“Play the violin!” thought Prince Emilio. “What can have happened to my palazzo? Am I awake? Here I am, in that woman’s bed, and she certainly thinks herself at home — she has taken off her cloak! Have I, like Vendramin, inhaled opium, and am I in the midst of one of those dreams in which he sees Venice as it was three centuries ago?”
The unknown fair one, seated in front of a dressing-table blazing with wax lights, was unfastening her frippery with the utmost calmness.
“Ring for Giulia,” said she; “I want to get my dress off.”
At that instant, the Duke noticed that the supper had been disturbed; he looked round the room, and discovered the Prince’s trousers hanging over a chair at the foot of the bed.
“Clarina, I will not ring!” cried the Duke, in a shrill voice of fury. “I will not play the violin this evening, nor tomorrow, nor ever again — ”
“Ta, ta, ta, ta!” sang Clarina, on the four octaves of the same note, leaping from one to the next with the ease of a nightingale.
“In spite of that voice, which would make your patron saint Clara envious, you are really too impudent, you rascally hussy!”
“You have not brought me up to listen to such abuse,” said she, with some pride.
“Have I brought you up to hide a man in your bed? You are unworthy alike of my generosity and of my hatred — ”
“A man in my bed!” exclaimed Clarina, hastily looking round.
“And after daring to eat our supper, as if he were at home,” added the Duke.
“But am I not at home?” cried Emilio. “I am the Prince of Varese; this palace is mine.”
As he spoke, Emilio sat up in bed, his handsome and noble Venetian head framed in the flowing hangings.
At first Clarina laughed — one of those irrepressible fits of laughter which seize a girl when she meets with an adventure comic beyond all conception. But her laughter ceased as she saw the young man, who, as has been said, was remarkably handsome, though but lightly attired; the madness that possessed Emilio seized her, too, and, as she had no one to adore, no sense of reason bridled her sudden fancy — a Sicilian woman in love.
“Although this is the palazzo Memmi, I will thank your Highness to quit,” said the Duke, assuming the cold irony of a polished gentleman. “I am at home here.”
“Let me tell you, Monsieur le Duc, that you are in my room, not in your own,” said Clarina, rousing herself from her amazement. “If you have any doubts of my virtue, at any rate give me the benefit of my crime — ”
“Doubts! Say proof positive, my lady!”
“I swear to you that I am innocent,” replied Clarina.
“What, then, do I see in that bed?” asked the Duke.
“Old Ogre!” cried Clarina. “If you believe your eyes rather than my assertion, you have ceased to love me. Go, and do not weary my ears! Do you hear? Go, Monsieur le Duc. This young Prince will repay you the million francs I have cost you, if you insist.”
“I will repay nothing,” said Emilio in an undertone.
“There is nothing due! A million is cheap for Clara Tinti when a man is so ugly. Now, go,” said she to the Duke. “You dismissed me; now I dismiss you. We are quits.”
At a gesture on Cataneo’s part, as he seemed inclined to dispute this order, which was given with an action worthy of Semiramis, — the part in which la Tinti had won her fame, — the prima donna flew at the old ape and put him out of the room.
“If you do not leave me in quiet this evening, we never meet again. And my never counts for more than yours,” she added.
“Quiet!” retorted the Duke, with a bitter laugh. “Dear idol, it strikes me that I am leaving you agitata!”
The Duke departed.
His mean spirit was no surprise to Emilio.
Every man who has accustomed himself to some particular taste, chosen from among the various effects of love, in harmony with his own nature, knows that no consideration can stop a man who has allowed his passions to become a habit.
Clarina bounded like a fawn from the door to the bed.
“A prince, and poor, young, and handsome!” cried she. “Why, it is a fairy tale!”
The Sicilian perched herself on the bed with the artless freedom of an animal, the yearning of a plant for the sun, the airy motion of a branch waltzing to the breeze. As she unbuttoned the wristbands of her sleeves, she began to sing, not in the pitch that won her the applause of an audience at the Fenice, but in a warble tender with emotion. Her song was a zephyr carrying the caresses of her love to the heart.
She stole a glance at Emilio, who was as much embarrassed as she; for this woman of the stage had lost all the boldness that had sparkled in her eyes and given decision to her voice and gestures when she dismissed the Duke. She was as humble as a courtesan who has fallen in love.
To picture la Tinti you must recall one of our best French singers when she came out in Il Fazzoletto, an opera by Garcia that was then being played by an Italian company at the theatre in the Rue Lauvois. She was so beautiful that a Naples guardsman, having failed to win a hearing, killed himself in despair. The prima donna of the Fenice had the same refinement of features, the same elegant figure, and was equally young; but she had in addition the warm blood of Sicily that gave a glow to her loveliness. Her voice was fuller and richer, and she had that air of native majesty that is characteristic of Italian women.
La Tinti — whose name also resembled that which the French singer assumed — was now seventeen, and the poor Prince three-and-twenty. What mocking hand had thought it sport to bring the match so near the powder? A fragrant room hung with rose-colored silk and brilliant with wax lights, a bed dressed in lace, a silent palace, and Venice! Two young and beautiful creatures! every ravishment at once.
Emilio snatched up his trousers, jumped out of bed, escaped into the dressing-room, put on his clothes, came back and hurried to the door.
These were his thoughts while dressing: —
“Massimilla, beloved daughter of the Doni, in whom Italian beauty is an hereditary prerogative, you who are worthy of the portrait of Margherita, one of the few canvases painted entirely by Raphael to his glory! My beautiful and saintly mistress, shall I not have deserved you if I fly from this abyss of flowers? Should I be worthy of you if I profaned a heart that is wholly yours? No; I will not fall into the vulgar snare laid for me by my rebellious senses! This girl has her Duke, mine be my Duchess!”
As he lifted the curtain, he heard a moan. The heroic lover looked round and saw Clarina on her knees, her face hidden in the bed, choking with sobs. Is it to be believed? The singer was lovelier kneeling thus, her face invisible, than even in her confusion with a glowing countenance. Her hair, which had fallen over her shoulders, her Magdalen-like attitude, the disorder of her half-unfastened dress, — the whole picture had been composed by the devil, who, as is well known, is a fine colorist.
The Prince put his arm round the weeping girl, who slipped from him like a snake, and clung to one foot, pressing it to her beautiful bosom.
“Will you explain to me,” said he, shaking his foot to free it from her embrace, “how you happen to be in my palazzo? How the impoverished Emilio Memmi — ”
“Emilio Memmi!” cried Tinti, rising. “You said you were a Prince.”
“A Prince since yesterday.”
“You are in love with the Duchess Cataneo!” said she, looking at him from head to foot.
Emilio stood mute, seeing that the prima dona was smiling at him through her tears.
“Your Highness does not know that the man who had me trained for the stage — that the Duke — is Cataneo himself. And your friend Vendramini, thinking to do you a service, let him this palace for a thousand crowns, for the period of my season at the Fenice. Dear idol of my heart!” she went on, taking his hand and drawing him towards her, “why do you fly from one for whom many a man would run the risk of broken bones? Love, you see, is always love. It is the same everywhere; it is the sun of our souls; we can w
arm ourselves whenever it shines, and here — now — it is full noonday. If to-morrow you are not satisfied, kill me! But I shall survive, for I am a real beauty!”
Emilio decided on remaining. When he signified his consent by a nod the impulse of delight that sent a shiver through Clarina seemed to him like a light from hell. Love had never before appeared to him in so impressive a form.
At that moment Carmagnola whistled loudly.
“What can he want of me?” said the Prince.
But bewildered by love, Emilio paid no heed to the gondolier’s repeated signals.
If you have never traveled in Switzerland you may perhaps read this description with pleasure; and if you have clambered among those mountains you will not be sorry to be reminded of the scenery.
In that sublime land, in the heart of a mass of rock riven by a gorge, — a valley as wide as the Avenue de Neuilly in Paris, but a hundred fathoms deep and broken into ravines, — flows a torrent coming from some tremendous height of the Saint-Gothard on the Simplon, which has formed a pool, I know not how many yards deep or how many feet long and wide, hemmed in by splintered cliffs of granite on which meadows find a place, with fir-trees between them, and enormous elms, and where violets also grow, and strawberries. Here and there stands a chalet and at the window you may see the rosy face of a yellow-haired Swiss girl. According to the moods of the sky the water in this tarn is blue and green, but as a sapphire is blue, as an emerald is green. Well, nothing in the world can give such an idea of depth, peace, immensity, heavenly love, and eternal happiness — to the most heedless traveler, the most hurried courier, the most commonplace tradesman — as this liquid diamond into which the snow, gathering from the highest Alps, trickles through a natural channel hidden under the trees and eaten through the rock, escaping below through a gap without a sound. The watery sheet overhanging the fall glides so gently that no ripple is to be seen on the surface which mirrors the chaise as you drive past. The postboy smacks his whip; you turn past a crag; you cross a bridge: suddenly there is a terrific uproar of cascades tumbling together one upon another. The water, taking a mighty leap, is broken into a hundred falls, dashed to spray on the boulders; it sparkles in a myriad jets against a mass that has fallen from the heights that tower over the ravine exactly in the middle of the road that has been so irresistibly cut by the most formidable of active forces.
If you have formed a clear idea of this landscape, you will see in those sleeping waters the image of Emilio’s love for the Duchess, and in the cascades leaping like a flock of sheep, an idea of his passion shared with la Tinti. In the midst of his torrent of love a rock stood up against which the torrent broke. The Prince, like Sisyphus, was constantly under the stone.
“What on earth does the Duke do with a violin?” he wondered. “Do I owe this symphony to him?”
He asked Clara Tinti.
“My dear child,” — for she saw that Emilio was but a child, — ”dear child,” said she, “that man, who is a hundred and eighteen in the parish register of vice, and only forty-seven in the register of the Church, has but one single joy left to him in life. Yes, everything is broken, everything in him is ruin or rags; his soul, intellect, heart, nerves, — everything in man that can supply an impulse and remind him of heaven, either by desire or enjoyment, is bound up with music, or rather with one of the many effects produced by music, the perfect unison of two voices, or of a voice with the top string of his violin. The old ape sits on my knee, takes his instrument, — he plays fairly well, — he produces the notes, and I try to imitate them. Then, when the long-sought-for moment comes when it is impossible to distinguish in the body of sound which is the note on the violin and which proceeds from my throat, the old man falls into an ecstasy, his dim eyes light up with their last remaining fires, he is quite happy and will roll on the floor like a drunken man.
“That is why he pays Genovese such a price. Genovese is the only tenor whose voice occasionally sounds in unison with mine. Either we really do sing exactly together once or twice in an evening, or the Duke imagines that we do; and for that imaginary pleasure he has bought Genovese. Genovese belongs to him. No theatrical manager can engage that tenor without me, nor have me to sing without him. The Duke brought me up on purpose to gratify that whim; to him I owe my talent, my beauty, — my fortune, no doubt. He will die of an attack of perfect unison. The sense of hearing alone has survived the wreck of his faculties; that is the only thread by which he holds on to life. A vigorous shoot springs from that rotten stump. There are, I am told, many men in the same predicament. May Madonna preserve them!
“You have not come to that! You can do all you want — all I want of you, I know.”
Towards morning the Prince stole away and found Carmagnola lying asleep across the door.
“Altezza,” said the gondolier, “the Duchess ordered me to give you this note.”
He held out a dainty sheet of paper folded into a triangle. The Prince felt dizzy; he went back into the room and dropped into a chair, for his sight was dim, and his hands shook as he read: —
“DEAR EMILIO: — Your gondola stopped at your palazzo. Did you not
know that Cataneo has taken it for la Tinti? If you love me, go
to-night to Vendramin, who tells me he has a room ready for you in
his house. What shall I do? Can I remain in Venice to see my
husband and his opera singer? Shall we go back together to Friuli?
Write me one word, if only to tell me what the letter was you
tossed into the lagoon.
“MASSIMILLA DONI.”
The writing and the scent of the paper brought a thousand memories back to the young Venetian’s mind. The sun of a single-minded passion threw its radiance on the blue depths come from so far, collected in a bottomless pool, and shining like a star. The noble youth could not restrain the tears that flowed freely from his eyes, for in the languid state produced by satiated senses he was disarmed by the thought of that purer divinity.
Even in her sleep Clarina heard his weeping; she sat up in bed, saw her Prince in a dejected attitude, and threw herself at his knees.
“They are still waiting for the answer,” said Carmagnola, putting the curtain aside.
“Wretch, you have undone me!” cried Emilio, starting up and spurning Clarina with his foot.
She clutched it so lovingly, her look imploring some explanation, — the look of a tear-stained Samaritan, — that Emilio, enraged to find himself still in the toils of the passion that had wrought his fall, pushed away the singer with an unmanly kick.
“You told me to kill you, — then die, venomous reptile!” he exclaimed.
He left the palace, and sprang into his gondola.
“Pull,” said he to Carmagnola.
“Where?” asked the old servant.
“Where you will.”
The gondolier divined his master’s wishes, and by many windings brought him at last into the Canareggio, to the door of a wonderful palazzo, which you will admire when you see Venice, for no traveler ever fails to stop in front of those windows, each of a different design, vying with each other in fantastic ornament, with balconies like lace-work; to study the corners finishing in tall and slender twisted columns, the string-courses wrought by so inventive a chisel that no two shapes are alike in the arabesques on the stones.
How charming is that doorway! how mysterious the vaulted arcade leading to the stairs! Who could fail to admire the steps on which ingenious art has laid a carpet that will last while Venice stands, — a carpet as rich as if wrought in Turkey, but composed of marbles in endless variety of shapes, inlaid in white marble. You will delight in the charming ornament of the colonnades of the upper story, — gilt like those of a ducal palace, — so that the marvels of art are both under your feet and above your head.
What delicate shadows! How silent, how cool! But how solemn, too, was that old palace! where, to delight Emilio and his friend Vendramin, the Duchess had collected antique Ve
netian furniture, and employed skilled hands to restore the ceilings. There, old Venice lived again. The splendor was not merely noble, it was instructive. The archaeologist would have found there such models of perfection as the middle ages produced, having taken example from Venice. Here were to be seen the original ceilings of woodwork covered with scrolls and flowers in gold on a colored ground, or in colors on gold, and ceilings of gilt plaster castings, with a picture of many figures in each corner, with a splendid fresco in the centre, — a style so costly that there are not two in the Louvre, and that the extravagance of Louis XIV. shrunk from such expense at Versailles. On all sides marble, wood, and silk had served as materials for exquisite workmanship.
Emilio pushed open a carved oak door, made his way down the long, vaulted passage which runs from end to end on each floor of a Venetian palazzo, and stopped before another door, so familiar that it made his heart beat. On seeing him, a lady companion came out of a vast drawing-room, and admitted him to a study where he found the Duchess on her knees in front of a Madonna.
He had come to confess and ask forgiveness. Massimilla, in prayer, had converted him. He and God; nothing else dwelt in that heart.
The Duchess rose very unaffectedly, and held out her hand. Her lover did not take it.
“Did not Gianbattista see you, yesterday?” she asked.
“No,” he replied.
“That piece of ill-luck gave me a night of misery. I was so afraid lest you might meet the Duke, whose perversity I know too well. What made Vendramin let your palace to him?”
“It was a good idea, Milla, for your Prince is poor enough.”
Massimilla was so beautiful in her trust of him, and so wonderfully lovely, so happy in Emilio’s presence, that at this moment the Prince, wide awake, experienced the sensations of the horrible dream that torments persons of a lively imagination, in which after arriving in a ballroom full of women in full dress, the dreamer is suddenly aware that he is naked, without even a shirt; shame and terror possess him by turns, and only waking can relieve him from his misery. Thus stood Emilio’s soul in the presence of his mistress. Hitherto that soul had known only the fairest flowers of feeling; a debauch had plunged it into dishonor. This none knew but he, for the beautiful Florentine ascribed so many virtues to her lover that the man she adored could not but be incapable of any stain.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 1144