Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  ‘But was he serenading the Lady Ortensia out of ill-feeling towards her, or out of good-feeling?’

  ‘Out of good-feeling.’

  ‘What is the good-feeling of a handsome young man towards a beautiful young woman usually called, my friend?’

  ‘Love, I suppose. What nonsense is this?’

  ‘It is the Socratic method, as recorded by Plato. I learned something of it when I was a student at Padua. Now, you have told me that the young man feels love for the young woman, and you appear to be right; but what do you think he hopes to get from her in return, love or dislike?’

  ‘Her love, no doubt.’

  ‘You answer well, my friend. Now tell me this also. Will he get her love without the consent of her husband, or with it?’

  ‘Without, if he gets it at all! I am tired of this fooling. It bores me excessively.’

  ‘You will not be bored long,’ answered Trombin with confidence. ‘Answer me one question more. Do you suppose that the young man will have any success with the Lady Ortensia, unless he can separate her from Stradella by some stratagem?’

  Gambardella looked sharply at his wordy companion.

  ‘I begin to take your meaning,’ he said.

  ‘You have a good mind,’ Trombin answered, ‘but it works slowly. You are on the verge of guessing what my inspiration is. Let us, for a large consideration, be the means of carrying off the Lady Ortensia for this rich young man, and when we have done so and received his money, let us execute the plan we have already made. For it will be easy for us to persuade her to do anything we suggest, because both she and her husband are under the greatest obligations to us, whereas the young man would have to employ violence and make a great scandal. But here comes that excellent Tommaso.’

  ‘You are certainly a great man,’ said Gambardella, looking at Trombin with admiration.

  It was clear from Tommaso’s face that the intelligence he brought was important, and as he stood hat in hand before his masters he looked up and down the colonnade to see if there were any one in sight and near enough to listen.

  ‘The gentleman is Don Alberto Altieri,’ he said, almost in a whisper.

  Trombin at once puffed out his pink cheeks, pursed his lips, and whistled very softly, for he was much surprised; but Gambardella seemed quite unmoved, and merely nodded to Tommaso as if well satisfied with the latter’s service. Then the two strolled on again, and their cut-throat servant followed them, just out of hearing of their conversation, as before; for he was much too wise to try any common trick of eavesdropping on a pair of men who would just as soon wring his neck and throw him into a well as look at him. His highest ambition really was to be promoted to help them in one of those outrageous deeds that had made them the most famous Bravi of the whole century, who had received pardons from popes and kings, from the Emperor Leopold, and from the Venetian Republic itself, under which passports they travelled and lived where they pleased, still untouched by the law.

  ‘This is a delicate business,’ observed Gambardella, for both had heard the gossip about Don Alberto and Queen Christina.

  ‘It will be the more amusing,’ answered Trombin. ‘When I reflect upon the primitive simplicity of the business we undertook for Pignaver, and compare it with the plan we have now conceived and shall certainly execute in a few days, I cannot but congratulate myself on the fertility of my imagination, or, as I might say, upon the resemblance between my mind and that of the novelist Boccaccio. But I feel the superiority of my lot over his in the fact that I am generally the chief actor in my own stories.’

  ‘The Queen will be useful,’ said Gambardella.

  ‘Bless her for an admirably amusing woman!’ cried Trombin fervently. ‘She has the mane of the lion and the heart of the hare!’

  ‘The mane happens to be a wig, my friend,’ sneered the other.

  ‘In more senses than one,’ retorted Trombin, ‘but the hare’s heart is genuine. She was afraid of poor Monaldeschi. You knew it, I knew it, and Luigi Santinelli knew it. She ordered us to kill him because she believed he was selling her secrets to the Spanish, and was going to poison her in their interests. She is always fancying that some one wants to poison her. Oh, yes, my friend, a most diverting character, for she thinks of nothing but herself, and her Self is a selfish, hysterical, cruel, cowardly woman!’

  ‘I detest her for that business at Fontainebleau,’ answered Gambardella.

  ‘Precisely. So do I, though she amuses me. To strangle a superfluous woman is sometimes unavoidable, and there are occasions when it is wisdom to stab an unnecessary male in the back. But to put an unarmed gentleman to the wall, so to say, in broad daylight and deliberately skewer him, being three to one as we were that day, is a thing I shall decline to do again for all the gold in India, Mexico, and Brazil!’

  ‘Unless it be paid in cash,’ suggested Gambardella.

  ‘Cash,’ answered Trombin enigmatically, ’is one of the forces of nature.’

  FOOTNOTES:

  For Trombin’s view of Christina’s character and Monaldeschi’s murder, I am indebted to the admirable and trustworthy work of Baron de Bildt, a distinguished Swedish diplomatist, entitled Christine de Suède et le Cardinal Azzolino (Paris, 1899). The writer points out the singular ignorance of the truth about Monaldeschi displayed by Browning and the elder Dumas.

  CHAPTER XVI

  A WEEK LATER fashionable Rome was gathered together at the Palazzo Riario to a feast of poetry and music. Christina had just founded the Academy which survives to this day in that state of mediocrity above which it has never risen in nearly two hundred and fifty years, for the idea had suggested itself to her when she found how easy it was to attract starving talent to a good dinner. ‘Feed the hungry’ is a good motto for those who aim at being patrons of the fine arts, like the ex-Queen in Rome, or Pignaver in Venice; the only condition is that the hungry shall be clever or witty starvelings who can pay for their dinners with their brains. However, when men of talent cease to be hungry they generally become snobs, and will take the fly of the season with as much voracity as any trout in May.

  The literary and musical receptions at the Palazzo Riario took place in the portico that opened upon the gardens in those days; for the whole palace was afterwards rebuilt by the Corsini, and many parts of it were changed. Christina had been in Paris and had seen Louis Fourteenth dance as Alcibiades in Benserade’s ballet, a sight to rejoice the gods of Olympus, who must certainly have laughed even louder at the bewigged King’s mincing steps than they did at Vulcan’s limp; for with many gifts, the Sun-King possessed no more sense of humour than Don Quixote, who stood on his head before Sancho as a proof that love was driving him mad. The ex-Queen was already dreaming of a wonderful pastoral play, in which Don Alberto Altieri was to appear as Endymion, and she herself, the elderly and slightly bedraggled virgin queen, would play Diana. There was Guidi to write the verses, Stradella should compose the music, and Christina herself would get most of the credit for the work.

  In the meantime, though she had nothing so complete to offer, she invited the Romans to hear such poetry as she could provide, and some excellent music; and Bernini, who could make anything look like anything else by means of whitewashed wooden columns, coarse draperies stiffened and whitened with wet plaster, and caryatides modelled in plaster and pasteboard, had improvised a Temple of Art for the performance. In the midst of this sanctuary, amongst laurels and roses, he had placed the clay model of his bust of Christina herself, in a wig like the French King’s. He afterwards cast it in bronze, and considering that he must have done his best to make the portrait pleasing, it is appalling to think what the original must have been.

  The little temple stood just outside the portico, facing inward like a stage, on which the performers appeared in turn, the audience being gathered under the portico. Beyond it, the beautiful gardens stretched away in terraces and grades to the high distance. Christina herself sat on a sort of throne, facing the clay image of herself, while her cou
rtiers and satellites were grouped behind her. Her intimate friend Cardinal Azzolino sat on her right, because Cardinal Altieri, who should have been there, had not come, and half-a-dozen other cardinals in scarlet occupied the huge gilt arm-chairs on both sides, each having one or two of his especial parasites behind him in readiness to do his bidding or to laugh at his jokes, as the case might be. There were not more than fifty other seats in the portico, and they were all occupied by the ladies of Rome, who came to applaud the performances of their countrymen and to laugh at the hysterical ‘Minerva of the North,’ who paid the poets and musicians, and went into such convulsions of appreciation when their works pleased her that the stability of her huge black wig was in danger. The ladies’ chairs were not close together, but scattered about, as in a drawing-room, and almost every lady had her own little court of admirers or parasites according to her age and looks. Many of the younger ones were standing, or strolling about, in the intervals of the entertainment, each closely attended by one or two fine gentlemen; but as soon as a recitation of verses began, or a piece of music, they all stood still where they were, and the hum of voices instantly gave way to profound silence.

  Ortensia was there too. She had come with her husband, and had been graciously received by the Queen, who evidently knew nothing of Don Alberto’s serenade; but Stradella had then left her to join his musicians, for he was to direct a part of his new oratorio as well as sing an air in it himself, and Ortensia necessarily stayed behind with the audience. Don Alberto Altieri at once came forward to take care of her, and nine-tenths of the Roman ladies present immediately asked of their attendant gentlemen who the handsome young woman in straw-coloured silk might be, whose hair had ‘quite the Venetian tinge,’ and whom ‘dear Don Alberto seemed to know so well.’ The result was that the occasion was Ortensia’s first real appearance in Roman society; and before her husband was ready to go home, she had made the acquaintance of nearly all the great ladies present.

  The young man was delighted to show off his power and popularity before her as he led her about, being convinced that it could not fail to make an impression on her; for wherever he turned he was met by smiling faces, and she was followed by eyes that envied the distinction conferred upon her by the nephew of ‘both the reigning Popes,’ as the Romans called Pope Clement and Cardinal Paluzzo Altieri. At the same time, the gossips were beginning to wonder what Queen Christina-Minerva-Diana would say to her favourite’s conduct if she saw anything of it, though Don Alberto kept well behind her as he piloted Ortensia from one great lady to another.

  Then, all at once, the two had disappeared unnoticed. A dark young girl with sad eyes and a sensitive though slightly irregular mouth had just appeared on the stage, dressed as one of the Muses; that is to say, she wore an ample garment of purple silk, of no particular shape, but cut low at the throat and having wide sleeves which displayed a pair of rather nervous white arms; her black hair was knotted low at the back of her neck, and she wore a wreath of fresh bay laurel that was very becoming to her young face. She was one of those strangely talented creatures, still found in Italy, and most often amongst the people, who have the gift of improvising very creditable verses and music on any subject that is given them, or even upon a set of rhymes, after concentrating their thoughts for a time which rarely exceeds two minutes, and is often only a few seconds.

  Don Alberto, who knew the programme of the entertainment, had man[oe]uvred skilfully. The girl appeared on the stage, lute in hand, and began to approach the wet clay bust of Christina with the mournfully inspired air of a Cassandra going up to the altar and image of Apollo; at the same moment Don Alberto found himself with Ortensia before an open door on the left side of the portico, a little farther back than the hindmost of the audience. Every one was watching the stage.

  ‘An “improvisatrice,”’ the young man whispered quickly. ‘Tiresome rubbish! I will show you the statues while it is going on.’

  Ortensia obeyed his gesture and passed through the door into a large hall where a quantity of fragments of antique statues were lying on the stone floor, or were propped upright against the walls, while half-a-dozen of the best were already set up on Corinthian capitals, or ancient altars, which served as pedestals.

  Don Alberto had quietly closed the door behind him when he followed Ortensia into the hall. It was the first time he had succeeded in being alone with her since the night of the serenade.

  ‘I trust you will accept my humblest excuses, dear lady,’ he said as they both stood still, ‘for having unwillingly broken off my little serenade the other night. I had intended it as a welcome to you and your husband on the first night you spent under my roof, but I had not thought of bringing a brace of cut-throats with me, as my rival did! They were too much for me — I wish I knew his name!’

  Don Alberto laughed pleasantly and looked at her, waiting for an answer. At the word ‘cut-throats’ she made a slight movement of surprise, and was on the point of indignantly attacking him for applying such a word to the friends who had brought about her marriage with Stradella; but she checked herself, hardly knowing why.

  ‘I was very tired that night, after moving to the palace,’ she said calmly. ‘My husband spoke of a noise in the street, but I must have been more than half asleep.’

  But Altieri had seen her start and did not believe a word of what she said. He was partially satisfied, however, since she chose to take no notice of a scandalous affray which might easily have reflected on her own good name. He laughed again.

  ‘As it was such a miserable failure, I am glad you were not awake to hear it,’ he said. ‘It was intended as a welcome, as an expression of my profound and devoted admiration, in which I hope you will believe now, though you were asleep that evening!’

  ‘Your admiration is exaggerated, sir,’ Ortensia answered with a light laugh, ‘but if, by devotion, you mean friendliness to my husband and myself, I accept it for him and for me with all my heart!’

  ‘I am grateful to your ladyship,’ said Don Alberto in the same jesting tone, ‘but, with your leave, I distinguish, as they taught me to say in the schools when I was nearly entrapped into a fallacy by a clever antagonist!’

  ‘But I am neither your antagonist nor clever,’ objected Ortensia, fencing gaily; ‘therefore you need not make any fine distinctions!’

  The young man changed his manner and tone with really dramatic effect; his face grew suddenly grave, his voice was sad, and he gazed into Ortensia’s eyes with a wistful lover-like expression that women rarely resisted.

  ‘You are unkind,’ he said. ‘You know what such words mean to me, and you say them willingly, meaning to hurt me — as you do!’

  It was so well done that Ortensia was deceived, as well she might be, seeing how young she was, though years counted not then as they do with us, and every girl of fourteen was taught to be on her defence against men of every age and station.

  ‘I did not mean to be unkind,’ Ortensia said incautiously.

  ‘Then pity me!’ he cried with a sudden burst of real or affected passion. ‘Are you blind, or are you cruel? Or are you only heartless? I do not believe that you were not at the window the other night! Your lips say one thing, your eyes another! You were looking down, you saw me wounded by that villain, and you listened to his master’s serenade till I came back with the watch, only to be defeated a second time by a brace of hired fencing-masters! No! It was not out of friendship for your husband, I confess it frankly, it was for love of you, it was because you have turned my blood to fire and my heart to flame — —’

  ‘Hush!’ Ortensia laid one hand warningly upon his arm, and at the same time she drew herself up with great dignity, and her face was proud and cold. ‘I give no man the right to speak of love to me — —’

  ‘Wait!’ interrupted Altieri. ‘Wait, forgive, pity if you can, but hear me out! Far be it from me to slight your honour, soul of my soul, heart of my body! — for my own is gone, and you are in its place, and without you I should surel
y die! No — do not fear me! See, I stand back from you, you cannot even reach me with your hand as you did just now. But I must speak, and you shall hear me. I know your story, for the Venetian Ambassador has told all Rome how you lived in your uncle’s house in miserable slavery, and how he meant to force you to be his wife, and that rather than submit to such an outrage you ran away with your music-master — we all know the truth about it, from the Pope, and my uncle the Cardinal, and the Queen, to the little page who carries Princess Colonna’s train at a papal audience! There is nothing more romantic and adventurous in all the tales of Boccaccio and Bandello, and whatever the Senator Pignaver may attempt by way of revenge you may be sure that Rome will protect you. But now that you are free, now that the world lies before you and at your feet, will you not choose a man worthy of your birth and name?’

  ‘A lover, sir?’ asked Ortensia indignantly.

  She had slowly moved backwards while he was speaking, till she leaned against the pedestal of a colossal bust of Juno.

  ‘Heaven forbid!’ said Don Alberto. ‘I mean a husband — —’

  ‘You seem to forget that I am married,’ Ortensia replied, with rising anger.

  ‘I would quarrel with any man who dared suggest that you do not believe it,’ said Don Alberto gravely.

  ‘What do you mean?’ She started, and a quick flush rose to her cheeks, but subsided instantly, leaving her pale.

  ‘It takes more than a mere sacristan’s trick to make a real marriage,’ answered Don Alberto enigmatically. ‘Do not be indignant, dearest lady! Let me speak. You were married in the sacristy of San Domenico at Ferrara. Do not be surprised that I know it. The Legate there, Monsignor Pelagetti, is afraid of getting into trouble for having imprisoned Stradella by mistake, and he has sent my uncle a full and precise account of all that happened. The Mother Superior of the Ursulines informed him of what had been done in the sacristy. Her intention was good, no doubt, but it is very uncertain whether the result is valid!’