The events foretold by the good priest happened sooner even than he had anticipated. A new government ruled the destinies of France, and the persecution ceased in Brittany.
Among other propositions which were then submitted to the Parliament, was one advocating the restoration of the road-side crosses throughout the province. It was found, however, on inquiry, that these crosses were to be counted by thousands, and that the mere cost of wood required to re-erect them necessitated an expenditure of money which the bankrupt nation could ill afford to spare. While this project was under discussion, and before it was finally rejected, one man had undertaken the task which the Government shrank from attempting. When Gabriel left the cottage, taking his brother and sisters to live with his wife and himself at the farmhouse, Francois Sarzeau left it also, to perform in highway and byway his promise to Father Paul. For months and months he labored without intermission at his task; still, always doing good, and rendering help and kindness and true charity to any whom he could serve. He walked many a weary mile, toiled through many a hard day’s work, humbled himself even to beg of others, to get wood enough to restore a single cross. No one ever heard him complain, ever saw him impatient, ever detected him in faltering at his task. The shelter in an outhouse, the crust of bread and drink of water, which he could always get from the peasantry, seemed to suffice him. Among the people who watched his perseverance, a belief began to gain ground that his life would be miraculously prolonged until he had completed his undertaking from one end of Brittany to the other. But this was not to be.
He was seen one cold autumn evening, silently and steadily at work as usual, setting up a new cross on the site of one which had been shattered to splinters in the troubled times. In the morning he was found lying dead beneath the sacred symbol which his own hands had completed and erected in its place during the night. They buried him where he lay; and the priest who consecrated the ground allowed Gabriel to engrave his father’s epitaph in the wood of the cross. It was simply the initial letters of the dead man’s name, followed by this inscription: “Pray for the repose of his soul: he died penitent, and the doer of good works.”
Once, and once only, did Gabriel hear anything of Father Paul. The good priest showed, by writing to the farmhouse, that he had not forgotten the family so largely indebted to him for their happiness. The letter was dated “Rome.” Father Paul said that such services as he had been permitted to render to the Church in Brittany had obtained for him a new and a far more glorious trust than any he had yet held. He had been recalled from his curacy, and appointed to be at the head of a mission which was shortly to be dispatched to convert the inhabitants of a savage and far distant land to the Christian faith. He now wrote, as his brethren with him were writing, to take leave of all friends forever in this world, before setting out—for it was well known to the chosen persons intrusted with the new mission that they could only hope to advance its object by cheerfully risking their own lives for the sake of their religion. He gave his blessing to Francois Sarzeau, to Gabriel, and to his family; and bade them affectionately farewell for the last time.
There was a postscript to the letter, which was addressed to Perrine, and which she often read afterward with tearful eyes. The writer begged that, if she should have any children, she would show her friendly and Christian remembrance of him by teaching them to pray (as he hoped she herself would pray) that a blessing might attend Father Paul’s labors in the distant land.
The priest’s loving petition was never forgotten. When Perrine taught its first prayer to her first child, the little creature was instructed to end the few simple words pronounced at its mother’s knees, with, “God bless Father Paul.”
In those words the nun concluded her narrative. After it was ended, she pointed to the old wooden cross, and said to me:
“That was one of the many that he made. It was found, a few years since, to have suffered so much from exposure to the weather that it was unfit to remain any longer in its old place. A priest in Brittany gave it to one of the nuns in this convent. Do you wonder now that the Mother Superior always calls it a Relic?”
“No,” I answered. “And I should have small respect indeed for the religious convictions of any one who could hear the story of that wooden cross, and not feel that the Mother Superior’s name for it is the very best that could have been chosen.”
On the last occasion when I made a lengthened stay in London, my wife and I were surprised and amused one morning by the receipt of the following note, addressed to me in a small, crabbed, foreign-looking handwriting.
“Professor Tizzi presents amiable compliments to Mr. Kerby, the artist, and is desirous of having his portrait done, to be engraved from, and placed at the beginning of the voluminous work on ‘The Vital Principle; or, Invisible Essence of Life,’ which the Professor is now preparing for the press—and posterity.
“The Professor will give five pounds; and will look upon his face with satisfaction, as an object perpetuated for public contemplation at a reasonable rate, if Mr. Kerby will accept the sum just mentioned.
“In regard to the Professor’s ability to pay five pounds, as well as to offer them, if Mr. Kerby should, from ignorance, entertain injurious doubts, he is requested to apply to the Professor’s honorable friend, Mr. Lanfray, of Rockleigh Place.”
But for the reference at the end of this strange note, I should certainly have considered it as a mere trap set to make a fool of me by some mischievous friend. As it was, I rather doubted the propriety of taking any serious notice of Professor Tizzi’s offer; and I might probably have ended by putting the letter in the fire without further thought about it, but for the arrival by the next post of a note from Mr. Lanfray, which solved all my doubts, and sent me away at once to make the acquaintance of the learned discoverer of the Essence of Life.
“Do not be surprised” (Mr. Lanfray wrote) “if you get a strange note from a very eccentric Italian, one Professor Tizzi, formerly of the University of Padua. I have known him for some years. Scientific inquiry is his monomania, and vanity his ruling passion. He has written a book on the principle of life, which nobody but himself will ever read; but which he is determined to publish, with his own portrait for frontispiece. If it is worth your while to accept the little he can offer you, take it by all means, for he is a character worth knowing. He was exiled, I should tell you, years ago, for some absurd political reason, and has lived in England ever since. All the money he inherits from his father, who was a mail contractor in the north of Italy, goes in books and experiments; but I think I can answer for his solvency, at any rate, for the large sum of five pounds. If you are not very much occupied just now, go and see him. He is sure to amuse you.”
Professor Tizzi lived in the northern suburb of London. On approaching his house, I found it, so far as outward appearance went, excessively dirty and neglected, but in no other respect different from the “villas” in its neighborhood. The front garden door, after I had rang twice, was opened by a yellow-faced, suspicious old foreigner, dressed in worn-out clothes, and completely and consistently dirty all over, from top to toe. On mentioning my name and business, this old man led me across a weedy, neglected garden, and admitted me into the house. At the first step into the passage, I was surrounded by books. Closely packed in plain wooden shelves, they ran all along the wall on either side to the back of the house; and when I looked up at the carpetless staircase, I saw nothing but books again, running all the way up the wall, as far as my eye could reach. “Here is the Artist Painter!” cried the old servant, throwing open one of the parlor doors, before I had half done looking at the books, and signing impatiently to me to walk into the room.
Books again! all round the walls, and all over the floor—among them a plain deal table, with leaves of manuscript piled high on every part of it—among the leaves a head of long, elfish white hair covered with a black skull-cap, and bent down over a book—above the head a sallow, withered hand shaking itself at me as a sign that I must not venture to speak just at that moment—on the tops of the bookcases glass vases full of spirits of some kind, with horrible objects floating in the liquid—dirt on the window panes, cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, dust springing up in clouds under my intruding feet. These were the things I observed on first entering the study of Professor Tizzi.
After I had waited for a minute or so, the shaking hand stopped, descended with a smack on the nearest pile of manuscript, seized the book that the head had been bending over, and flung it contemptuously to the other end of the room. “I’ve refutedyou,at any rate!” said Professor Tizzi, looking with extreme complacency at the cloud of dust raised by the fall of the rejected volume.
He turned next to me. What a grand face it was! What a broad, white forehead—-what fiercely brilliant black eyes—what perfect regularity and refinement in the other features; with the long, venerable hair, framing them in, as it were, on either side! Poor as I was, I felt that I could have painted his portrait for nothing. Titian, Vandyke, Valasquez—any of the three would have paid him to sit to them!
“Accept my humblest excuses, sir,” said the old man, speaking English with a singularly pure accent for a foreigner. “That absurd book plunged me so deep down in the quagmires of sophistry and error, Mr. Kerby, that I really could not get to the surface at once when you came into the room. So you are willing to draw my likeness for such a small sum as five pounds?” he continued, rising, and showing me that he wore a long black velvet gown, instead of the paltry and senseless costume of modern times.
I informed him that five pounds was as much as I generally got for a drawing.
“It seems little,” said the professor; “but if you want fame, I can make it up to you in that way. There is my great work” (he pointed to the piles of manuscript), “the portrait of my mind and the mirror of my learning; put a likeness of my face on the first page, and posterity will then be thoroughly acquainted with me, outside and in. Your portrait will be engraved, Mr. Kerby, and your name shall be inscribed under the print. You shall be associated, sir, in that way, with a work which will form an epoch in the history of human science. The Vital Principle—or, in other words, the essence of that mysterious Something which we call Life, and which extends down from Man to the feeblest insect and the smallest plant—has been an unguessed riddle from the beginning of the world to the present time. I alone have found the answer; and here it is!” He fixed his dazzling eyes on me in triumph, and smacked the piles of manuscript fiercely with both his sallow hands.
I saw that he was waiting for me to say something; so I asked if his great work had not cost a vast expenditure of time and pains.
“I am seventy, sir,” said the Professor; “and I began preparing myself for that book at twenty. After mature consideration, I have written it in English (having three other foreign languages at my fingers’ ends), as a substantial proof of my gratitude to the nation that has given me an asylum. Perhaps you think the work looks rather long in its manuscript state? It will occupy twelve volumes, sir, and it is not half long enough, even then, for the subject. I take two volumes (and no man could do it in less) to examine the theories of all the philosophers in the world, ancient and modern, on the Vital Principle. I take two more (and little enough) to scatter every one of the theories,seriatim, to the winds. I take two more (at the risk, for brevity’s sake, of doing things by halves) to explain the exact stuff, or vital compound, of which the first man and woman in the world were made—calling them Adam and Eve, out of deference to popular prejudices. I take two more—but you are standing all this time, Mr. Kerby; and I am talking instead of sitting for my portrait. Pray take any books you want, anywhere off the floor, and make a seat of any height you please. Furniture would only be in my way here, so I don’t trouble myself with anything of the kind.”
I obediently followed the Professor’s directions, and had just heaped up a pile of grimy quartos, when the old servant entered the room with a shabby little tray in his hand. In the middle of the tray I saw a crust of bread and a bit of garlic, encircled by a glass of water, a knife, salt, pepper, a bottle of vinegar, and a flask of oil.
“With your permission, I am going to breakfast,” said Professor Tizzi, as the tray was set down before him on the part of his great work relating to the vital compound of Adam and Eve. As he spoke, he took up the piece of bread, and rubbed the crusty part of it with the bit of garlic, till it looked as polished as a new dining-table. That done, he turned the bread, crumb uppermost, and saturated it with oil, added a few drops of vinegar, sprinkled with pepper and salt, and, with a gleam of something very like greediness in his bright eyes, took up the knife to cut himself a first mouthful of the horrible mess that he had just concocted. “The best of breakfasts,” said the Professor, seeing me look amazed. “Not a cannibal meal of chicken-life in embryo (vulgarly called an egg); not a dog’s gorge of a dead animal’s flesh, blood and bones, warmed with fire (popularly known as a chop); not a breakfast, sir, that lions, tigers, Caribbees, and costermongers could all partake of alike; but an innocent, nutritive, simple, vegetable meal; a philosopher’s refection, a breakfast that a prize-fighter would turn from in disgust, and that a Plato would share with relish.”
I have no doubt that he was right, and that I was prejudiced; but as I saw the first oily, vinegary, garlicky morsel slide noiselessly into his mouth, I began to feel rather sick. My hands were dirty with moving the books, and I asked if I could wash them before beginning to work at the likeness, as a good excuse for getting out of the room, while Professor Tizzi was unctuously disposing of his simple vegetable meal.
The philosopher looked a little astonished at my request, as if the washing of hands at irregular times and seasons offered a comparatively new subject of contemplation to him; but he rang a hand-bell on his table immediately, and told the old servant to take me up into his bedroom.
The interior of the parlor had astonished me; but a sight of the bedroom was a new sensation—not of the most agreeable kind. The couch on which the philosopher sought repose after his labors was a truckle-bed that would not have fetched half a crown at a sale. On one side of it dangled from the ceiling a complete male skeleton, looking like all that was left of a man who might have hung himself about a century ago, and who had never been disturbed since the moment of his suicide. On the other side of the bed stood a long press, in which I observed hideous colored preparations of the muscular system, and bottles with curious, twining, thread-like substances inside them, which might have been remarkable worms or dissections of nerves, scattered amicably side by side with the Professor’s hair-brush (three parts worn out), with remnants of his beard on bits of shaving-paper, with a broken shoe-horn, and with a traveling looking-glass of the sort usually sold at sixpence apiece. Repetitions of the litter of books in the parlor lay all about over the floor; colored anatomical prints were nailed anyhow against the walls; rolled-up towels were scattered here, there, and everywhere in the wildest confusion, as if the room had been bombarded with them; and last, but by no means least remarkable among the other extraordinary objects in the bed-chamber, the stuffed figure of a large unshaven poodle-dog, stood on an old card-table, keeping perpetual watch over a pair of the philosopher’s black breeches twisted round his forepaws.
I had started, on entering the room, at the skeleton, and I started once more at the dog. The old servant noticed me each time with a sardonic grin. “Don’t be afraid,” he said; “one is as dead as the other.” With these words, he left me to wash my hands.
Finding little more than a pint of water at my disposal, and failing altogether to discover where the soap was kept, I was not long in performing my ablutions. Before leaving the room, I looked again at the stuffed poodle. On the board to which he was fixed, I saw painted in faded letters the word “Scarammuccia,” evidently the comic Italian name to which he had answered in his lifetime. There was no other inscription; but I made up my mind that the dog must have been the Professor’s pet, and that he kept the animal stuffed in his bedroom as a remembrance of past times. “Who would have suspected so great a philosopher of having so much heart!” thought I, leaving the bedroom to go downstairs again.
The Professor had done his breakfast, and was anxious to begin the sitting; so I took out my chalks and paper, and set to work at once—I seated on one pile of books and he on another.
“Fine anatomical preparations in my room, are there not, Mr. Kerby?” said the old gentleman. “Did you notice a very interesting and perfect arrangement of the intestinal ganglia? They form the subject of an important chapter in my great work.”
“I am afraid you will think me very ignorant,” I replied. “But I really do not know the intestinal ganglia when I see them. The object I noticed with most curiosity in your room was something more on a level with my own small capacity.”
“And what was that?” asked the Professor.
“The figure of the stuffed poodle. I suppose he was a favorite of yours?”
“Of mine? No, no; a young woman’s favorite, sir, before I was born; and a very remarkable dog, too. The vital principle in that poodle, Mr. Kerby, must have been singularly intensified. He lived to a fabulous old age, and he was clever enough to play an important part of his own in what you English call a Romance of Real Life! If I could only have dissected that poodle, I would have put him into my book; he should have headed my chapter on the Vital Principle of Beasts.”
“Here is a story in prospect,” thought I, “if I can only keep his attention up to the subject.”
“He should have figured in my great work, sir,” the Professor went on. “Scarammuccia should have taken his place among the examples that prove my new theory; but unfortunately he died before I was born. His mistress gave him, stuffed, as you see upstairs, to my father to take care of for her, and he has descended as an heirloom to me. Talking of dogs, Mr. Kerby, I have ascertained, beyond the possibility of doubt, that the brachial plexus in people who die of hydrophobia—but stop! I had better show you how it is—the preparation is upstairs under my wash-hand stand.”
He left his seat as he spoke. In another minute he would have sent the servant to fetch the “preparation,” and I should have lost the story. At the risk of his taking offense, I begged him not to move just then, unless he wished me to spoil his likeness. This alarmed, but fortunately did not irritate him. He returned to his seat, and I resumed the subject of the stuffed poodle, asking him boldly to tell me the story with which the dog was connected. The demand seemed to impress him with no very favorable opinion of my intellectual tastes; but he complied with it, and related, not without many a wearisome digression to the subject of his great work, the narrative which I propose calling by the name of “The Yellow Mask.” After the slight specimens that I have given of his character and style of conversation, it will be almost unnecessary for me to premise that I tell this story as I have told the last, and “Sister Rose,” in my own language, and according to my own plan in the disposition of the incidents—adding nothing, of course, to the facts, but keeping them within the limits which my disposable space prescribes to me.
I may perhaps be allowed to add in this place, that I have not yet seen or heard of my portrait in an engraved state. Professor Tizzi is still alive; but I look in vain through the publishers’ lists for an announcement of his learned work on the Vital Principle. Possibly he may be adding a volume or two to the twelve already completed, by way of increasing the debt which a deeply obliged posterity is, sooner or later, sure of owing to him.
About a century ago, there lived in the ancient city of Pisa a famous Italian milliner, who, by way of vindicating to all customers her familiarity with Paris fashions, adopted a French title, and called herself the Demoiselle Grifoni. She was a wizen little woman with a mischievous face, a quick tongue, a nimble foot, a talent for business, and an uncertain disposition. Rumor hinted that she was immensely rich, and scandal suggested that she would do anything for money.
The one undeniable good quality which raised Demoiselle Grifoni above all her rivals in the trade was her inexhaustible fortitude. She was never known to yield an inch under any pressure of adverse circumstances. Thus the memorable occasion of her life on which she was threatened with ruin was also the occasion on which she most triumphantly asserted the energy and decision of her character. At the height of the demoiselle’s prosperity her skilled forewoman and cutter-out basely married and started in business as her rival. Such a calamity as this would have ruined an ordinary milliner; but the invincible Grifoni rose superior to it almost without an effort, and proved incontestably that it was impossible for hostile Fortune to catch her at the end of her resources. While the minor milliners were prophesying that she would shut up shop, she was quietly carrying on a private correspondence with an agent in Paris. Nobody knew what these letters were about until a few weeks had elapsed, and then circulars were received by all the ladies in Pisa, announcing that the best French forewoman who could be got for money was engaged to superintend the great Grifoni establishment. This master-stroke decided the victory. All the demoiselle’s customers declined giving orders elsewhere until the forewoman from Paris had exhibited to the natives of Pisa the latest fashions from the metropolis of the world of dress.
The Frenchwoman arrived punctual to the appointed day—glib and curt, smiling and flippant, tight of face and supple of figure. Her name was Mademoiselle Virginie, and her family had inhumanly deserted her. She was set to work the moment she was inside the doors of the Grifoni establishment. A room was devoted to her own private use; magnificent materials in velvet, silk, and satin, with due accompaniment of muslins, laces, and ribbons were placed at her disposal; she was told to spare no expense, and to produce, in the shortest possible time, the finest and nearest specimen dresses for exhibition in the show-room. Mademoiselle Virginie undertook to do everything required of her, produced her portfolios of patterns and her book of colored designs, and asked for one assistant who could speak French enough to interpret her orders to the Italian girls in the work-room.
“I have the very person you want,” cried Demoiselle Grifoni. “A work-woman we call Brigida here—the idlest slut in Pisa, but as sharp as a needle—has been in France, and speaks the language like a native. I’ll send her to you directly.”
Mademoiselle Virginie was not left long alone with her patterns and silks. A tall woman, with bold black eyes, a reckless manner, and a step as firm as a man’s, stalked into the room with the gait of a tragedy-queen crossing the stage. The instant her eyes fell on the French forewoman, she stopped, threw up her hands in astonishment, and exclaimed, “Finette!”
“Teresa!” cried the Frenchwoman, casting her scissors on the table, and advancing a few steps.
“Hush! call me Brigida.”
“Hush! call me Virginie.”
These two exclamations were uttered at the same moment, and then the two women scrutinized each other in silence. The swarthy cheeks of the Italian turned to a dull yellow, and the voice of the Frenchwoman trembled a little when she spoke again.
“How, in the name of Heaven, have you dropped down in the world as low as this?” she asked. “I thought you were provided for when—”
“Silence!” interrupted Brigida. “You see I was not provided for. I have had my misfortunes; and you are the last woman alive who ought to refer to them.”
“Do you think I have not had my misfortunes, too, since we met?” (Brigida’s face brightened maliciously at those words.) “You have had your revenge,” continued Mademoiselle Virginie, coldly, turning away to the table and taking up the scissors again.
Brigida followed her, threw one arm roughly round her neck, and kissed her on the cheek. “Let us be friends again,” she said. The Frenchwoman laughed. “Tell me how I have had my revenge,” pursued the other, tightening her grasp. Mademoiselle Virginie signed to Brigida to stoop, and whispered rapidly in her ear. The Italian listened eagerly, with fierce, suspicious eyes fixed on the door. When the whispering ceased, she loosened her hold, and, with a sigh of relief, pushed back her heavy black hair from her temples. “Now we are friends,” she said, and sat down indolently in a chair placed by the worktable.
“Friends,” repeated Mademoiselle Virginie, with another laugh. “And now for business,” she continued, getting a row of pins ready for use by putting them between her teeth. “I am here, I believe, for the purpose of ruining the late forewoman, who has set up in opposition to us? Good! Iwillruin her. Spread out the yellow brocaded silk, my dear, and pin that pattern on at your end, while I pin at mine. And what are your plans, Brigida? (Mind you don’t forget that Finette is dead, and that Virginie has risen from her ashes.) You can’t possibly intend to stop here all your life? (Leave an inch outside the paper, all round.) You must have projects? What are they?”
“Look at my figure,” said Brigida, placing herself in an attitude in the middle of the room.
“Ah,” rejoined the other, “it’s not what it was. There’s too much of it. You want diet, walking, and a French stay-maker,” muttered Mademoiselle Virginie through her chevaus-defrise of pins.
“Did the goddess Minerva walk, and employ a French stay-maker? I thought she rode upon clouds, and lived at a period before waists were invented.”
“What do you mean?”
“This—that my present project is to try if I can’t make my fortune by sitting as a model for Minerva in the studio of the best sculptor in Pisa.”
“And who is he! (Unwind me a yard or two of that black lace.)”
“The master-sculptor, Luca Lomi—an old family, once noble, but down in the world now. The master is obliged to make statues to get a living for his daughter and himself.”
“More of the lace—double it over the bosom of the dress. And how is sitting to this needy sculptor to make your fortune?”
“Wait a minute. There are other sculptors besides him in the studio. There is, first, his brother, the priest—Father Rocco, who passes all his spare time with the master. He is a good sculptor in his way—has cast statues and made a font for his church—a holy man, who devotes all his work in the studio to the cause of piety.”
“Ah, bah! we should think him a droll priest in France. (More pins.) You don’t expecthimto put money in your pocket, surely?”
“Wait, I say again. There is a third sculptor in the studio—actually a nobleman! His name is Fabio d’Ascoli. He is rich, young, handsome, an only child, and little better than a fool. Fancy his working at sculpture, as if he had his bread to get by it—and thinking that an amusement! Imagine a man belonging to one of the best families in Pisa mad enough to want to make a reputation as an artist! Wait! wait! the best is to come. His father and mother are dead—he has no near relations in the world to exercise authority over him—he is a bachelor, and his fortune is all at his own disposal; going a-begging, my friend; absolutely going a-begging for want of a clever woman to hold out her hand and take it from him.”
“Yes, yes—now I understand. The goddess Minerva is a clever woman, and she will hold out her hand and take his fortune from him with the utmost docility.”
“The first thing is to get him to offer it. I must tell you that I am not going to sit to him, but to his master, Luca Lomi, who is doing the statue of Minerva. The face is modeled from his daughter; and now he wants somebody to sit for the bust and arms. Maddalena Lomi and I are as nearly as possible the same height, I hear—the difference between us being that I have a good figure and she has a bad one. I have offered to sit, through a friend who is employed in the studio. If the master accepts, I am sure of an introduction to our rich young gentleman; and then leave it to my good looks, my various accomplishments, and my ready tongue, to do the rest.”
“Stop! I won’t have the lace doubled, on second thoughts. I’ll have it single, and running all round the dress in curves—so. Well, and who is this friend of yours employed in the studio? A fourth sculptor?”
“No, no; the strangest, simplest little creature—”
Just then a faint tap was audible at the door of the room.
Brigida laid her finger on her lips, and called impatiently to the person outside to come in.
The door opened gently, and a young girl, poorly but very neatly dressed, entered the room. She was rather thin and under the average height; but her head and figure were in perfect proportion. Her hair was of that gorgeous auburn color, her eyes of that deep violet-blue, which the portraits of Giorgione and Titian have made famous as the type of Venetian beauty. Her features possessed the definiteness and regularity, the “good modeling” (to use an artist’s term), which is the rarest of all womanly charms, in Italy as elsewhere. The one serious defect of her face was its paleness. Her cheeks, wanting nothing in form, wanted everything in color. That look of health, which is the essential crowning-point of beauty, was the one attraction which her face did not possess.
She came into the room with a sad and weary expression in her eyes, which changed, however, the moment she observed the magnificently-dressed French forewoman, into a look of astonishment, and almost of awe. Her manner became shy and embarrassed; and after an instant of hesitation, she turned back silently to the door.
“Stop, stop, Nanina,” said Brigida, in Italian. “Don’t be afraid of that lady. She is our new forewoman; and she has it in her power to do all sorts of kind things for you. Look up, and tell us what you want. You were sixteen last birthday, Nanina, and you behave like a baby of two years old!”
“I only came to know if there was any work for me to-day,” said the girl, in a very sweet voice, that trembled a little as she tried to face the fashionable French forewoman again.
“No work, child, that is easy enough for you to do,” said Brigida. “Are you going to the studio to-day?”
Some of the color that Nanina’s cheeks wanted began to steal over them as she answered “Yes.”
“Don’t forget my message, darling. And if Master Luca Lomi asks where I live, answer that you are ready to deliver a letter to me; but that you are forbidden to enter into any particulars at first about who I am, or where I live.”
“Why am I forbidden?” inquired Nanina, innocently.
“Don’t ask questions, baby! Do as you are told. Bring me back a nice note or message to-morrow from the studio, and I will intercede with this lady to get you some work. You are a foolish child to want it, when you might make more money here and at Florence, by sitting to painters and sculptors; though what they can see to paint or model in you I never could understand.”
“I like working at home better than going abroad to sit,” said Nanina, looking very much abashed as she faltered out the answer, and escaping from the room with a terrified farewell obeisance, which was an eccentric compound of a start, a bow, and a courtesy.
“That awkward child would be pretty,” said Mademoiselle Virginie, making rapid progress with the cutting-out of her dress, “if she knew how to give herself a complexion, and had a presentable gown on her back. Who is she?”
“The friend who is to get me into Master Luca Lomi’s studio,” replied Brigida, laughing. “Rather a curious ally for me to take up with, isn’t she?”
“Where did you meet with her?”
“Here, to be sure; she hangs about this place for any plain work she can get to do, and takes it home to the oddest little room in a street near the Campo Santo. I had the curiosity to follow her one day, and knocked at her door soon after she had gone in, as if I was a visitor. She answered my knock in a great flurry and fright, as you may imagine. I made myself agreeable, affected immense interest in her affairs, and so got into her room. Such a place! A mere corner of it curtained off to make a bedroom. One chair, one stool, one saucepan on the fire. Before the hearth the most grotesquely hideous unshaven poodle-dog you ever saw; and on the stool a fair little girl plaiting dinner-mats. Such was the household—furniture and all included. ‘Where is your father?’ I asked. ‘He ran away and left us years ago,’ answers my awkward little friend who has just left the room, speaking in that simple way of hers, with all the composure in the world. ‘And your mother?’—‘Dead.’ She went up to the little mat-plaiting girl as she gave that answer, and began playing with her long flaxen hair. ‘Your sister, I suppose,’ said I. ‘What is her name?’—‘They call me La Biondella,’ says the child, looking up from her mat (La Biondella, Virginie, means The Fair). ‘And why do you let that great, shaggy, ill-looking brute lie before your fireplace?’ I asked. ‘Oh!’ cried the little mat-plaiter, ‘that is our dear old dog, Scarammuccia. He takes care of the house when Nanina is not at home. He dances on his hind legs, and jumps through a hoop, and tumbles down dead when I cry Bang! Scarammuccia followed us home one night, years ago, and he has lived with us ever since. He goes out every day by himself, we can’t tell where, and generally returns licking his chops, which makes us afraid that he is a thief; but nobody finds him out, because he is the cleverest dog that ever lived!’ The child ran on in this way about the great beast by the fireplace, till I was obliged to stop her; while that simpleton Nanina stood by, laughing and encouraging her. I asked them a few more questions, which produced some strange answers. They did not seem to know of any relations of theirs in the world. The neighbors in the house had helped them, after their father ran away, until they were old enough to help themselves; and they did not seem to think there was anything in the least wretched or pitiable in their way of living. The last thing I heard, when I left them that day, was La Biondella crying ‘Bang!’—then a bark, a thump on the floor, and a scream of laughter. If it was not for their dog, I should go and see them oftener. But the ill-conditioned beast has taken a dislike to me, and growls and shows his teeth whenever I come near him.”
“The girl looked sickly when she came in here. Is she always like that?”
“No. She has altered within the last month. I suspect our interesting young nobleman has produced an impression. The oftener the girl has sat to him lately, the paler and more out of spirits she has become.”
“Oh! she has sat to him, has she?”
“She is sitting to him now. He is doing a bust of some Pagan nymph or other, and prevailed on Nanina to let him copy from her head and face. According to her own account the little fool was frightened at first, and gave him all the trouble in the world before she would consent.”
“And now she has consented, don’t you think it likely she may turn out rather a dangerous rival? Men are such fools, and take such fancies into their heads—”
“Ridiculous! A thread-paper of a girl like that, who has no manner, no talk, no intelligence; who has nothing to recommend her but an awkward, babyish prettiness! Dangerous to me? No, no! If there is danger at all, I have to dread it from the sculptor’s daughter. I don’t mind confessing that I am anxious to see Maddalena Lomi. But as for Nanina, she will simply be of use to me. All I know already about the studio and the artists in it, I know through her. She will deliver my message, and procure me my introduction; and when we have got so far, I shall give her an old gown and a shake of the hand; and then, good-by to our little innocent!”
“Well, well, for your sake I hope you are the wiser of the two in this matter. For my part, I always distrust innocence. Wait one moment, and I shall have the body and sleeves of this dress ready for the needle-women. There, ring the bell, and order them up; for I have directions to give, and you must interpret for me.”
While Brigida went to the bell, the energetic Frenchwoman began planning out the skirt of the new dress. She laughed as she measured off yard after yard of the silk.
“What are you laughing about?” asked Brigida, opening the door and ringing a hand-bell in the passage.
“I can’t help fancying, dear, in spite of her innocent face and her artless ways, that your young friend is a hypocrite.”
“And I am quite certain, love, that she is only a simpleton.”
The studio of the master-sculptor, Luca Lomi, was composed of two large rooms unequally divided by a wooden partition, with an arched doorway cut in the middle of it.
While the milliners of the Grifoni establishment were industriously shaping dresses, the sculptors in Luca Lomi’s workshop were, in their way, quite as hard at work shaping marble and clay. In the smaller of the two rooms the young nobleman (only addressed in the studio by his Christian name of Fabio) was busily engaged on his bust, with Nanina sitting before him as a model. His was not one of those traditional Italian faces from which subtlety and suspicion are always supposed to look out darkly on the world at large. Both countenance and expression proclaimed his character frankly and freely to all who saw him. Quick intelligence looked brightly from his eyes; and easy good humor laughed out pleasantly in the rather quaint curve of his lips. For the rest, his face expressed the defects as well as the merits of his character, showing that he wanted resolution and perseverance just as plainly as it showed also that he possessed amiability and intelligence.
At the end of the large room, nearest to the street door, Luca Lomi was standing by his life-size statue of Minerva; and was issuing directions, from time to time, to some of his workmen, who were roughly chiseling the drapery of another figure. At the opposite side of the room, nearest to the partition, his brother, Father Rocco, was taking a cast from a statuette of the Madonna; while Maddalena Lomi, the sculptor’s daughter, released from sitting for Minerva’s face, walked about the two rooms, and watched what was going on in them.
There was a strong family likeness of a certain kind between father, brother and daughter. All three were tall, handsome, dark-haired, and dark-eyed; nevertheless, they differed in expression, strikingly as they resembled one another in feature. Maddalena Lomi’s face betrayed strong passions, but not an ungenerous nature. Her father, with the same indications of a violent temper, had some sinister lines about his mouth and forehead which suggested anything rather than an open disposition. Father Rocco’s countenance, on the other hand, looked like the personification of absolute calmness and invincible moderation; and his manner, which, in a very firm way, was singularly quiet and deliberate, assisted in carrying out the impression produced by his face. The daughter seemed as if she could fly into a passion at a moment’s notice, and forgive also at a moment’s notice. The father, appearing to be just as irritable, had something in his face which said, as plainly as if in words, “Anger me, and I never pardon.” The priest looked as if he need never be called on either to ask forgiveness or to grant it, for the double reason that he could irritate nobody else, and that nobody else could irritate him.
“Rocco,” said Luca, looking at the face of his Minerva, which was now finished, “this statue of mine will make a sensation.”
“I am glad to hear it,” rejoined the priest, dryly.
“It is a new thing in art,” continued Luca, enthusiastically. “Other sculptors, with a classical subject like mine, limit themselves to the ideal classical face, and never think of aiming at individual character. Now I do precisely the reverse of that. I get my handsome daughter, Maddalena, to sit for Minerva, and I make an exact likeness of her. I may lose in ideal beauty, but I gain in individual character. People may accuse me of disregarding established rules; but my answer is, that I make my own rules. My daughter looks like a Minerva, and there she is exactly as she looks.”
“It is certainly a wonderful likeness,” said Father Rocco, approaching the statue.
“It the girl herself,” cried the other. “Exactly her expression, and exactly her features. Measure Maddalena, and measure Minerva, and from forehead to chin, you won’t find a hair-breadth of difference between them.”
“But how about the bust and arms of the figure, now the face is done?” asked the priest, returning, as he spoke, to his own work.
“I may have the very model I want for them to-morrow. Little Nanina has just given me the strangest message. What do you think of a mysterious lady admirer who offers to sit for the bust and arms of my Minerva?”
“Are you going to accept the offer?” inquired the priest.
“I am going to receive her to-morrow; and if I really find that she is the same height as Maddalena, and has a bust and arms worth modeling, of course I shall accept her offer; for she will be the very sitter I have been looking after for weeks past. Who can she be? That’s the mystery I want to find out. Which do you say, Rocco—an enthusiast or an adventuress?”
“I do not presume to say, for I have no means of knowing.”
“Ah, there you are with your moderation again. Now, I do presume to assert that she must be either one or the other—or she would not have forbidden Nanina to say anything about her in answer to all my first natural inquiries. Where is Maddalena? I thought she was here a minute ago.”
“She is in Fabio’s room,” answered Father Rocco, softly. “Shall I call her?”
“No, no!” returned Luca. He stopped, looked round at the workmen, who were chipping away mechanically at their bit of drapery; then advanced close to the priest, with a cunning smile, and continued in a whisper, “If Maddalena can only get from Fabio’s room here to Fabio’s palace over the way, on the Arno—come, come, Rocco! don’t shake your head. If I brought her up to your church door one of these days, as Fabio d’Ascoli’s betrothed, you would be glad enough to take the rest of the business off my hands, and make her Fabio d’Ascoli’s wife. You are a very holy man, Rocco, but you know the difference between the clink of the money-bag and the clink of the chisel for all that!”
“I am sorry to find, Luca,” returned the priest, coldly, “that you allow yourself to talk of the most delicate subjects in the coarsest way. This is one of the minor sins of the tongue which is growing on you. When we are alone in the studio, I will endeavor to lead you into speaking of the young man in the room there, and of your daughter, in terms more becoming to you, to me, and to them. Until that time, allow me to go on with my work.”
Luca shrugged his shoulders, and went back to his statue. Father Rocco, who had been engaged during the last ten minutes in mixing wet plaster to the right consistency for taking a cast, suspended his occupation; and crossing the room to a corner next the partition, removed from it a cheval-glass which stood there. He lifted it away gently, while his brother’s back was turned, carried it close to the table at which he had been at work, and then resumed his employment of mixing the plaster. Having at last prepared the composition for use, he laid it over the exposed half of the statuette with a neatness and dexterity which showed him to be a practiced hand at cast-taking. Just as he had covered the necessary extent of surface, Luca turned round from his statue.
“How are you getting on with the cast?” he asked. “Do you want any help?”
“None, brother, I thank you,” answered the priest. “Pray do not disturb either yourself or your workmen on my account.”
Luca turned again to the statue; and, at the same moment, Father Rocco softly moved the cheval-glass toward the open doorway between the two rooms, placing it at such an angle as to make it reflect the figures of the persons in the smaller studio. He did this with significant quickness and precision. It was evidently not the first time he had used the glass for purposes of secret observation.
Mechanically stirring the wet plaster round and round for the second casting, the priest looked into the glass, and saw, as in a picture, all that was going forward in the inner room. Maddalena Lomi was standing behind the young nobleman, watching the progress he made with his bust. Occasionally she took the modeling tool out of his hand, and showed him, with her sweetest smile, that she, too, as a sculptor’s daughter, understood something of the sculptor’s art; and now and then, in the pauses of the conversation, when her interest was especially intense in Fabio’s work, she suffered her hand to drop absently on his shoulder, or stooped forward so close to him that her hair mingled for a moment with his. Moving the glass an inch or two, so as to bring Nanina well under his eye, Father Rocco found that he could trace each repetition of these little acts of familiarity by the immediate effect which they produced on the girl’s face and manner. Whenever Maddalena so much as touched the young nobleman—no matter whether she did so by premeditation, or really by accident—Nanina’s features contracted, her pale cheeks grew paler, she fidgeted on her chair, and her fingers nervously twisted and untwisted the loose ends of the ribbon fastened round her waist.
“Jealous,” thought Father Rocco; “I suspected it weeks ago.”
He turned away, and gave his whole attention for a few minutes to the mixing of the plaster. When he looked back again at the glass, he was just in time to witness a little accident which suddenly changed the relative positions of the three persons in the inner room.
He saw Maddalena take up a modeling tool which lay on a table near her, and begin to help Fabio in altering the arrangement of the hair in his bust. The young man watched what she was doing earnestly enough for a few moments; then his attention wandered away to Nanina. She looked at him reproachfully, and he answered by a sign which brought a smile to her face directly. Maddalena surprised her at the instant of the change; and, following the direction of her eyes, easily discovered at whom the smile was directed. She darted a glance of contempt at Nanina, threw down the modeling tool, and turned indignantly to the young sculptor, who was affecting to be hard at work again.
“Signor Fabio,” she said, “the next time you forget what is due to your rank and yourself, warn me of it, if you please, beforehand, and I will take care to leave the room.” While speaking the last words, she passed through the doorway. Father Rocco, bending abstractedly over his plaster mixture, heard her continue to herself in a whisper, as she went by him, “If I have any influence at all with my father, that impudent beggar-girl shall be forbidden the studio.”
“Jealousy on the other side,” thought the priest. “Something must be done at once, or this will end badly.”
He looked again at the glass, and saw Fabio, after an instant of hesitation, beckon to Nanina to approach him. She left her seat, advanced half-way to his, then stopped. He stepped forward to meet her, and, taking her by the hand, whispered earnestly in her ear. When he had done, before dropping her hand, he touched her cheek with his lips, and then helped her on with the little white mantilla which covered her head and shoulders out-of-doors. The girl trembled violently, and drew the linen close to her face as Fabio walked into the larger studio, and, addressing Father Rocco, said:
“I am afraid I am more idle, or more stupid, than ever to-day. I can’t get on with the bust at all to my satisfaction, so I have cut short the sitting, and given Nanina a half-holiday.”
At the first sound of his voice, Maddalena, who was speaking to her father, stopped, and, with another look of scorn at Nanina standing trembling in the doorway, left the room. Luca Lomi called Fabio to him as she went away, and Father Rocco, turning to the statuette, looked to see how the plaster was hardening on it. Seeing them thus engaged, Nanina attempted to escape from the studio without being noticed; but the priest stopped her just as she was hurrying by him.
“My child,” said he, in his gentle, quiet way, “are you going home?”
Nanina’s heart beat too fast for her to reply in words; she could only answer by bowing her head.
“Take this for your little sister,” pursued Father Rocco, putting a few silver coins in her hand; “I have got some customers for those mats she plaits so nicely. You need not bring them to my rooms; I will come and see you this evening, when I am going my rounds among my parishioners, and will take the mats away with me. You are a good girl, Nanina—you have always been a good girl—and as long as I am alive, my child, you shall never want a friend and an adviser.”
Nanina’s eyes filled with tears. She drew the mantilla closer than ever round her face, as she tried to thank the priest. Father Rocco nodded to her kindly, and laid his hand lightly on her head for a moment, then turned round again to his cast.
“Don’t forget my message to the lady who is to sit to me to-morrow,” said Luca to Nanina, as she passed him on her way out of the studio.
After she had gone, Fabio returned to the priest, who was still busy over his cast.
“I hope you will get on better with the bust to-morrow,” said Father Rocco, politely; “I am sure you cannot complain of your model.”
“Complain of her!” cried the young man, warmly; “she has the most beautiful head I ever saw. If I were twenty times the sculptor that I am, I should despair of being able to do her justice.”
He walked into the inner room to look at his bust again—lingered before it for a little while—and then turned to retrace his steps to the larger studio. Between him and the doorway stood three chairs. As he went by them, he absently touched the backs of the first two, and passed the third; but just as he was entering the larger room, stopped, as if struck by a sudden recollection, returned hastily, and touched the third chair. Raising his eyes, as he approached the large studio again after doing this, he met the eyes of the priest fixed on him in unconcealed astonishment.
“Signor Fabio!” exclaimed Father Rocco, with a sarcastic smile, “who would ever have imagined that you were superstitious?”
“My nurse was,” returned the young man, reddening, and laughing rather uneasily. “She taught me some bad habits that I have not got over yet.” With those words he nodded and hastily went out.
“Superstitious,” said Father Rocco softly to himself. He smiled again, reflected for a moment, and then, going to the window, looked into the street. The way to the left led to Fabio’s palace, and the way to the right to the Campo Santo, in the neighborhood of which Nanina lived. The priest was just in time to see the young sculptor take the way to the right.
After another half-hour had elapsed, the two workmen quitted the studio to go to dinner, and Luca and his brother were left alone.
“We may return now,” said Father Rocco, “to that conversation which was suspended between us earlier in the day.”
“I have nothing more to say,” rejoined Luca, sulkily.
“Then you can listen to me, brother, with the greater attention,” pursued the priest. “I objected to the coarseness of your tone in talking of our young pupil and your daughter; I object still more strongly to your insinuation that my desire to see them married (provided always that they are sincerely attached to each other) springs from a mercenary motive.”
“You are trying to snare me, Rocco, in a mesh of fine phrases; but I am not to be caught. I know what my own motive is for hoping that Maddalena may get an offer of marriage from this wealthy young gentleman—she will have his money, and we shall all profit by it. That is coarse and mercenary, if you please; but it is the true reason why I want to see Maddalena married to Fabio. You want to see it, too—and for what reason, I should like to know, if not for mine?”
“Of what use would wealthy relations be to me? What are people with money—what is money itself—to a man who follows my calling?”
“Money is something to everybody.”
“Is it? When have you found that I have taken any account of it? Give me money enough to buy my daily bread, and to pay for my lodging and my coarse cassock, and though I may want much for the poor, for myself I want no more. Then have you found me mercenary? Do I not help you in this studio, for love of you and of the art, without exacting so much as journeyman’s wages? Have I ever asked you for more than a few crowns to give away on feast-days among my parishioners? Money! money for a man who may be summoned to Rome to-morrow, who may be told to go at half an hour’s notice on a foreign mission that may take him to the ends of the earth, and who would be ready to go the moment when he was called on! Money to a man who has no wife, no children, no interests outside the sacred circle of the Church! Brother, do you see the dust and dirt and shapeless marble chips lying around your statue there? Cover that floor instead with gold, and, though the litter may have changed in color and form, in my eyes it would be litter still.”
“A very noble sentiment, I dare say, Rocco, but I can’t echo it. Granting that you care nothing for money, will you explain to me why you are so anxious that Maddalena should marry Fabio? She has had offers from poorer men—you knew of them—but you have never taken the least interest in her accepting or rejecting a proposal before.”
“I hinted the reason to you, months ago, when Fabio first entered the studio.”
“It was rather a vague hint, brother; can’t you be plainer to-day?”
“I think I can. In the first place, let me begin by assuring you that I have no objection to the young man himself. He may be a little capricious and undecided, but he has no incorrigible faults that I have discovered.”
“That is rather a cool way of praising him, Rocco.”
“I should speak of him warmly enough, if he were not the representative of an intolerable corruption, and a monstrous wrong. Whenever I think of him I think of an injury which his present existence perpetuates; and if I do speak of him coldly, it is only for that reason.”
Luca looked away quickly from his brother, and began kicking absently at the marble chips which were scattered over the floor around him.
“I now remember,” he said, “what that hint of yours pointed at. I know what you mean.”
“Then you know,” answered the priest, “that while part of the wealth which Fabio d’Ascoli possesses is honestly and incontestably his own; part, also, has been inherited by him from the spoilers and robbers of the Church—”
“Blame his ancestors for that; don’t blame him.”
“I blame him as long as the spoil is not restored.”
“How do you know that it was spoil, after all?”
“I have examined more carefully than most men the records of the civil wars in Italy; and I know that the ancestors of Fabio d’Ascoli wrung from the Church, in her hour of weakness, property which they dared to claim as their right. I know of titles to lands signed away, in those stormy times, under the influence of fear, or through false representations of which the law takes no account. I call the money thus obtained spoil, and I say that it ought to be restored, and shall be restored, to the Church from which it was taken.”
“And what does Fabio answer to that, brother?”
“I have not spoken to him on the subject.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have, as yet, no influence over him. When he is married, his wife will have influence over him, and she shall speak.”
“Maddalena, I suppose? How do you know that she will speak?”
“Have I not educated her? Does she not understand what her duties are toward the Church, in whose bosom she has been reared?”
Luca hesitated uneasily, and walked away a step or two before he spoke again.
“Does this spoil, as you call it, amount to a large sum of money?” he asked, in an anxious whisper.
“I may answer that question, Luca, at some future time,” said the priest. “For the present, let it be enough that you are acquainted with all I undertook to inform you of when we began our conversation. You now know that if I am anxious for this marriage to take place, it is from motives entirely unconnected with self-interest. If all the property which Fabio’s ancestors wrongfully obtained from the Church were restored to the Church to-morrow, not one paulo of it would go into my pocket. I am a poor priest now, and to the end of my days shall remain so. You soldiers of the world, brother, fight for your pay; I am a soldier of the Church, and I fight for my cause.”
Saying these words, he returned abruptly to the statuette; and refused to speak, or leave his employment again, until he had taken the mold off, and had carefully put away the various fragments of which it consisted. This done, he drew a writing-desk from the drawer of his working-table, and taking out a slip of paper wrote these lines:
“Come down to the studio to-morrow. Fabio will be with us, but Nanina will return no more.”
Without signing what he had written, he sealed it up, and directed it to “Donna Maddalena”; then took his hat, and handed the note to his brother.
“Oblige me by giving that to my niece,” he said.
“Tell me, Rocco,” said Luca, turning the note round and round perplexedly between his finger and thumb; “do you think Maddalena will be lucky enough to get married to Fabio?”
“Still coarse in your expressions, brother!”
“Never mind my expressions. Is it likely?”
“Yes, Luca, I think it is likely.”
With those words he waved his hand pleasantly to his brother, and went out.