with a Roman n.o.ble, was a thing so unsuitable that, even in her own house, she must put it down authoritatively. She had never liked Balda.s.sare--never wanted to receive him, now she resolved never to see him again; but, as she feared that Trenta would continue to bring him, under pretext of making up her whist-table, she did not say so.

The medical Adonis was forced to swallow his rage, but his cheeks tingled. He dared not quarrel either with the marchesa, Trenta, or the count, by whose joint support alone he could hope to plant himself firmly in the realms of Lucchese fashionable life--a life which he felt was his element. Utterly disconcerted, however, he turned down his eyes, and stared at his boots, which were highly glazed, then glanced up at his own face (as faultless and impa.s.sive as a Greek mask) in a mirror opposite, hastily arranged his hair, and finally collapsed into silence and a corner.

At this moment Count Marescotti became suddenly aware of Enrica's presence. She was, as I have said, sitting in the same place by the cas.e.m.e.nt, concealed by the curtain, her head bent down over her knitting. She had only looked up once when n.o.bili's name had been mentioned. No one had noticed her. It was not the usage of Casa Guinigi to notice Enrica. Enrica was not the marchesa's daughter; therefore, except in marriage, she was not ent.i.tled to enjoy the honors of the house. She was never permitted to take part in conversation.

Marescotti, who had not seen her since she was fourteen, now bounded across the room to where she sat, overshadowed by the curtain, bowed to her formally, then touched the tips of her fingers with his lips.

Enrica raised her eyes. And what eyes they were!--large, melancholy, brooding, of no certain color, changing as she spoke, as the summer sky changes the color of the sea. They were more gray than blue, yet they were blue, with long, dark eyelashes that swept upon her cheeks.

As she looked up and smiled, there was an expression of the most perfect innocence in her face. It was like a flower that opens its bosom frankly to the sun.

Marescotti's artistic nature was deeply stirred. He gazed at her in silence for some minutes; he was seeking in his own mind in what type of womanhood he should place her. Suddenly an idea struck him.--She was the living image of the young Madonna--the young Madonna before the visit of the archangel--pale, meditative, pathetic, but with no shadow of the future upon her face. Marescotti was so engrossed by this idea that he remained motionless before her. Each one present observed his emotion, the marchesa specially; she frowned her disapproval.