Chapter XLVII: The Vulture

Magnani knew all, for Agatha had at least suspected his passion, if she had not actually divined it; and she had told him the story of her life. She had described her blighted, desolate past, and her present, devoted to serious pursuits and absorbed by maternal affections. By thus displaying her confidence in him and her regard for him, she had at all events healed the secret wound inflicted upon his plebeian pride. She had with delicate tact pointed out to him that the obstacle between them was not the difference in rank and in their ideas, but the difference between their ages and the decree of an inflexible destiny. In a word, she had raised him to her own level by treating him as a brother, and if she had not effected a complete cure at the first attempt, she had removed all the bitterness of his suffering. Then she had adroitly brought Mila's name into the conversation, and, when he realized that the princess desired their union, Magnani had deemed it to be his duty to comply with her desire.

That duty he determined to set about performing at once, and he fully appreciated the fact that Agatha, to punish him for his madness, had pointed out to him the easiest, not to say the most delightful of expiations. As he had not shared Mila's uneasiness with respect to Michel's absence, he had gone out simply to please her, with no idea that there was any need of going in search of him. He had called upon Fra Angelo, to consult him concerning the girl's sentiments, and to ask for his advice and support. When he reached the monastery, the monks were reciting prayers for the cardinal's soul, and he was obliged to wait in the garden, with its paths of earthenware and its borders of lava, until Fra Angelo could come to him. The doleful chanting depressed him, and he could not avoid a presentiment of evil to come as he thought that he was cherishing the hope of a happy betrothal in the midst of a funeral ceremony.

On the preceding evening, before he parted from Pier-Angelo on their return from the Della Serra palace, he had sounded the old artisan concerning his daughter's feelings. Pier-Angelo, delighted by that overture, had ingenuously replied that he believed that she loved him; but as Magnani distrusted his good fortune, and hardly dared hope, Pier-Angelo had advised him to consult his brother the Capuchin, whom, although younger than himself, he was accustomed to look upon as the head of the family.

Magnani was very uncertain and disturbed in mind. And yet a mysterious voice told him that Mila loved him. He recalled her furtive glances, her sudden blushes, her concealed tears, her deathly pallor, aye, and her words, which denoted an affectation of indifference prompted by pride. He hoped; he awaited impatiently the end of the prayers, and when Fra Angelo joined him he begged him to give him his attention, to advise him, and above all things to tell him the truth without concealment.

"This is a serious matter," the good monk replied; "I have always had the friendliest feeling for your family, my son, and a very high regard for you. But are you sure that you know me and love me well enough to believe me if the advice that I give you is contrary to your secret desires? For we monks are often consulted, and very little heed is paid to our counsel. Everyone comes and confides his thoughts and passions, even his business affairs to us, because it is commonly supposed that men with no direct interest in life have a keener insight than others. That is a mistake. In most cases our advice is either too complaisant to be worth following or so severe that it is impossible to follow it. For my part I dislike to give advice."

"Very well," said Magnani, "if you do not consider me capable of making the most of your counsel, will you promise to answer, without hesitation, and with perfect frankness, a question I am going to ask you?"

"Hesitation is not a failing of mine, my friend. But for lack of careful handling one may inflict much pain on those whom one loves, and do you want me to be cruel to you? You subject my affection to a painful test!"

"You frighten me beforehand, Padre Angelo. It seems to me that you have already guessed the question I am going to ask you."

"Ask it, so that I may see if I am not mistaken."

"And you will answer?"

"I will answer."

"Well," said Magnani, in a trembling voice, "should I do well to ask your brother to give me Mila's hand?"

"Precisely, that is what I expected. My brother has already spoken to me about it. He thinks that his daughter loves you; he thinks that he has detected it."

"Great God! if it were true!" said Magnani, clasping his hands.

But Fra Angelo's face maintained its cold, sad expression.

"You do not consider me worthy to be Mila's husband," continued the modest Magnani. "It is true that I am not, padre; but if you knew how firmly I have resolved to become worthy!"

"My friend," rejoined the monk, "the day on which you should become Mila's husband, if you love each other fervently and sincerely, would be the happiest day in Pier-Angelo's life and mine; for we monks know that a man must love with his whole soul the spouse to whom he gives his life, whether that spouse be the family or the church. I believe that you love Mila, since you seek her hand; but I do not know whether Mila loves you or whether my brother is mistaken."

"Alas!" replied Magnani, "nor do I know myself."

"You do not know?" said Fra Angelo, drawing his eyebrows together; "she has never told you so?"

"Never!"

"But she has granted you some innocent favors, has she not? She has been alone with you?"

"Only by chance or from necessity."

"She has never made an appointment with you?"

"Never!"

"Not yesterday? was she not walking with you, in this neighborhood, last night at sunset?"

"Last night, in this neighborhood?" repeated Magnani, turning pale; "no, padre."

"On your salvation?"

"On my salvation and my honor!"

"In that case, Magnani, you must not think about Mila. Mila loves someone, and you are not that some one. And the worst of it is that neither her father nor I can guess who it is. Would to God that a girl so devoted to her duties, so hard-working, and down to this very day so modest, might have taken a fancy to a man like you! You would have brought up a family nobly, and your union would have edified your neighbors. But Mila is a child, and a romantic child, I fear. Hereafter we must watch her more carefully; I will warn her father, and you, being a man of heart, will say nothing and forget her."

"What!" cried Magnani, "can it be that Mila, the personification of honesty, courage, and innocence, already has a misstep upon her conscience? Great God! have chastity and truth ceased to exist on earth?"

"I do not say that," the monk replied: "I trust that Mila is still pure; but she is on the road to her destruction if someone does not hold her back. Last night, at sunset, she passed here, all alone, and dressed in her best clothes; she tried to avoid me, she refused to account for herself, she tried to lie. Ah! I prayed earnestly for her last night, and I slept but little."

"I will keep Mila's secret, and I will think no more about her," said Magnani, utterly confounded.

But he continued to think of her. It was natural to his character, grave and strong, but incapable of boastful confidence, to go forward to meet obstacles, and to halt when he reached them, unable to surmount them or to make up his mind to turn his back upon them.

At that moment Michel arrived; he seemed to have undergone a magical transformation since the preceding day, although he still wore his artisan's jacket; his forehead and his eyes seemed larger, his nostrils inhaled the air more freely, his chest seemed to have developed in a different atmosphere. The pride, the conscious strength, the tranquillity of the free man shone in his face.

"Ah!" said Magnani, throwing himself into the arms the young prince held out to him, "your dream has come true already, Michel! It was a beautiful dream! the awakening is still more beautiful. I have been struggling with a nightmare which your good fortune has driven away, but which has left me bewildered and crushed by fatigue."

Fra Angelo blessed them both, and said, addressing the prince:

"I hail with joy your accession to greatness and power, when I see you embrace a man of the common people of your native country. Michel de Castro-Reale, Michelangelo Lavoratori, I shall always love you as my nephew, while loving you as my prince. Will you tell me now, _your excellency_, that it is an imposition for those of my class to love and serve yours?"

"Do not remind me of my heresies, my excellent uncle," replied Michel. "I no longer know to what class I belong; I feel that I am a man and a Sicilian, that is all."

"Long live Sicily!" cried the Capuchin, saluting Ætna.

"Long live Sicily!" echoed Michel, saluting Catania.

Magnani was deeply moved and his manner was most affectionate. He rejoiced sincerely in Michel's good fortune; but, for his own part, he was sorely distressed by the obstacle that had arisen between Mila and him, and he trembled lest he should fall anew under the empire of his former passion. But the mother is something more than the woman, and the thought of Agatha in that new aspect made Magnani's adoration calmer and more solemn than it had been before. He felt that he should blush in Michel's presence if he retained the slightest trace of his madness. He determined to banish it altogether, and, happy in the thought that he could always say to himself that he had devoted his youth, by a solemn vow, to the loveliest saint in heaven, he retained her image and her memory in his heart like a divine perfume.

Magnani was cured; but what a sad cure, to renounce, at twenty-five, all the dreams of love! He was resigned to his fate; but from that moment life was to him nothing more than a stern and passionless duty.

The reveries and torments which had made that duty dear to him no longer existed. Never was there a man on earth more utterly alone, more disgusted with all earthly things, than Magnani on the day of his deliverance.

He left Fra Angelo and Michel, who proposed to go at once to Nicolosi, and passed the rest of the day walking alone by the seashore, opposite the basaltic isles of Acireale.

The young prince and the monk started immediately after making up their minds to visit the Piccinino. They were approaching the ill-omened _Destatore's_ Cross when the bells of Catania, changing their rhythm, rang the knell that announces death. Fra Angelo crossed himself without stopping; Michel thought of his father, who had perhaps been assassinated by order of that wicked prelate, and quickened his pace in order to kneel upon the grave of Castro-Reale.

He did not as yet feel the courage to examine that fatal cross, where he had experienced such painful emotions, even before he knew of the tie of blood that bound him to the bandit of Ætna. But a huge vulture, starting up suddenly from the very foot of the cross, forced him involuntarily to turn his eyes in that direction. For a moment he thought that he was the victim of a ghastly hallucination. A dead body lay in a pool of blood at the spot from which the vulture had fled.

Frozen with horror, Michel and his uncle drew near and recognized the body of Abbé Ninfo, half disfigured by pistol shots fired at point-blank range. The murder had been premeditated or committed with extraordinary sang-froid, for the perpetrator had taken the time and trouble to write with chalk, in small letters, close together, on the black lava pedestal of the cross, this ferociously concise inscription:

"Here was found, eighteen years ago to-day, the body of a celebrated brigand, _Il Destatore_, Prince of Castro-Reale, the avenger of the woes of his country.

"Here will be found to-day the body of his assassin, Abbé Ninfo, who has confessed his participation in the crime. So cowardly a champion would not have dared to strike openly so gallant a man. He led him into a trap, into which he himself has fallen at last, after eighteen years of unpunished crimes.

"More fortunate than Castro-Reale, who was struck down by slaves, Ninfo has fallen by the hand of a free man.

"If you wish to know who condemned the _Destatore_ and paid for his murder, ask Satan, who, within an hour, will receive before his tribunal the wicked soul of Cardinal Hieronimo de Palmarosa.

"Do not accuse Castro-Reale's widow: she is innocent.

"Michel de Castro-Reale, there is still much blood to be shed before your father's death is avenged!

"He who writes these lines is the bastard of Castro-Reale, whom men call the Piccinino and the _Justicier d'aventure_. He it was who killed the knave Ninfo. He did it at sunrise, to the sound of the bells which announced the death agony of Cardinal Palmarosa. He did it so that it may not be thought that all villains can die in their beds.

"Let the first man who reads this inscription copy or remember it and carry it to the people of Catania!"

"Let us rub it out," said Michel, "or my brother's audacity will be fatal to him."

"No, let us not rub it out," said the monk. "Your brother is too prudent not to be far away from here before this, and we have no right to deprive the nobles and people of Catania of a terrible example and a bloody lesson. The proud Castro-Reale assassinated! assassinated by the cardinal! lured into a trap by this vile abbé! Ah! I ought to have guessed it! He had too much vigor and courage still to stoop to suicide. Do not accuse your brother of being over severe, Michel, and do not look upon this vengeance as a mere useless crime. You do not know what your father was in his good days, his great days. You do not know that he was on the point of mending his ways and becoming once more the dispenser of justice on the mountain. He was repentant. He believed in God, he still loved his country, and he adored your mother. If he could but have lived as he was living a year more, she would have loved him, and would have forgiven everything. She would have come and shared his perils, she would have been the brigand's wife instead of being the prisoner and victim of his murderers. She would have brought you up herself, she would never have been parted from you! You would have drunk the milk of a lioness and you would have grown to manhood in the tempest. Everything would be better so! Sicily would be nearer its deliverance than it will be ten years hence; and I should not have continued to be a monk. Instead of walking up the mountain, with folded arms, to see this body lying in a corner and the Piccinino flying among the precipices, we should all be together, rifle in hand, fighting desperately against the Swiss mercenaries of Naples, and perhaps marching on Catania with the yellow flag flaunting its golden folds in the morning breeze! Yes, everything would be better so, I tell you, Prince of Castro-Reale!--But God's will be done!" added Fra Angelo, remembering at last that he was a monk.

Being certain that the Piccinino must have left the valley long before the hour named in the inscription as that of the murder, Michel and the monk went no farther, but retraced their steps from that wild spot where the abbé's corpse would be at the mercy of the vulture for some hours to come, before anyone would interrupt his ghastly feast. As they turned away, they saw the ill-omened bird fly over their heads, returning with savage eagerness to his prey.

"That is the fate you deserved," said the monk, calmly; "to be eaten by dogs and vultures! that is the malediction which people in all ages have called down upon spies and traitors. You are very pale, my young prince, and perhaps you think me very harsh in my judgment of a priest, being myself a churchman. What can you expect? It may be that I have seen and done with my own hand, perhaps, more killing than is consistent with the salvation of my soul! but in conquered countries, you see, war sometimes has no other resource than murder. Do not think that the Piccinino is worse than other men. He was born calm and long-suffering; but there are virtues which would become vices in us Sicilians, if we should cling to them. Reason and a sense of justice taught him to be a scourge at need. But you see that his heart is sound at bottom. He is very angry with your mother, you told me, and you dreaded his vengeance. You see that he absolves her from the crime which certainly never occurred to that saint-like woman's mind; you see that he does homage to truth, even in the heat of his anger; you see, too, that instead of cursing you he exhorts you to make common cause with him when occasion requires. No, no, Carmelo is no dastard!"

Michel was of the monk's opinion, but he held his peace; it would require a mighty effort on his part to fraternize with the gloomy mind of that civilized savage whom men called the Piccinino. He readily detected the monk's secret predilection for the brigand. In Fra Angelo's eyes the bastard rather than the prince was the _Destatore's_ son and the heir of his strong nature. But Michel was too heavily burdened by the emotions--by turns delicious and painful--which he had experienced within a few hours, to maintain a conversation on any subject, and, even if he considered that the Capuchin was too revengeful and inclined to be too pitiless in his opinions, he did not feel that he had the right to contradict or even to pass judgment upon a man to whom he was indebted for the legitimizing of his birth, the saving of his life, and the joy of knowing his mother.

They saw in the distance the cardinal's villa all draped in black.

"You too, Michel, will be obliged to wear mourning," said Fra Angelo. "Carmelo is more fortunate than you at this moment, in not belonging to society. If he were the Princess of Palmarosa's son, he would have to wear the false livery of grief--mourning for his father's murderer."

"For love of my mother, my dear uncle," replied the prince, "do not force upon my notice the unpleasant side of my position. At present I can think of nothing except that I am the son of the noblest and loveliest and best of women."

"That is well, my child, that is well. Forgive me," continued the monk. "My mind is always in the past; it is always busy with the memory of my poor murdered captain. Why did I leave him? Why had I turned monk? Ah! I was a coward too. If I had remained faithful to him in his ill-fortune, and patient with his vagaries, he never would have fallen into a wretched ambuscade, and perhaps he would be alive still! He would be proud and happy to have two sons, both brave and handsome! Ah! _Destatore_, _Destatore_! here am I weeping for you more bitterly than at first. To learn that you died by another hand than your own is like losing you again."

And the monk, but a moment before so pitiless and unfeeling as he trampled upon the blood of the traitor, began to weep like a child. The old soldier, faithful beyond the grave, reappeared in him, and he embraced Michel, saying: "Comfort me; let me hope that we shall avenge him!"

"Let us hope for Sicily!" replied Michel. "We have something better to do than perpetuate family quarrels; we have our country to serve! Ah! our country! That is a word that you had to explain to me yesterday, my brave soldier, but to-day I understand it perfectly."

They exchanged a warm grasp of the hand and entered Villa Palmarosa.