Chapter XLV: Memories

Agatha was completely shattered by so much agitation and fatigue. Her health was delicate although her spirit was strong, and when Michel saw how pale she was, and that her voice had become almost inaudible, he was terrified. He began to be conscious of the loving and poignant anxiety born of a sentiment that was altogether new to him. He had hardly known the love that a child feels for its mother. Pier-Angelo's wife had been kind to him, to be sure, but he had lost her when he was very young, and she had left on his memory the impression of a robust and domineering virago, irreproachable in her conduct, but somewhat violent, and, although devoted to her little ones, inclined to talk loud and strike hard. What a contrast to that exquisite disposition, that soft beauty, that poetic creature who was called Agatha, and whom Michel could admire as the ideal of an artist while adoring her as a mother!

He begged her to lie down and to try to obtain an hour's rest.

"I will stay with you," he said; "I will sit by your pillow, I shall be perfectly happy, just looking at you, and you will find me here when you open your eyes."

"But this will be the third night that you will have passed almost without sleep," she said. "Ah! how it pains me on your account to think of the life we have been leading for several days past!"

"Do not worry about me, darling mother," replied the young man, covering her hands with kisses. "I have slept a good deal in the morning these three days; and now I am so happy, notwithstanding what we have just gone through, that it seems to me that I shall never sleep again. I tried to sleep in order to see you again in my dreams: now that the dream has become reality, I should be afraid of losing it if I slept. But you must rest, mother.--Ah! how sweet that name mother is!"

"I am no more inclined to sleep than you are," she said; "I would like not to leave you for an instant. And as the thought of the Piccinino still makes me tremble for your life, you shall remain with me until daylight, whatever the consequences. I will lie down on the bed, as you insist upon it; sit in this easy chair, with your hand in mine, and if I haven't the strength to talk to you, I can at all events listen to you; we have so many things to say to each other! I want to know about your life from the first day that you can remember down to this moment."

They passed in this way two hours, which seemed to them like two minutes; Michel told her the whole story of his life, and did not conceal even his recent emotions. The passionate attachment which he had felt for his mother before he knew her no longer raised in his mind any question too delicate to be translated by words befitting the sanctity of their new relations. The words he had used to himself had assumed a new meaning, and whatever impropriety there might have been in them had vanished like the incoherent words one utters in fever, which leave no trace when health and reason have returned.

Moreover, except for a few outbursts of vanity, Michel had had no thoughts for which he need blush now upon searching his conscience. He had believed that she loved him, and therein he was hardly in error! He had been assailed by an ardent passion, and he felt that he loved Agatha, now that she had become his mother, with no less warmth, gratitude, even jealousy, than an hour earlier. He could understand now why he had never seen her without feeling that his heart went out to her with irresistible force, without an all-powerful attraction, a secret thrill of pride which had its echo in himself. He remembered that, when he first saw her, it seemed to him that her face had always been familiar to him; and when he asked her to explain that miracle, she replied: "Look in the mirror, and you will see that my features placed your own image before you; this resemblance, which Pier-Angelo constantly observed with delight, and which filled my heart with pride, made me tremble for you. Luckily nobody has noticed it, unless possibly the cardinal, who ordered his bearers to stop so that he could look at you, on the day that you arrived in the neighborhood, and, as if guided by an invisible hand, paused at the gate of your ancestor's palace. My uncle was formerly the most suspicious and most keen-eyed of persecutors and despots. Certainly, if he had seen you before he was stricken with paralysis, he would have recognized you and have had you cast into prison, then exiled--perhaps assassinated!--without putting a single question to you. Enfeebled as he was ten days ago, he fastened upon you a glance which aroused the suspicions of Abbé Ninfo, and his memory revived so far as to lead him to inquire your age. Who knows what fatal light might have found its way into his brain, if Providence had not inspired you to answer that you were twenty-one years old instead of eighteen!"

"I am eighteen," said Michel, "and you, mother? You seem to me as young as I am."

"I am thirty-two," replied Agatha; "didn't you know?"

"No! if I had been told that you were my sister, I should have believed it when I saw you. Oh! what good fortune that you are still so young and so lovely! You will live as long as I do, won't you? I shall not have the misfortune to lose you! Lose you!--Ah! now that my life is bound to yours, the thought of death frightens me, I would like to die neither before nor after you. But is this the first time that we have ever been together? I am searching the vague memories of my infancy in the hope of finding some trace of you."

"My poor child," said the princess, "I never saw you before the day when, as I looked at you through a window of the gallery where you were sleeping, I could not restrain a cry of love and of agonizing joy, which woke you. Three months ago I did not even know of your existence. I believed that you died on the day you were born. Otherwise, do you suppose that I would not have come to Rome, in some disguise or other, to take you in my arms and rescue you from the dangers of a solitary life? On the day that Pier-Angelo told me that he had rescued you from the hands of a villainous midwife, who was about to put you in a hospital, by order of my parents, that he had fled with you to a foreign country, and had brought you up as his son, I insisted upon starting for Rome. I would have done it too, but for the prudence of Fra Angelo, who pointed out to me that your life would be in danger as long as the cardinal lived, and that it was better to await his death than to expose us all to suspicions and investigations. Ah! my son, how horribly I suffered while I lived alone with the ghastly memories of my youth! Branded from my girlhood, maltreated, secluded and persecuted by my family, because I would not disclose the name of the man whom I had consented to marry as soon as the first symptoms of pregnancy appeared; parted from my child, and cursed for the tears which his alleged death caused me to shed; threatened with the horror of seeing him killed before my eyes, when I yielded to the hope that they had deceived me--the best years of my life passed amid tears of despair and shudders of horror.

"I gave birth to you in this room, Michel on this very spot. It was then a sort of garret, long unused, which had been transformed into a prison, in order to conceal the shame of my condition. Nobody knew what had happened to me! I could hardly have described it, I had hardly understood it, I was so young and my imagination was so pure. I foresaw that the truth would bring fresh disasters upon the child I was carrying within me, and on his father. My governess had died on the day after our catastrophe, without saying a word, whether because she could not or did not choose to. No one could extort my secret from me, even during the pains of childbirth; and when my father and my uncle, standing by my bed, as pitiless as inquisitors, threatened me with death if I did not confess what they called my sin, I replied simply that I was innocent before God, and that it was for Him alone to punish or save the culprit. Whether or not they ever discovered that I was the wife of Castro-Reale, I could never find out; his name was never mentioned to me, I was never questioned concerning him. Nor do I know whether they procured his assassination, or whether Abbé Ninfo assisted them to surprise him; but unfortunately I do not think them incapable of it. I know only this, that at the time of his death, when I had barely recovered from my confinement, they tried to compel me to marry. Hitherto they had held up before me as an everlasting punishment, the impossibility of finding a husband. They took me from my prison, where I had been secluded so carefully that everyone supposed that I was in the convent at Palermo, and nothing had transpired out-of-doors. I was rich, fair, and of noble birth. Twenty suitors came forward. I repelled with horror the idea of deceiving an honest man, or of confessing my misfortune to a man who was mean-spirited enough to accept me because of my wealth. My resistance irritated my father to frenzy. He pretended to take me back to Palermo. But he brought me back to this room at night, and kept me imprisoned here for another whole year.

"It was a ghastly prison, as stifling as the leads of Venice; for the sun beat down upon a thin covering of metal, this part of the palace having never been finished and being roofed over temporarily. I endured thirst, mosquitoes, neglect, solitude, and lack of the fresh air and exercise which are so essential to the young. But I did not die, I contracted no disease, the vital principle was so strong within me. My father, unwilling to entrust the duty of guarding me to any other person, fearing that the compassion of his servants would lessen my sufferings, brought me my food himself; and when his political schemes kept him away from home for days at a time, I underwent the tortures of hunger. But I had acquired a stoical firmness of will, and I did not stoop to complain. I also acquired a certain amount of courage and of faith during that trial, and I do not rebuke God for having inflicted it on me. Consciousness of duty and regard for justice are great blessings for which one cannot pay too high a price!"

Agatha, as she spoke, was half reclining, and her voice, feeble at first, gradually became animated. She raised herself on her elbow, and, shaking her long black hair, and calling her son's attention with a gesture to the luxurious apartment in which they were, she continued:

"Michel, I pray that material enjoyments and the pride of birth and fortune may never dazzle you! I have paid dearly for those advantages; and, in the horrible solitude of this chamber, so bright and cheerful for us two to-day, I have passed many long sleepless hours, lying on a wretched pallet, consumed by fever, and asking God why He had not caused me to be born in a goatherd's cave or on a pirate's ship. I sighed for liberty, and the lowest of beggars seemed to me more blessed than I. If I had been poor and obscure, I should have received from my parents consolation and sympathy in my misfortune; whereas the illustrious Palmarosas heaped abuse upon their child and accused her of committing a crime because she would not be compelled to lie, and because she refused to bolster up the honor of her family by an imposture. I had no books in my prison; I had received only the most superficial education, and I utterly failed to understand the persecution of which I was the object. But, during that tedious and cruel inaction, I reflected, and I discovered for myself the emptiness of human pride. My moral being was transformed, so to speak, and everything that gratifies and enhances the vanity of men appeared to me, at my own expense, in its true light.

"But why should I say at my expense rather than to my advantage? What are two years of torture compared with the blessing of truth? When I returned to liberty and life, when I found that I readily recovered the vigor of youth, and that I had the necessary time and means to benefit by the ideas that had come to me, a great calmness overspread my heart, and I voluntarily adopted the habit, theretofore forced upon me, of self-denial and resolution.

"I renounced forever all idea of love and marriage. The thought of that bliss was marred and sullied in my imagination; and as for the cravings of the heart, there was no longer anything individual in mine. They had extended beyond the circle of selfish passions; I had conceived in my suffering one genuine passion, the object of which was not the enjoyment and triumph of one human being standing apart from the general misery by virtue of her own prosperity. That passion, which consumed me like a fever, and I may say with feverish intensity, was the longing to fight for the weak against their oppressors, and to be as lavish of benefactions and consolation as my family had been of persecution and dread. I had been brought up to respect and fear the court, to detest and distrust my unhappy countrymen. Had it not been for my own catastrophe I should probably have followed those precepts and examples of hideous cruelty. My heedless nature, wherein I resembled the women of my country, might never have conceived anything better than the principles of my family, which was not one of those that were subjected to persecution, and in which exile and suffering have inspired horror of the foreign yoke and love of country. My kinsmen, being ardently devoted to the ruling powers, had always been overwhelmed with favors, and the renewed prosperity which we shall soon owe to the cardinal's inheritance makes us a shameful exception among the many illustrious families whom I have seen ground into the dust by exorbitant taxes and by outlawry.

"I was no sooner mistress of my actions and my property than I devoted my life to the relief of the unfortunate. As a woman I was debarred from taking an interest in politics, the social sciences or philosophy. And indeed what man can possibly do it under the yoke that is crushing us? But what I could do was to assist the victims of tyranny, to whatever class they might belong. I soon found that their number was so great that my income would not suffice, even if I deprived myself of the necessaries of life. Thereupon my mind was soon made up. I had determined not to marry. I was ignorant of your existence, and I looked upon myself as alone in the world. I caused an exact statement of my fortune to be prepared--a precaution which the wealthy patricians of our province very rarely take; their indifference keeps them from visiting their estates when they are in the interior of the island, and many have never set foot upon them. I investigated my property and made myself familiar with it; first of all, I sold a part in small lots, intending to supply the poor people of these regions with a little land at a very low price, in a majority of cases for nothing. That was unsuccessful. A people that has fallen into the lowest stage of poverty and slavery cannot be saved with a stroke of the pen. I tried other methods which I will describe to you in detail at another time. They failed. Everything is bound to fail when the laws of a country have decreed its ruin. I had no sooner made a family happy, than the taxes, increasing with its prosperity, made a poverty-stricken family of it. How can order and stability be secured when the state seizes sixty per cent of the income of the humble workingman as well as of the idle rich man?

"Thus I learned, with profound sorrow, that in conquered and downtrodden countries there is no resource but almsgiving, and I devoted my life to that. It required much more activity and perseverance than gifts outright and sacrifices of capital. This life of small benefactions and constant sacrifices is a task without respite, without limits and without recompense; for almsgiving affords only a momentary remedy; it creates the necessity of being repeated and extended ad infinitum, and one never sees the result of the toil one imposes upon oneself. Oh! how cruel it is to live and love when one dresses every hour a wound that cannot be healed, when one unceasingly casts one's heart and strength into a pit which can no more be filled than the crater of Ætna!

"I accepted this task, and I devote all my time to it; I realize its inefficiency, and I am not discouraged. I no longer cry out against sloth, debauchery and all the vices that poverty engenders; or, if I do, my anger is no longer against those who acquire these vices but against those who impose them and perpetuate them. I do not quite understand what is meant by discernment in almsgiving. That is all very well for free countries, where a reprimand may serve some purpose, and where the precepts of practical morality are for the use of all men. Among us, alas! misery is so widespread that good and evil are to many persons of mature years words devoid of sense; and to preach orderliness, honesty and prudence, amid suffering and hunger, is almost ferocious pedantry.

"My income has not always been sufficient to meet so many calls, Michel, and you will find your mother's fortune secretly undermined by excavations of such depth that it may perhaps crumble on my grave. Were it not for the cardinal's inheritance, I should regret to-day that I had not saved for you sufficient means to serve your country as you will; but to-morrow you will be richer than I have ever been, and you will administer your fortune according to your principles and the dictates of your heart. I shall impose no task upon you. To-morrow you will enter into possession of this great power, and I shall not be at all disturbed as to the use you may make of it. I am sure of you. You have been brought up in a good school, my son--the school of poverty and toil! I know how you repair trivial faults; I know of what sacrifices your heart is capable when it is at odds with a consciousness of duty. Prepare, therefore, to bear the burden of your misfortune--to be a prince in fact as well as in name. Within three days you have embarked upon what seem to be strange adventures; you have received more than one valuable lesson. Fra Angelo, the Marquis della Serra, Magnani--even Mila, the sweet child--have spoken to you in a language which has made a profound impression on you, I know. I saw it in your conduct, in your determination to remain an artisan; and from that moment I promised myself that I would disclose to you the secret of your destiny, even though the cardinal should live on and compel us to take extraordinary precautions."

"O mother, how noble you are! and how little people know you when they think that you are a mere devotee, apathetic or eccentric? Your life is the life of a saint or martyr: nothing for yourself, everything for others!"

"Do not give me so much credit, my child," replied Agatha. "Innocent as I was, I had no claim to share in the general happiness. I was borne down by a fatality which all my efforts had succeeded only in making more burdensome. By denying myself love, I was simply fulfilling the plainest duty that honor imposes upon a woman. So, too, in becoming a sister of charity I obeyed the imperative outcry of my conscience. I had been unfortunate; I knew unhappiness by personal experience; I was no longer one of those who can refuse to credit the sufferings of others because they have never suffered themselves. I may, perhaps, have done good without judgment; at all events, I have done it without remission and with the utmost zeal. But, in my eyes, to do good does not amount to so much as is generally supposed. To do good in this way is simply not to do evil; not to be selfish means simply that one is not blind nor detestable. I have such unbounded pity for those who are vain of their good works, that I have hidden mine almost as sedulously as I kept the secret of my marriage and your birth. My character has never been understood. I did not wish that it should be. So that I have no right to complain of having been misjudged."

"Ah! but I know you," said Michel, "and my heart will repay you a hundredfold for all the happiness of which you have been deprived."

"I know it," she replied. "Your tears prove it, and I feel it; for, since you have been with me, I should have forgotten that I had ever been unhappy, if I had not had my story to tell you."

"Thank you, mother, but do not say that you leave me at liberty to do as I please. I am only a child, and I feel so insignificant beside you that I never desire to see anything except through your eyes, or to act except by your orders. I will help you to carry the burden of wealth and of almsgiving, but I will be your man of business--nothing more. I, a rich man and a prince! I, endowed with any sort of authority when you are here! when I am your son!"

"My child, you must be a man. I have not had the happiness of bringing you up; I could have done it no better than worthy Pier-Angelo. It is my business now to love you--nothing more--and that is enough. To justify my love, you will not need to have your ancestors' portraits say to you: '_I am not pleased with you_.'--You will so conduct yourself that your mother will always say to you: '_I am pleased with you_.' But listen, Michel! the bells are tolling; all the bells in the city are tolling the knell of a dying man, and it must be some great personage. It is your kinsman--your enemy--Cardinal Palmarosa, who is about to be called to account by God for his crimes. It is daylight, and we must part. Go and pray to God to be merciful to him. I go to receive his last breath!"