Chapter XX: Introduction (3)

The Venetian lower classes, especially the gondoliers, have, as you know, a liking for jewels. They spend a good part of what they earn in antique rings, shirt studs, scarf pins, chains and the like. I had previously accepted many trinkets of the sort. I carried them all back to Signora Aldini, and would not even wear silver buckles on my shoes. But my most meritorious sacrifice was my abandonment of music. I considered that my work, laborious as it was, was no compensation for the expense which my constant theatre-going and my singing lessons imposed on the signora. I persistently declared that I had a cold in my head, and instead of going to the performance at La Fenice with her, I adopted the practice of reading in the lobby of the theatre. I realized that I was ignorant; and, although my mistress was scarcely less so, I determined to extend my ideas a little, and not to make her blush for my blunders. I studied my mother tongue earnestly, and strove to break myself of the habit of murdering verses, as all gondoliers do. Moreover, something told me that that study would be useful to me later, and that what I lost in the way of progress in singing I should gain in the perfecting of my pronunciation and accent.

A few days of this judicious conduct served to restore my tranquillity. I had never been more manly, more cheerful, and, as Salomé said, more comely than in my neat and modest clothes, with my amiable expression and my sun-burned hands. Everybody had accorded me confidence and esteem once more, and I was again the recipient of the innumerable little attentions which I formerly enjoyed. Pretty Alezia, who had the greatest respect for the judgment of her Jewish governess, allowed me to kiss the ends of her black braids, embellished with scarlet ribbons and fine pearls.

A single person remained depressed and unhappy--the signora herself. I constantly surprised her lovely blue eyes, filled with tears, fastened upon me with an indescribable expression of affection and grief. She could not accustom herself to see me working so. If I had been her own son she could not have been more grieved to see me carrying burdens and standing in the rain. Indeed, her solicitude vexed me a little, and the efforts she made to conceal it made it even more painful to her. An entirely unforeseen revolution of sentiment had taken place in her. That love which had hitherto been, as she herself told me, her torment and her joy, seemed now to cause her naught but shame and consternation. She no longer avoided opportunities to be alone with me, as she used to do; on the contrary, she sought them; but, as soon as I knelt at her feet, she would burst into sobs and change the hours promised to the joys of love into hours of painful emotion. I strove in vain to understand what was taking place in her heart. I could obtain nothing but vague replies, always kind and affectionate, but incoherent, which caused me the utmost perplexity. I had no idea what to do to comfort her and strengthen that discouraged heart. I was consumed by desire, and it seemed to me that an hour of mutual effusion and passion would have been more eloquent than all that talk and all those tears; but I felt too much respect and devotion for her not to sacrifice my transports of passion to her. I felt that it would be very easy to take her by surprise, weak as she was in body and mind; but I dreaded the tears of the next day too much, and I wished to owe my happiness to her confidence and love alone. That day did not come, and I must say, to the discredit of feminine weakness, that, if I had shown less delicacy and unselfishness, my desires would have been fully gratified. I had hoped that Bianca would encourage me; I soon discovered that, on the contrary, she was afraid of me, and that she shuddered at my approach, as if crime and remorse approached with me. I succeeded in reassuring her only to see her plunge into still deeper dejection, and upbraid fate, as if it had not been in her power to put a better face upon her destiny. Then, too, a secret sense of shame helped to crush that shrinking heart. Religion took possession of her more and more completely; her confessor controlled her and terrified her. He forbade her to have lovers, and, although she resisted him when it was a question of Signor Lanfranchi and Signor Montalegri, she had not the same courage with respect to me. I succeeded little by little in extorting from her a confession of all her sufferings and internal struggles. She had confessed to the confessor all the details of our love, and he had declared that that low, criminal affection was a heinous crime. He had forbidden her to think of marriage with me, even more peremptorily than to give way to her passion; and he had frightened her so by threatening to cast her out from the bosom of the Church, that her gentle, timid mind, torn between the desire to make me happy and the fear of destroying her own soul, was suffering veritable agony.

Hitherto Signora Aldini's piety had been so pliant, so tolerant, so truly Italian, that I was not a little surprised to see it become serious just at the height of one of those paroxysms of passion which seem most inconsistent with such changes. I worked hard with my poor inexperienced brain to understand this phenomenon, and I succeeded. Bianca probably loved me more than she had loved the count and the prince; but she had not sufficient courage nor a sufficiently enlightened mind to rise above public opinion. She complained of the arrogance of other people; but she gave real value to that arrogance by her fear of it. In a word, she was more submissive than anybody else to the prejudice which she had attempted for an instant to defy. She had hoped to find in the church, through the sacrament, and by redoubling her pious fervor, the strength which she failed to find in herself, and which she had not needed with her former lovers, because they were patricians and society was on their side. But now the church threatened her, society would heap maledictions upon her; to fight against the church and society at the same time was a task beyond her strength.

Then too, it may be that her love subsided as soon as I became worthy of it; perhaps, instead of appreciating the grandeur of soul which had led me to descend of my own motion from the salon to the servant's quarters, she had fancied that she could detect in that courageous behavior a lack of dignity and an inborn liking for servitude. She believed too that the threats and sarcasms of her other servants had frightened me. She was astonished to find that I was not ambitious, and that very absence of ambition seemed to her an indication of an inert or timid spirit. She did not admit all this to me; but as soon as I was once on the track I divined it all. I was not angry. How could she understand my noble pride and my sensitive honor, she who had accepted and returned the love of an Aldini and a Lanfranchi?

Doubtless she ceased to consider me handsome when I refused to wear lace and ribbons. My hands, calloused in her service, no longer seemed to her worthy to press hers. She had loved me as a gondolier, in the thought and hope of transforming me into an attractive cicisbeo; but the instant that I insisted upon reverting to the system of a fair exchange of services between her and myself, all her illusions vanished, and she saw in me only the vulgar fisherman's son of Chioggia, a species of stupid and hard-working beast of burden.

As these discoveries cleared the mists away from my mind, the violence of my passions diminished. If I had had to deal with a great soul, or even with a forceful nature, it would have been in my eyes a glorious task to efface the distressing memories left behind in that heart by my predecessors. But to succeed such men simply to be misunderstood, and in all probability to be some day cast aside and forgotten like them, was a happiness which I no longer cared to purchase at the cost of an enormous expenditure of passion and will-power. Signora Aldini was a sweet and lovely woman; but could I not find in a cottage at Chioggia beauty and sweetness united, without causing tears to flow, without causing remorse, and above all without leaving shame behind me?

My mind was soon made up. I resolved not only to leave the signora, but to cease to be a servant. So long as I had been in love with her harp and her person, I had had no time to reflect seriously on my condition. But, as soon as I abandoned my foolish aspirations, I realized how difficult it is to retain one's dignity unimpaired under the protection of the great, and I recalled the salutary arguments which my father had urged upon me, and to which I had paid little heed.

When I gave her an inkling of my purpose, I saw, although she opposed it, that she was greatly relieved; happiness might return and dwell once more in that affectionate and beneficent heart. The charming frivolity which was the basis of her character would reappear on the surface with the first lover who should be able to push aside her confessor, her servants, and society. A great passion would have shattered her system; a succession of mild passions and a multitude of lukewarm attachments would keep her alive in her natural element.

I forced her to admit all that I had divined. She had never studied herself very much, and she was always most sincere. If there was no heroism in her character, neither was there any pretension to heroism, nor the overbearing despotism which is its consequence. She approved my determination, but she wept and was dismayed at the thought of the blank my departure would leave in her life; for she loved me still, I am sure, with all the strength of her nature.

She attempted to worry and fret about what was to become of me. I would not allow it. The abrupt and haughty tone in which I interrupted her when she spoke of offering her services closed her mouth once for all in that respect. I would not even take the clothes she had had made for me. On the day before I was to take my leave, I purchased the complete outfit of a sailor of Chioggia, new, but of the coarsest materials; and in that guise I appeared before her for the last time.

She had requested me to come to her at midnight, so that we could part without witnesses. I was grateful to her for the affectionate familiarity with which she embraced me. I do not believe there was another society woman in all Venice sufficiently sincere and sympathetic to be willing to repeat the assurance of her love to a man dressed as I was. Tears poured from her eyes when she passed her little white hands over the rough material of my scarlet-lined cape; then she smiled, and, pulling the hood over my head, gazed at me lovingly, and exclaimed that she had never seen me look so handsome, and that she had done very wrong ever to make me dress in any other way. The warmth and sincerity of my thanks, the oaths I took to be faithful to her until death, and never to think of her except to bless her and commend her to God's keeping, touched her deeply. She was not accustomed to being left in that way.

"You have a more chivalrous heart," she said to me, "than any of those who bear the title of chevalier."

Then she gave way to an outburst of enthusiasm: the independence of my nature, the indifference with which I laid aside luxury and indolence for the hardest of lives, the respect with which I had never failed to treat her when it would have been so easy for me to abuse her weakness for me; all this, she said, raised me far above other men. She threw herself into my arms, almost at my feet, and again begged me not to go away, but to marry her.

This outburst was sincere, and, although it did not change my resolution, it made the signora so lovely and so fascinating that I was very near casting my heroism to the winds and taking my reward in that last night for all the sacrifices I had made to my peace of mind. But I had the strength to resist, and to go forth chaste from a love affair which nevertheless had its origin in sensual desire. I took my leave, bathed in her tears, and carrying away, as my sole treasure and trophy, a lock of her lovely fair hair. As I withdrew I went to little Alezia's bed, and softly put aside the curtains to take a last look at her. She at once woke, and did not recognize me at first, for she was frightened; she did not cry out, but simply called her mother in a voice which she tried to keep from trembling.

"Signorina," I said, "I am the _Orco_,[3] and I have come to ask you why you pierce the hearts of your dolls with pins."

She sat up in bed, and replied, glancing at me with a mischievous expression:

"I do it to see if their blood is blue."

_Blue blood_, you know, is synonymous with noble in the popular language of Venice.

"But they have no blood," I said; "they are not noble!"

"They are nobler than you," was her retort, "for their blood isn't black."

Black, you know, is the color of the _nicoloti_, the association of boatmen.

"_Signora mia_," I said in an undertone to her mother, as I drew the child's curtains, "you have done well not to splash ink on your azure crest. Here is a little patrician who would never have forgiven you."

"And my heart," she replied sadly, "is pierced, not with a pin, but with a thousand swords."

When I was in the street, I stopped to look at the corner of the palace which stood out in the moonlight from the eaves to the depths of the Grand Canal. A boat passed, and, causing a ripple in the water, cut and scattered the reflection of that pure line. It seemed to me that I had just had a beautiful dream and had awakened in darkness. I began to run at full speed, never looking behind, and did not stop until I reached the Paglia bridge, where the boats for Chioggia await passengers, while the boatmen, wrapped in their capes in winter and summer alike, lie sound asleep on the parapet, and even across the steps, under the feet of passers-by. I asked if anyone of my fellow-townsmen would take me to my father's house.

"Is it you, _kinsman_?" they cried in surprise.

That word _kinsman_, which the Venetians ironically bestow on the Chioggians, and which the latter have had the good-sense to accept,[4] was so sweet to my ear that I embraced the first man who called me by it. They promised to start in an hour, and asked me several questions, but did not listen to my answers. The Chioggian hardly knows the use of a bed; but he sleeps while walking, talking, even rowing. They suggested my taking a nap on the common bed, that is to say on the flagstones of the quay. I lay on the ground, with my head on one of those worthy fellows, while another used me as a pillow, and so on. I slept as in the happiest days of my childhood, and I dreamed that my poor mother--who had been dead a year--appeared in the doorway of our cottage and congratulated me on my return. I was awakened by the repeated shouts of _Chiosa_! _Chiosa_![5] with which our boatmen wake the echoes of the ducal palace and the prisons, to attract passengers. It seemed to me a cry of triumph, like the _Italia_! _Italia_! of the Trojans in the _Æneid_. I jumped aboard a boat with a light heart, and, thinking of the night Bianca must have passed, reproached myself a little for sleeping soundly. But I was reconciled to myself by the thought that I had not poisoned her future peace of mind.

It was midwinter and the nights were long; we reached Chioggia an hour before dawn. I ran to our cabin. My father was already at sea; only my youngest brother was left behind to look after the house. It took a long while for him to wake up and recognize me. It was easy to see that he was accustomed to sleep amid the roar of the waves and the storm; for I nearly broke the door down trying to make him hear me. At last he came out, leaped on my neck, put on his cape and rowed me half a league out to sea, to the spot where my father's boat lay at anchor. The excellent man, awaiting the best time to set his nets, was asleep, according to the custom of old fishermen, stretched out on his back, his body and face sheltered by a coarse blanket, while the stinging north wind whistled through the rigging. The white-capped waves beat against the vessel and covered him with spray; no human voice could be heard in the vast solitude of the Adriatic. I softly put aside the blanket and looked at him. He was the image of strength in repose. His gray beard, as tangled as the seaweed when the tide is rising, his earth-colored jacket and his dull green woollen cap made him resemble an old Triton asleep in his shell. He displayed no more surprise when he woke than if he had been expecting me.

"Oho!" he said, "I was dreaming of the poor woman, and she said to me: 'Get up, old man, here's our son Daniel back again.'"

[Footnote 3: The red devil, or will'o-the-wisp of the lagoons.]

[Footnote 4: The peninsula of Chioggia was originally inhabited by five or six families which never married except among themselves.]

[Footnote 5: Chioggia!]

SECOND PART

I do not propose, my friends, to describe all the vicissitudes which marked my passage from the beach at Chioggia to the stage of the leading theatres in Italy, and from the trade of fisherman to the rôle of _primo tenore_; that was the work of several years, and my reputation increased rapidly as soon as I had taken the first step in my career. If circumstances were often unfavorable, my easy-going disposition was always able to make the best of them, and I can fairly say that my great successes did not cost me very dear.

Ten years after leaving Venice, I was at Naples, playing Romeo at the San Carlo theatre. King Murat and his brilliant staff, and all the vain and venal beauties of Italy, were there. I did not pride myself on being a particularly ardent patriot, but I did not share the infatuation of that period for foreign domination. I did not turn my face backward toward a still more degrading past; I fed upon the first elements of Carbonarism, which were then fermenting, without definite shape or name, from Prussia to Sicily.

My heroism was simple and intense, as all religions are at their birth. I carried into all that I did, and especially into my art, the feeling of mocking pride and democratic independence which inspired me every day in the clubs and in clandestine pamphlets. _Friends of Truth_, _Friends of Light_, _Friends of Liberty_--such were the names under which liberal sympathies gathered; and even in the ranks of the French army, at the very side of the victorious leaders, we had associates, children of your great revolution, who, in their secret hearts, were determined to wash away the stain of the 18th Brumaire.

I loved the rôle of Romeo, because I could give expression in it to warlike sentiments and feelings of chivalrous detestation. When my audience, always half French, applauded my dramatic outbursts, I felt as if I were revenged for our national degradation; for those conquerors were unconsciously applauding curses aimed at them, longings for their death and threats to attain it.

One evening, during one of my finest moments, when it seemed as if the roof would fall under the explosions of frantic applause, my eyes fell upon a face in a proscenium box almost on the stage, an impassive face, the sight of which made my blood suddenly run cold. You have no idea of the mysterious influences which govern the actor's inspiration, how the expression of certain faces absorbs him, and stimulates or deadens his audacity. Speaking for myself at least, I cannot avoid an instant sympathy with my audience, whether the effect is to spur me on if I find it inclined to resist, until I subjugate it by my passion, or to melt us into one as by the action of an electric current, so that its quick response imparts new vigor to my sensitive talent. But certain glances, or certain words spoken in whispers close beside me, have sometimes disturbed me so that it required the utmost effort of which my will was capable to combat their effect.

The face that impressed me at that moment was ideally beautiful; its owner was beyond dispute the most beautiful woman in the whole theatre. Meanwhile, the whole audience was roaring and stamping in admiration, and she alone, the queen of the evening, seemed to be studying me dispassionately, and to discover faults which the vulgar eye could not detect. She was the Muse of Tragedy, stern Melpomene in person, with her regular oval face, her black eyebrows, her high forehead, her raven hair, her great eyes gleaming with a dark flame in their vast orbits, and her stern lip, whose unbending curve was never softened by a smile; and, with all the rest, in the very bloom and flower of youth, with a graceful, lithe figure instinct with health.

"Who is that lovely dark girl with such a cold eye?" I asked Count Nasi, during the entr'acte; he had taken a great liking to me, and came on the stage every evening to chat with me.

"She is either the daughter or niece of Princess Grimani," was his reply. "I do not know her, for she has just come from some convent or other, and her mother, or aunt, is herself a stranger in this region. All I can tell you is that Prince Grimani loves her like his own child, that he will give her a handsome dowry, and that she is one of the richest matches in Italy; and yet I shall never take my place in the lists."

"Why not, pray?"

"Because they say she is insolent and vain, infatuated with her noble birth, and of an overbearing disposition. I care so little for women of that stamp that I don't even care to look at her when I meet her. They say that she will be queen of the balls next winter, and that her beauty is something marvellous. I don't know or want to know whether it is or is not. I can't endure Grimani either; he is a genuine stage _hidalgo_; and if it were not that he has a handsome fortune and a young wife who is said to be attractive, I don't know how anyone could be induced to endure the tedium of his conversation or the freezing stiffness of his hospitality."

During the following scene I glanced at the proscenium box from time to time. I was no longer disturbed by the thought that its occupants were disposed to judge me unfavorably, since I had learned that the Grimanis were accustomed to maintain a haughty demeanor even with people whom they considered to belong to their own class. I looked at the girl with the impartiality of a sculptor or a painter; she seemed to me even lovelier than at first sight. Old Grimani, who was sitting beside her at the front of the box, had a fine face, but stern and cold. That supercilious couple seemed to exchange a few monosyllables at long intervals, and at the end of the opera he rose slowly and went out, without waiting for the ballet.

The next day the old man and the young woman were in the same place, in the same unmoved attitude. I did not once see any trace of emotion, and Prince Grimani slept sweetly throughout the first acts. The young woman, on the contrary, seemed to be paying her whole attention to the performance. Her great eyes were fastened on me like those of a ghost, and that fixed, searching and profound gaze became so embarrassing to me that I carefully avoided it. But, as if an evil spell had been cast upon me, the more I tried to keep my eyes away, the more they persisted in meeting those of the young sorceress. There was something so extraordinarily powerful in that mysterious magnetism, that I was assailed by childish dread of it, and feared that I should not be able to finish the opera. I had never felt anything like it. There were times when I fancied that I recognized that marble face, and I seemed to be on the point of accosting her as an old friend. At other times I believed that she was my deadly enemy, my evil genius, and I was tempted to hurl violent reproaches at her.

The _seconda donna_ added to my truly alarming discomfort by whispering to me:

"Look out, Lelio, you'll catch the fever. That woman in the box will give you the _jettatura_."[6]

I had been a firm believer in the _jettatura_ during the greater part of my life. I no longer believed in it; but the love of the marvellous, which is not easily dislodged from an Italian head, especially that of a child of the people, had led me to indulge in most extravagant reflections on the subject of animal magnetism. It was the period when charming fancies of that sort were blooming luxuriantly all over the world; Hoffmann was writing his _Tales_, and magnetism was the mysterious pivot upon which all the hopes of the _illuminati_ turned. Whether because that foible had taken such complete possession of me that it controlled my actions, or because it took me by surprise at a moment when I was not in the best of health, I began to shiver from head to foot, and I nearly fainted when I returned to the stage. That wretched weakness finally gave place to wrath, and as I walked toward the box in question with La Checchina--the _seconda donna_ who had mentioned the evil eye--I said to her, indicating my fair enemy, but in a tone too low to be overheard by the audience, these words paraphrased from one of our finest tragedies:

"_Bella e stupida._"

The signora flushed to the roots of her hair with anger. She started to rouse Prince Grimani, who was sleeping with all his heart; but she suddenly stopped, as if she had changed her mind, and kept her eyes fixed upon me as before, but with a vindictive, threatening expression which seemed to say:

"You shall repent of that."

Count Nasi accosted me as I left the theatre after the performance.

"Lelio," said he, "you are in love with the Grimani."

"Am I bewitched, in God's name," I cried, "and why is it that I cannot rid myself of that apparition?"

"You won't rid yourself of it for a long time either, poor boy," said Checchina, with a half-artless, half-mocking air; "that Grimani is the devil. Wait a moment," she added, taking my arm, "I know something about fever, and I will wager--_Corpo della Madonna_!"--she cried, turning pale, "you have a terrible attack of fever, my poor Lelio!"

"One always has the fever when one acts and sings in a way to give it to others," said the count; "come to supper with me, Lelio."

I declined; I was ill, in very truth. During the night I had a violent fever, and the next day I could not leave my bed. Checchina installed herself at my bedside and did not leave me all the time that I was ill.

Checchina was a young woman of twenty or thereabout, tall and large, and of a somewhat masculine type of beauty, although very white and fair. She was my sister and my kinswoman, that is to say, she came from Chioggia. Like me she was a fisherman's child and had long employed her strength beating the waters of the Adriatic with oars. A wild love of independence led her to use her fine voice as a means of assuring herself a free profession and a wandering life. She had run away from her father's house and begun to roam about the country on foot, singing in the public squares. I chanced to meet her at Milan, in a furnished lodging-house where she was singing for the guests at the table d'hôte. I recognized her as a Chioggian by her accent; I questioned her and remembered seeing her as a child; but I was careful to say nothing by which she could identify me as a _kinsman_, especially as that Daniele Gemello who had left the neighborhood rather suddenly, as the result of an unlucky duel. That duel cost a poor devil his life and his murderer many sleepless nights.

Allow me to pass rapidly over that incident, and to avoid awakening a bitter memory during our quiet evening. It will be enough for me to say to Zorzi that the practice of duelling with knives was still in full vigor at Chioggia in my youth, and the whole population acted as seconds. Duels were fought in broad daylight, on the public square, and insults were avenged by the wager of combat, as in the days of chivalry. My melancholy success exiled me from the province! for the _podestat_ was far from lenient in such matters, and the law inflicted severe penalties upon the last remnants of those savage old customs. Perhaps this will explain why I always concealed the story of my early years, and why I travelled over the world under the name of Lelio, sending money secretly to my family, writing to them with the greatest caution, and disclosing to no one, not even to them, my means of subsistence, for fear that, by corresponding with me they might draw upon themselves the open hostility of those families in Chioggia whom the death of my assailant had angered more or less.

But, as my origin was betrayed by an ineradicable trace of the Venetian accent, I passed myself off as a native of Palestrina, and Checchina had adopted the habit of calling me her _countryman_, her _cousin_ or her _gossip_, as it happened.

Thanks to my care and my assistance, Checchina rapidly acquired considerable talent, and at the time of my life of which I am now speaking, she had been engaged on honorable terms as a member of the troupe at San Carlo.

She was a strange but most excellent creature, was Checchina; she had improved wonderfully since I had picked her out of the gutter, so to speak; but she still retained, and retains to this day, a certain rusticity which does not altogether disappear on the stage, and which makes her the first actress in the world in such rôles as Zerlina. She had corrected in large measure the amplitude of her gestures and the abruptness of her speech, but she retained enough of both to come very near being comic in pathetic parts. However, as she had intelligence and feeling, she raised herself to a relatively high position, but the public did not give her all the credit she deserved. Opinions were divided concerning her, and a certain abbé said that she brushed so close to the sublime and the farcical that there was not enough room left between the two for her long arms.

Unluckily, Checchina had one failing, from which, by the way, the greatest artists are not exempt. She satisfied herself only in rôles which were entirely unsuited to her, and, scorning those in which she could best display her _verve_, her unconstant and her restless activity, she insisted upon producing great effects in tragedy. Like a true village maiden, she was intoxicated by superb costumes, and fancied that she was really a queen when she wore a diadem and a royal cloak. Her tall, lithe figure, her graceful, quasi-martial bearing, made of her a magnificent statue when she was not in motion. But her exaggerated gestures constantly betrayed the young oarswoman, and when I desired, on the stage, to warn her to be less vehement, I would whisper: "_Per dio_! _non vogar_! _non siamo qui sull' Adriatico_."[7]

Whether Checchina was my mistress is a question of little interest to you, I presume. I can only assure you that she was not at the time of which I am speaking, and that I was indebted for her affectionate care to nothing else than the kindness of her heart and her unfailing gratitude. She has always been a devoted sister and friend to me, and many a time she has risked a rupture with her most brilliant lovers, rather than desert me or neglect me when my health or my interests demanded her zealous care or her aid.

As I was saying, she took up her post at my bedside, and did not leave me until she had cured me. Her tireless devotion to me vexed Count Nasi somewhat, although he was my friend and placed full confidence in my word; but he himself confessed to me what he called his miserable weakness. When I urged Checchina to deal more gently with that excellent young man's involuntary sensitiveness, she would say:

"Nonsense! Don't you see that I must train him to respect my independence? Do you suppose that, when I am his wife, I will consent to abandon my stage friends and worry about what people in society think of me? Don't believe it, Lelio. I propose to remain free, and to obey the voice of my heart and nothing else."

She had persuaded herself, with none too good reason, that the count was fully determined to marry her; and I may say that she possessed, to a marvellous degree, the gift of deluding herself with respect to the violence of the passions she inspired; nothing could equal her confidence in a promise, unless it were her philosophical and heroic indifference when she was deceived.

I suffered considerably; my disease came very near assuming a serious character. The doctors found a very pronounced tendency to enlargement of the heart, and the very sharp pains which I felt about that organ and the excessive rush of blood thither necessitated numerous bleedings. So that I lost the rest of that season, and, as soon as I was convalescent, I went for rest and balmy air to a beautiful villa of Count Nasi's, a few leagues from Florence, near Cafaggiolo, at the foot of the Apennines. He promised to join me there with Checchina as soon as the performances for which she was engaged would allow her to leave Naples.

A few days of that delightful solitude benefited me so much that I was allowed to take excursions of some length, sometimes in the saddle, sometimes on foot, through the narrow gorges and picturesque ravines which form a first step to the towering masses of the Apennines. In my musing I called that region the _proscenium_ of the great range, and I loved to seek out some amphitheatre of hills or some natural terrace where, all alone and far from every eye, I could indulge in outbursts of lyric declamation, which were answered by the resonant echoes or the mysterious murmur of the streams flowing under the rocks.

One day I unexpectedly found myself on the Florence road. Like a glistening white ribbon it ran through a verdant, gently undulating country, strewn with beautiful gardens, wooded parks and handsome villas. Seeking to learn my whereabouts, I stopped at the gate of one of those charming abodes. The gate was open, and I could see an avenue of old trees mysteriously intertwined. Beneath those dark, voluptuously enlaced branches a woman was walking slowly--a woman of slender form and a bearing so noble that I paused to gaze at her and follow her with my eyes as long as possible. As she showed no inclination to turn, I was seized with an irresistible longing to see her features, and I yielded to it, heedless of the fact that I was violating the proprieties, and might be subjected to a humiliating rebuff.

"Who can say," I said to myself, "women are so indulgent sometimes in this mild climate of ours!"

Moreover, I reasoned that my face was too well known for me ever to be taken for a robber; and, lastly, I relied to some extent on the curiosity which the great majority of people feel to obtain a near view of the features and manners of an artist of some celebrity.

So I ventured into the shady avenue, walking rapidly, and was just about to overtake the solitary promenader, when I saw coming toward her a young man dressed in the latest fashion, and with a pretty, insipid face, who caught sight of me before I had time to jump in among the trees. I was within three yards of the noble pair. The young man stopped beside the lady, offered her his arm, and said to her, glancing at me with the most surprised air of which a perfectly attired man is capable:

"My dear cousin, who is this man who is following you?"

The lady turned, and the sight of her gave me such a shock that for a moment I was in danger of a relapse. My heart gave a sharp, nervous throb as I recognized the young woman who stared at me in such a curious way from her proscenium box at the time I was taken ill at Naples. Her face flushed slightly, then lost its color. But no gesture, no exclamation betrayed either surprise or anger. She eyed me from head to foot with calm disdain, and replied with incredible audacity:

"I don't know him."

That extraordinary statement aroused my curiosity. It seemed to me that I could detect in that girl such consummate dissimulation and such a strange sort of pride that I suddenly felt irresistibly impelled to take the risk of a mad adventure. We Bohemians do not allow ourselves to be awed overmuch by the customs of society and the laws of propriety; we have no great fear of being ejected from those private theatres where society takes its turn at posing before us, and where we feel so strongly the superiority of the artist; for there no one can arouse in us the intense emotions which we have the art of arousing. Salons bore us to death and chill our blood, in return for the warmth and life that we carry thither. So I approached my noble hosts with a dignified air, caring very little about the manner of their reception of me, and determined to take the first convenient pretext for obtaining admission to the house.

I bowed gravely and represented myself as a piano-tuner who had been sent for to Florence from a country-house, the name of which I pretended to remember imperfectly.

"This is not the place. You may quit this place," replied the signora, coldly. But, like a true fiancé, the cousin came to my assistance.

"My dear cousin," he said, "your piano is terribly out of tune; if this man could spare an hour, we might have some music this evening. I beg you to let him tune it, won't you?"

The young Grimani had a wicked smile on her lips as she replied:

"As you please, cousin."

"Does she propose to amuse herself at my expense or his?" I thought. "Perhaps both."

I bowed slightly to signify my consent. Thereupon the cousin, with careless courtesy, pointed out to me a glass door at the end of the avenue, where the branches, drooping lower and lower until they formed a sort of arbor, concealed the front of the villa.

"At the end of the large salon, signor," he said, "you will find a study. The piano is there. I shall have the honor to see you again when you have finished. Shall we walk as far as the pond?" he added, turning to his cousin.

I saw her smile again, almost imperceptibly, but with the keenest delight at the mortification that I felt, while she let me go in one direction and continued her stroll in the other, leaning on the arm of her elegant and aristocratic cousin.

It is not a very difficult matter to put a piano _almost_ in tune, and although I had never tried before, I succeeded very well; but I spent much more time about it than an experienced hand would have required, and I watched with some impatience the sun sinking behind the treetops; for I had no other pretext for another interview with my singular heroine than to hear her try the piano when it was in tune. So I worked away awkwardly enough, and was in the midst of a monotonous drumming with which I was almost deafening myself, when I raised my head and saw the signora before me, half turned toward the fireplace, but watching me in the mirror with malicious intentness. To meet her sidelong glance and turn my eyes away was a matter of a second. I continued my work with the utmost coolness, resolved to watch the enemy and see what she was driving at.

La Grimani--I continued to give her that name in my mind, knowing no other--made a pretence of arranging some flowers in the vases on the mantel with great care; then she moved a chair, moved it back to the place where it was before, dropped her fan, picked it up with a great rustling of her skirts, opened a window, and instantly closed it again, then, seeing that I was determined not to notice anything, she adopted the extreme course of dropping a stool on her pretty little foot and uttering a cry of pain. I was stupid enough to drop the key on the metallic strings, which emitted a piteous wail. The signora started, shrugged her shoulders, and, suddenly recovering all her self-possession, as if we were acting a scene in a burlesque, she looked me in the face and said:

"_Cosa, signore?_"

"I thought that your ladyship spoke to me," I replied, with no less tranquillity, and resumed my work. She remained standing in the middle of the room as if petrified by amazement in the face of such audacity, or as if brought to a standstill by a sudden doubt as to my identity with the person whom she had thought that she recognized. At last she lost patience, and asked me, almost roughly, if I had nearly finished.

"Oh! bless my soul, no! signora," I replied; "here is a broken string, you see." As I spoke I gave the key a sharp twist on the pin I was turning, and broke the string.

"It seems to me," said she, "that this piano is giving you a great deal of trouble."

"A great deal," I rejoined, "the strings keep breaking." And I snapped a second one.

"That is very extraordinary," she exclaimed.

"Yes, it is indeed extraordinary," I replied.

The cousin entered at that moment, and I snapped a third string by way of salute. It was one of the lower bass strings, and it made a terrible report. The cousin, who was not expecting it, stepped back, and the signora laughed aloud. That laugh had a strange sound to me. It was not in harmony with her face or her manner; it was harsh and spasmodic, and disconcerted the cousin so that I almost pitied him.

"I am very much afraid," she said, when that nervous paroxysm came to an end and she was able to speak, "I am very much afraid that we cannot have any music to-night. This poor old _cembalo_ is bewitched, all the strings are breaking. It is really supernatural, I assure you, Hector; if you so much as look at them they twist and snap with a horrible noise."

With that she began to laugh again, peal upon peal, without the slightest trace of merriment on her face. The cousin laughed because she did, but was abruptly checked by these words from her:

"For heaven's sake, cousin, don't laugh; you haven't the slightest inclination to."

The cousin seemed to me to be well used to being laughed at and teased. But he was hurt, no doubt, to be treated so in my presence; for he said in an irritated tone:

"Why shouldn't I be inclined to laugh as well as you, cousin?"

"Because I say that you are not," she replied. "But tell me, Hector," she added, abruptly changing the subject, "were you at San Carlo last year?"

"No, cousin."

"In that case you did not hear the famous Lelio?"

She said these last words with significant emphasis; but she had not the impudence to look me in the face immediately, and I had time to recover from the emotion caused me by that blow full in the face.

"I neither heard him nor saw him," said the guileless cousin, "but I heard a great dea! about him. He's a great artist, so I understand."

"Very great," replied La Grimani, "a full head taller than you. See! he is about this gentleman's height.--Do you know him, signor?" she added, turning to me.

"I know him very well, signora," I replied tartly; "he is a very handsome fellow, a very great actor, an admirable singer, a very clever talker, a bold and spirited adventurer, and, furthermore, a fearless duellist, which is not amiss."

The signora looked at her cousin, then glanced at me, with an indifferent air, as if to say: "It's of little consequence to me." Then she went off into another paroxysm of inextinguishable laughter, which was altogether unnatural, and in which neither her cousin nor myself joined. I returned to my pursuit of the dominant chord on the keyboard, and Signor Ettore moved about impatiently, making his new boots squeak on the floor, as if he were utterly disgusted with the conversation being carried on between a mere workman like myself and his noble fiancée.

"Look you, cousin, you mustn't believe what he says about Lelio," observed the signora, abruptly ceasing her convulsive laughter. "So far as the man's great beauty is concerned, I cannot contradict him for I didn't look at him; and, besides, an actor can always appear young and handsome with his paint and his false hair and moustaches. But as to his being an admirable singer and a good actor, that I deny. In the first place he sings false, in the second place he acts detestably. His declamation is too loud, his gestures commonplace, the expression of his features stiff and conventional. When he weeps, he makes wry faces; when he threatens, he roars; when he is majestic, he is tedious; and, in his best moments, when he holds himself back and doesn't speak, one might apply to him the refrain of the ballad:

"'_Brutto è quanto stupido._'

I am sorry to disagree with this gentleman; but my opinion is the opinion of the public! It isn't my fault that Lelio didn't have the slightest success at San Carlo, and I don't advise you to take the journey to Naples to see him, cousin."

Having received this stinging lesson, for a moment I was on the verge of losing my head and picking a quarrel with the cousin to punish the signora; but the excellent youth did not give me time.

"That is just like a woman," he cried, "and above all things just like one of your inconceivable whims, cousin! Not more than three days ago, you told me that Lelio was the finest actor and the most incomparable singer in all Italy. I have no doubt that you will say to-morrow just the opposite of what you say to-day, with the privilege of taking it all back again the next day."

"To-morrow and the day after to-morrow and every day of my life, my dear cousin," the signora hurriedly interposed, "I will tell you that you are a fool and Lelio an idiot."

"Brava, signora," rejoined the cousin in an undertone, offering her his arm to leave the salon; "he who loves you is a fool, and he who displeases you an idiot."

"Before your lordship and ladyship retire," I said, without the slightest symptom of emotion, "I will call your attention to the fact that this piano is in such a bad condition that I cannot possibly repair it properly in one day. I am obliged to go now; but if such is your wish, I will return to-morrow."

"Certainly, signor," replied the cousin, with patronizing politeness, half turning toward me; "you will oblige me if you will return to-morrow."

La Grimani, stopping him with a sudden and energetic motion of her head, forced him to turn wholly around, and as she stood in the doorway, leaning on his arm and eyeing me with an air of defiance, she said, as she saw me close the piano and take my hat:

"Will the signor come again to-morrow?"

"Most certainly I shall not fail to do so," I replied, bowing to the ground.

She continued to detain her cousin in the doorway, so that I was obliged to pass in front of them in order to go out; and, as I did so, I bowed again and looked my Bradamante in the eye with an assurance befitting the combat upon which we had entered. A gleam of undaunted courage flashed from her eyes. Therein I read distinctly that my boldness did not displease her, and that the lists were not closed to me.

So I was at my post before noon the next day, and found my heroine at hers, seated at the piano and touching the silent or jangling keys with admirable indifference, as if she desired to prove to me by those diabolical discords her detestation and contempt for music.

I entered calmly and saluted her with as much respectful indifference as if I were in reality a piano-tuner. I placed my hat carelessly on a chair, I laboriously drew off my gloves, imitating the awkwardness of a man unused to wearing them. I took from my pocket a wooden box filled with spools of wire, and began to unwind enough for one string--all with the utmost gravity and without affectation. The signora continued to pound the hapless piano in unmerciful fashion, although the sounds she produced were of a nature to put to flight the most hardened savages. I at once saw that she was amusing herself by destroying its tone and breaking it more and more, in order to provide work for me, and I detected more coquetry than cruelty in that devilment; for she seemed disposed to remain with me.

Thereupon I said to her with a perfectly serious face: "Does your ladyship think that the piano begins to be in tune?"

"The harmony is satisfactory to me," she said, biting her lips to keep from laughing, "and the sounds it gives forth are extremely pleasant to the ear."

"It is a fine instrument," said I.

"And in very good condition," she rejoined.

"Your ladyship is a very talented performer."

"As you see."

"That is a charming waltz, and exceedingly well executed."

"Is it not? How could one help playing well on an instrument in such perfect tune? You love music, signor?"

"A little, signora; but your playing goes to my heart."

"In that case I will continue." And she proceeded, with a fiendish smile, to murder one of the _bravura_ airs she had heard me sing with the greatest applause on the stage.

"Is his lordship your cousin well?" I said, when she had finished.

"He is hunting."

"Is your ladyship fond of game?"

"I am immoderately fond of it. And you, signor?"

"I am sincerely and deeply partial to it."

"Which do you like best, game or music?"

"I like music at table, but at this moment I should like some game better."

She rose and rang. A servant appeared instantly, as if he were a piece of machinery set in motion by the bell-rope.