The Bravo

by James Fenimore Cooper

  The gondolier laughed in real indifference at her affected scorn. But remembering his errand, he quickly assumed a graver air, and endeavored to still the resentment of his fickle mistress by a more respectful manner.

  "St. Mark protect me, Annina!" he said. "If we are not to kneel before the good priore together, it is no reason we should not bargain in wines. Here have I come into the dark canals, within stone's throw of thy very door, with a gondola of mellow Lachryma Christi, such as honest 'Maso, thy father, has rarely dealt in, and thou treatest me as a dog that is chased from a church!"

  "I have little time for thee or thy wines to-night, Gino. Hadst thou not stayed me, I should already have been abroad and happy."

  "Close thy door, girl, and make little ceremony with an old friend," said the gondolier, officiously offering to aid her in securing the dwelling. Annina took him at his word, and as both appeared to work with good will, the house was locked, and the wilful girl and her suitor were soon in the street. Their route lay across the bridge already named. Gino pointed to the gondola as he said, "Thou art not to be tempted, Annina?"

  "Thy rashness in leading the smugglers to my father's door will bring us to harm some day, silly fellow!"

  "The boldness of the act will prevent suspicion."

  "Of what vineyard is the liquor?"

  "It came from the foot of Vesuvius, and is ripened by the heat of the volcano. Should my friends part with it to thy enemy, old Beppo, thy father will rue the hour!"

  Annina, who was much addicted to consulting her interests on all occasions, cast a longing glance at the boat. The canopy was closed, but it was large, and her willing imagination readily induced her to fancy it well filled with skins from Naples.

  "This will be the last of thy visits to our door, Gino?"

  "As thou shalt please. But go down and taste."

  Annina hesitated, and, as a woman is said always to do when she hesitates, she complied. They reached the boat with quick steps, and without regarding the men who were still lounging on the thwarts, Annina glided immediately beneath the canopy. A fifth gondolier was lying at length on the cushions, for, unlike a boat devoted to the contraband, the canopy had the usual arrangement of a barque of the canals.

  "I see nothing to turn me aside!" exclaimed the disappointed girl. "Wilt thou aught with me, Signore?"

  "Thou art welcome. We shall not part so readily as before."

  The stranger had arisen while speaking, and as he ended, he laid a hand on the shoulder of his visitor, who found herself confronted with Don Camillo Monforte.

  Annina was too much practised in deception to indulge in any of the ordinary female symptoms, either of real or of affected alarm. Commanding her features, though in truth her limbs shook, she said with assumed pleasantry—

  "The secret trade is honored in the services of the noble Duke of St. Agata!"

  "I am not here to trifle, girl, as thou wilt see in the end. Thou hast thy choice before thee, frank confession or my just anger."

  Don Camillo spoke calmly, but in a manner that plainly showed Annina she had to deal with a resolute man.

  "What confession would your eccellenza have from the daughter of a poor wine-seller?" she asked, her voice trembling in spite of herself.

  "The truth—and remember that this time we do not part until I am satisfied. The Venetian police and I are now fairly at issue, and thou art the first fruits of my plan."

  "Signor Duca, this is a bold step to take in the heart of the canals!"

  "The consequences be mine. Thy interest will teach thee to confess."

  "I shall make no great merit, Signore, of doing that which is forced upon me. As it is your pleasure to know the little I can tell you, I am happy to be permitted to relate it."

  "Speak then; for time presses."

  "Signore, I shall not pretend to deny you have been ill-treated. Capperi! how ill has the council treated you! A noble cavalier, of a strange country, who, the meanest gossip in Venice knows, has a just right to the honors of the Senate, to be so treated is a disgrace to the Republic! I do not wonder that your eccellenza is out of humor with them. Blessed St. Mark himself would lose his patience to be thus treated!"

  "A truce with this, girl, and to your facts."

  "My facts, Signor Duca, are a thousand times clearer than the sun, and they are all at your eccellenza's service. I am sure I wish I had more of them, since they give you pleasure."

  "Enough of this profession. Speak to the facts themselves."

  Annina, who in the manner of most of her class in Italy, that had been exposed to the intrigues of the towns, had been lavish of her words, now found means to cast a glance at the water, when she saw that the boat had already quitted the canals, and was rowing easily out upon the Lagunes. Perceiving how completely she was in the power of Don Camillo, she began to feel the necessity of being more explicit.

  "Your eccellenza has probably suspected that the council found means to be acquainted with your intention to fly from the city with Donna Violetta?"

  "All that is known to me."

  "Why they chose me to be the servitor of the noble lady is beyond my powers to discover. Our Lady of Loretto! I am not the person to be sent for, when the state wishes to part two lovers!"

  "I have borne with thee, Annina, because I would let the gondola get beyond the limits of the city; but now thou must throw aside thy subterfuge, and speak plainly. Where didst thou leave my wife?"

  "Does your eccellenza then think the state will admit the marriage to be legal?"

  "Girl, answer, or I will find means to make thee. Where didst thou leave my wife?"

  "Blessed St. Theodore! Signore, the agents of the Republic had little need of me, and I was put on the first bridge that the gondola passed."

  "Thou strivest to deceive me in vain. Thou wast on the Lagunes till a late hour in the day, and I have notice of thy having visited the prison of St. Mark as the sun was setting; and this on thy return from the boat of Donna Violetta."

  There was no acting in the wonder of Annina.

  "Santissima Maria! You are better served, Signore, than the council thinks!"

  "As thou wilt find to thy cost, unless the truth be spoken. From what convent did'st thou come?"

  "Signore, from none. If your eccellenza has discovered that the Senate has shut up the Signora Tiepolo in the prison of St. Mark, for safe-keeping, it is no fault of mine."

  "Thy artifice is useless, Annina," observed Don Camillo, calmly. "Thou wast in the prison, in quest of forbidden articles that thou hadst long left with thy cousin Gelsomina, the keeper's daughter, who little suspected thy errand, and on whose innocence and ignorance of the world thou hast long successfully practised. Donna Violetta is no vulgar prisoner, to be immured in a jail."

  "Santissima Madre di Dio!"

  Amazement confined the answer of the girl to this single, but strong exclamation.

  "Thou seest the impossibility of deception. I am acquainted with so much of thy movements as to render it impossible that thou should'st lead me far astray. Thou art not wont to visit thy cousin; but as thou entered the canals this evening—"

  A shout on the water caused Don Camillo to pause. On looking out he saw a dense body of boats sweeping towards the town as if they were all impelled by a single set of oars. A thousand voices were speaking at once, and occasionally a general and doleful cry proclaimed that the floating multitude, which came on, was moved by a common feeling. The singularity of the spectacle, and the fact that his own gondola lay directly in the route of the fleet, which was composed of several hundred boats, drove the examination of the girl, momentarily, from the thoughts of the noble.

  "What have we here, Jacopo?" he demanded, in an under-tone, of the gondolier who steered his own barge.

  "They are fishermen, Signore, and by the manner in which they come down towards the canals, I doubt they are bent on some disturbance. There has been discontent among them since the refusal of the Doge to liberate the boy of their comp
anion from the galleys."

  Curiosity induced the people of Don Camillo to linger a minute, and then they perceived the necessity of pulling out of the course of the floating mass, which came on like a torrent, the men sweeping their boats with that desperate stroke which is so often seen among the Italian oarsmen. A menacing hail, with a command to remain, admonished Don Camillo of the necessity of downright flight, or of obedience. He chose the latter, as the least likely to interfere with his own plans.

  "Who art thou?" demanded one, who had assumed the character of a leader. "If men of the Lagunes and Christians, join your friends, and away with us to St. Mark for justice!"

  "What means this tumult?" asked Don Camillo, whose dress effectually concealed his rank, a disguise that he completed by adopting the Venetian dialect. "Why are you here in these numbers, friends?"

  "Behold!"

  Don Camillo turned, and he beheld the withered features and glaring eyes of old Antonio, fixed in death. The explanation was made by a hundred voices, accompanied by oaths so bitter, and denunciations so deep, that had not Don Camillo been prepared by the tale of Jacopo, he would have found great difficulty in understanding what he heard.

  In dragging the Lagunes for fish, the body of Antonio had been found, and the result was, first, a consultation on the probable means of his death, and then a collection of the men of his calling, and finally the scene described.

  "Giustizia!" exclaimed fifty excited voices, as the grim visage of the fisherman was held towards the light of the moon; "Giustizia in Palazzo e paue in Piazza!"

  "Ask it of the Senate!" returned Jacopo, not attempting to conceal the derision of his tones.

  "Thinkest thou our fellow has suffered for his boldness yesterday?"

  "Stranger things have happened in Venice!"

  "They forbid us to cast our nets in the Canale Orfano, lest the secrets of justice should be known, and yet they have grown bold enough to drown one of our own people in the midst of our gondolas!"

  "Justice, justice!" shouted numberless hoarse throats.

  "Away to St. Mark's! Lay the body at the feet of the Doge! Away, brethren, Antonio's blood is on their souls!"

  Bent on a wild and undigested scheme of asserting their wrongs, the fishermen again plied their oars, and the whole fleet swept away, as if it was composed of a single mass.

  The meeting, though so short, was accompanied by cries, menaces, and all those accustomed signs of rage which mark a popular tumult among those excitable people, and it had produced a sensible effect on the nerves of Annina. Don Camillo profited by her evident terror to press his questions, for the hour no longer admitted of trifling.

  The result was, that while the agitated mob swept into the mouth of the Great Canal, raising hoarse shouts, the gondola of Don Camillo Monforte glided away across the wide and tranquil surface of the Lagunes.

  Chapter XXII

  *

  "A Clifford, a Clifford! we'll follow the king and Clifford."

  HENRY VI.

  The tranquillity of the best ordered society may be disturbed, at any time, by a sudden outbreaking of the malcontents. Against such a disaster there is no more guarding than against the commission of more vulgar crimes; but when a government trembles for its existence, before the turbulence of popular commotion, it is reasonable to infer some radical defect in its organization. Men will rally around their institutions, as freely as they rally around any other cherished interest, when they merit their care, and there can be no surer sign of their hollowness than when the rulers seriously apprehend the breath of the mob. No nation ever exhibited more of this symptomatic terror, on all occasions of internal disturbance, than the pretending Republic of Venice. There was a never-ceasing and a natural tendency to dissolution, in her factious system, which was only resisted by the alertness of her aristocracy, and the political buttresses which their ingenuity had reared. Much was said of the venerable character of her polity, and of its consequent security, but it is in vain that selfishness contends with truth. Of all the fallacies with which man has attempted to gloss his expedients, there is none more evidently false than that which infers the duration of a social system, from the length of time it has already lasted. It would be quite as reasonable to affirm that the man of seventy has the same chances for life as the youth of fifteen, or that the inevitable fate of all things of mortal origin was not destruction. There is a period in human existence when the principle of vitality has to contend with the feebleness of infancy, but this probationary state passed, the child attains the age when it has the most reasonable prospect of living. Thus the social, like any other machine, which has run just long enough to prove its fitness, is at the precise period when it is least likely to fail, and although he that is young may not live to become old, it is certain that he who is old was once young. The empire of China was, in its time, as youthful as our own republic, nor can we see any reason for believing that it is to outlast us, from the decrepitude which is a natural companion of its years.

  At the period of our tale, Venice boasted much of her antiquity, and dreaded, in an equal degree, her end. She was still strong in her combinations, but they were combinations that had the vicious error of being formed for the benefit of the minority, and which, like the mimic fortresses and moats of a scenic representation, needed only a strong light to destroy the illusion. The alarm with which the patricians heard the shouts of the fishermen, as they swept by the different palaces, on their way to the great square, can be readily imagined. Some feared that the final consummation of their artificial condition, which had so long been anticipated by a secret political instinct, was at length arrived, and began to bethink them of the savest means of providing for their own security. Some listened in admiration, for habit had so far mastered dulness, as to have created a species of identity between the state and far more durable things, and they believed that St. Mark had gained a victory, in that decline, which was never exactly intelligible to their apathetic capacities. But a few, and these were the spirits that accumulated all the national good which was vulgarly and falsely ascribed to the system itself, intuitively comprehended the danger, with a just appreciation of its magnitude, as well as of the means to avoid it.

  But the rioters were unequal to any estimate of their own force, and had little aptitude in measuring their accidental advantages. They acted merely on impulse. The manner in which their aged companion had triumphed on the preceding day, his cold repulse by the Doge, and the scene of the Lido, which in truth led to the death of Antonio, had prepared their minds for the tumult. When the body was found, therefore, after the time necessary to collect their forces on the Lagunes, they yielded to passion, and moved away towards the palace of St. Mark, as described, without any other definite object than a simple indulgence of feeling.

  On entering the canal, the narrowness of the passage compressed the boats into a mass so dense, as, in a measure, to impede the use of oars, and the progress of the crowd was necessarily slow. All were anxious to get as near as possible to the body of Antonio, and, like all mobs, they in some degree frustrated their own objects by ill-regulated zeal. Once or twice the names of offensive senators were shouted, as if the fishermen intended to visit the crimes of the state on its agents; but these cries passed away in the violent breath that was expended. On reaching the bridge of the Rialto, more than half of the multitude landed, and took the shorter course of the streets to the point of destination, while those in front got on the faster, for being disembarrassed of the pressure in the rear. As they drew nearer to the port, the boats began to loosen, and to take something of the form of a funeral procession.

  It was during this moment of change that a powerfully manned gondola swept, with strong strokes, out of a lateral passage into the Great Canal. Accident brought it directly in front of the moving phalanx of boats that was coming down the same channel. Its crew seemed staggered by the extraordinary appearance which met their view, and for an instant its course was undecided.

&nbs
p; "A gondola of the Republic!" shouted fifty fishermen. A single voice added—"Canale Orfano!"

  The bare suspicion of such an errand, as was implied by the latter words, and at that moment, was sufficient to excite the mob. They raised a cry of denunciation, and some twenty boats made a furious demonstration of pursuit. The menace, however, was sufficient; for quicker far than the movements of the pursuers, the gondoliers of the Republic dashed towards the shore, and leaping on one of those passages of planks which encircle so many of the palaces of Venice, they disappeared by an alley.

  Encouraged by this success, the fishermen seized the boat as a waif, and towed it into their own fleet, filling the air with cries of triumph. Curiosity led a few to enter the hearse-like canopy, whence they immediately reissued dragging forth a priest.

  "Who art thou?" hoarsely demanded he who took upon himself the authority of a leader.

  "A Carmelite, and a servant of God!"

  "Dost thou serve St. Mark? Hast thou been to the Canale Orfano to shrive a wretch?"

  "I am here in attendance on a young and noble lady, who has need of my counsel and prayers. The happy and the miserable, the free and the captive, are equally my care!"

  "Ha! Thou art not above thy office? Thou wilt say the prayers for the dead in behalf of a poor man's soul?"

  "My son, I know no difference, in this respect, between the Doge and the poorest fisherman. Still I would not willingly desert the females."

  "The ladies shall receive no harm. Come into my boat, for there is need of thy holy office."

  Father Anselmo—the reader will readily anticipate that it was he—entered the canopy, said a few words in explanation to his trembling companions, and complied. He was rowed to the leading gondola, and, by a sign, directed to the dead body.

  "Thou see'st that corpse, father?" continued his conductor. "It is the face of one who was an upright and pious Christian!"

  "He was."

  "We all knew him as the oldest and the most skilful fisherman of the Lagunes, and one ever ready to assist an unlucky companion."