Once more did Gerald find himself alone and penniless upon the world. He was not, however, as when first he issued forth, timid, depressed, and diffident. Short as had been the interval since that time, his mind had made a considerable progress. His various readings had taught him much; and he had already learned that in the Mutual Assurance Company we call Life men are ever more or less dependent on their fellows. ‘There must, then,’ said he to himself, ‘be surely some craft or calling to which I can bring skill or aptitude, and some one or other will certainly accept of services that only require the very humblest recognition.’ He walked for hours without seeing a living thing: the barren mountain had not even a sheep-walk; and save the path worn by the track of smugglers, there was nothing to show that the foot of man had ever traversed its dreary solitudes. At last he gained the summit of the ridge, and could see the long line of coast to the westward, jagged and indented with many a bay and promontory. There lay St. Stephano: he could recognise it by the light cloud of pale blue smoke that floated over the valley, and marked where the town stood; and, beyond, he could catch the masts and yards of a few small craft that were sheltering in the offing. Beyond these again stretched the wide blue sea, marked at the horizon by some far-away sails. The whole was wrapped in that solemn calm, so striking in the noon of an Italian summer’s day. Not a cloud moved, not a leaf was stirring; a faint foam-line on the beach told that there the waves crept softly in, but, except this, all nature was at rest.
In the dead stillness of night our thoughts turn inward, and we mingle memories with our present reveries; but in the stillness of noonday, when great shadows lie motionless on the hillside, and all is hushed save the low murmur of the laden bee, our minds take the wide range of the world—visiting many lands—mingling with strange people. Action, rather than reflection, engages us; and we combine, and change, and fashion the mighty elements before us as we will. We people the plains with armed hosts; we fill the towns with busy multitudes—gay processions throng the squares, and banners wave from steeple and tower; over the blue sea proud fleets are seen to move, and thundering echoes send back their dread cannonading: and through these sights and sounds we have our especial part—lending our sympathies here, bearing our warmest wishes there. If we dream, it is of the real, the actual, and the true; and thus dreaming, we are but foreshadowing to ourselves the incidents and accidents of life, and garnering up the resources wherewith to meet them.
Stored as was his mind with recent reading, Gerald’s fancy supplied him with innumerable incidents, in every one of which he displayed the same heroic traits, the same aptitude to meet emergency, and the same high-hearted courage he had admired in others. Vain-gloriousness may be forgiven when it springs, as his did, out of thorough ignorance of the world. It is, indeed, but the warm outpouring of a generous temperament, where self-esteem predominates. The youth ardently desired that the good should prosper and the bad be punished: his only mistake was, that he claimed the chief place in effecting both one and the other.
Eagerly bent upon adventure, no matter where, how, or with whom, he stood on the mountain’s peak, gazing at the scene beneath him. A waving tract of country, traversed by small streams, stretched away toward Tuscany, but where the boundary lay between the states he could not detect. No town or village could be descried; and, so far as he could see, miles and miles of journey yet lay before him ere he could arrive at a human dwelling. This was indeed the less matter, since Tina had fastened up in his handkerchief sufficient food for the day; and even were night to overtake him, there was no great hardship in passing it beneath that starry sky.
‘Many there must be,’ thought he, ‘campaigning at this very hour, in far-away lands, mayhap amid the sand deserts of the East, or crouching beneath the shelter of the drifted snows in the North; and even here are troops of gypsies, who never know what means the comfort of a roof over them.’ Just as he said these words to himself, his eyes chanced to rest upon a thin line of pale blue smoke that arose from a group of alders beside a stream in the valley. Faint and thin at first, it gradually grew darker and fuller, till it rose into the clear air, and was wafted slowly along toward the sea.
‘Just as if I had conjured them up,’ cried Gerald, ‘there are the gypsies; and if there be a Strega in the company, she shall have this crown for telling me my fortune! What marvels will she not invent for this broad piece—what dragons shall I not slay—what princesses not marry; not but in reality they do possess some wondrous insight into the future! Signor Gabriel sneered at it, as he sneered at everything-; but there’s no denying they read destiny, as the sailor reads the coming storm in signs unseen by others. There is something fine, too, in their clanship; how, poor and houseless, despised as they are, they cling together, hoarding up their ancient rites and traditions—their only wealth—and wandering through the world, pilgrims of centuries old.’
As he descended the mountain path he continued thus to exalt the gypsies in his estimation, and with that unfailing resource in similar cases, that what he was unable to praise he at least found picturesque. The path led through a wood of stunted chestnut-trees, on issuing from whose shade he could no longer detect the spot he was in search of; the fire had gone out, and the smoke ceased to linger over the place.
‘Doubtless the encampment has broken up; they are trudging along toward the coast, where the villages lie,’ thought he, ‘and I may come up with them to-morrow or next day,’ and he stepped out briskly on his way.
The day was intensely hot, and Gerald would gladly have availed himself of any shade, to lie down and enjoy the ‘siesta’ hours in true Italian fashion. The only spot, however, he could procure likely to offer such shelter was a little copse of olives, at a bend of the river, about a mile away. A solitary rock, with a few ruined walls upon it, rose above the trees, and marked the place as one once inhabited. Following the winding of the stream, he at length drew nigh, and quickly noticed that the grass was greener and deeper, with here and there a daffodil or a wild-flower, signs of a soil which, in some past time, had been cared for and cultivated. The river, too, as it swept around the base of the rock, deepened into a clear, calm pool, the very sight of which was intensely grateful and refreshing. As the youth stood in admiring contemplation of this fair bath, and inwardly vowing to himself the luxury of a plunge into it, a low rustling noise startled him, and a sound like the sharp stamp of a beast’s foot. He quickly turned, and, tracing the noise, saw a very diminutive ass, who, tethered to an olive-tree, was busily munching a meal of thistles, and as busily stamping off the stray forest flies that settled on him. Two panniers, covered over with some tarnished scarlet cloth, and a drum of considerable size and very gaudy colouring, lay on the grass, with three or four painted poles, a roll of carpet, and a bright brass basin, such as conjurers use for their trade. There was also a curiously-shaped box, painted in checkers, doubtless some mysteriously gifted ‘property.’
Curious to discover the owners of these interesting relics, Gerald advanced into the copse, when his quick hearing was arrested by the long-drawn breathings of several people fast asleep—so, at least, they seemed, by the full-toned chorus of their snorings; though the next moment showed him that they consisted of but three persons, an old, stunted, and very emaciated man; an equally old woman, immensely fat and misshapen, to which her tawdry finery gave something indescribably ludicrous in effect; and a young girl, whose face was buried in the bend of her arms, but whose form, as she lay in the graceful abandonment of sleep, was finely and beautifully proportioned. A coarse dress of brown stuff was her only covering, leaving her arms bare, while her legs, but for the sandals of some tawdry tinsel, were naked to the knees and as brown as the skin of an Indian, yet in shape and symmetry they might have vied with the most faultless statue of the antique—indeed, to a sleeping nymph in the gallery of the Altieri Palace was Gerald now comparing her, as he stood gazing on her. The richly floating hair, which, as a protection against the zanzari, she had let fall over her neck and shoulders, only partially defended her, and so she stirred at times, each motion displaying some new charm, some fresh grace of form. At last, perhaps startled by a thought of her dreams, she gave a sudden cry, and sprang up to a sitting posture, her eyes widely staring and her half-opened lips turned to where Gerald stood. As for him, the amazement that seized him overcame him—for she was no other than the tarantella dancer of the Piazza di Spagna, the Marietta who had so fascinated him on the night he left the convent.
‘Babbo! Babbo!’ screamed she, in terror, as she caught sight of the naked rapier at the youth’s side; and in a moment both the old man and the woman were on their legs.
‘We are poor, miserably poor, Signore!’ cried the old man piteously; ‘mere “vagabonds,” and no more.’
‘We have not a Bajocclo among us, Signore mio,’ blubbered out the old woman.
An honest burst of laughter from Gerald, far more reassuring than words, soon satisfied them that their fears were needless.
‘Who are you, then?’ cried the girl, as she darted her piercing black eyes toward him; ‘and why are you here?’
‘The world is wide, and open to all of us,cara mia,’ said the youth good-humouredly. ‘Don’t be angry with me because I ‘m not a brigand.’
‘He says truly,’ said the old man.
‘Sangue dei Santi, but you have given me a hearty fright, boy, what ever brought you here!’ said the fat old woman, as she wiped the hot drops from her steaming face.
There is some marvellous freemasonry in poverty—some subtle sympathy links poor men together—for scarcely had Gerald told that he was destitute and penniless as themselves, than these poor outcasts bade him a frank welcome among them, and invited him to a share of their little scanty supper.
‘I ‘ll warrant me that you have drawn a low number in the conscription, boy; and that’s the reason you have fled from home,’ said the old woman; and Gerald laughed good-humouredly, as though accepting the suggestion as a happy guess; nor was he sorry to be spared the necessity of recounting his story.
‘But why not be a soldier?’ broke in Marietta.
‘Because it’s a dog’s life,’ retorted the hag savagely.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Gerald. ‘When I saw the noble guard of his Holiness prancing into the Piazza del Popolo, I longed to be one of them. They were all glittering with gold and polished steel, and their horses bounded and caracoled as if impatient for a charge.’
‘Ah!’ sighed the old man drearily, ‘there’s only one happy road in this life.’
‘And what may that be, Babbo?’ said Gerald, addressing him by the familiar title the girl had given him.
‘A Frate’s, boy, a Frate’s. I don’t care whether he be a Dominican or an Ignorantine. Though, myself, I like the Ignorantines. Theirs is truly a blessed existence: no wants—no cares—no thoughts for the morrow! I never watched one of them stepping along, with firm foot and sack on his arm, that I didn’t say to myself, “There’s freedom—there’s light-heartedness.”’
‘I should have called your own a pleasanter life.’
‘Mine!’ groaned he.
‘Ay, Babbo, and so is it,’ burst in the girl, in an excited tone. ‘Show me the Frate has such a time as we have! Whenever the friar comes, men shuffle away to escape giving him their “quattrini.” They know well there’s no such sturdy beggar as he who asks no alms, but shows you the mouth of his long empty sack; but where we appear the crowds gather, mothers snatch up their babies and hurry out to greet us; hard-worked men cease their toil; children desert their games; all press round eagerly at the first roll of Gaetana’s drum, and of poor Chico’s fife, when he was with us,’ added she, dropping her head, while a heavy tear rolled down her swarthy cheek.
‘Maladizione a Chico!’ screamed out the old man, lifting up both his clenched hands in passion.
‘What was it he did?’ asked Gerald of the old man.
‘He fancied himself a patriot, boy, and he stabbed a spy of the police at the St. Lucia one evening; and they have him now at the galleys, and they ‘ll keep him there for life!
‘Ah! if you saw him on the two poles,’ cried the girl, ‘only strapped so, over his instep, and he could spring from here to the tree yonder; and then he ‘d unfasten one, and holding it on his forehead, balance Babbo’s basin on the top, all the while playing the tambourine! And who could play it like him? It was a drum with cymbals in his hands.’
‘Was he handsome, too?’ asked Gerald, with a half-sly glance toward her; but she only hung her head in silence.
‘He handsome!’ cried the old woman, catching at the words. ‘Brutto! brutto! he had a hare-lip, with a dog’s jaw!’
‘No, truly,’ muttered Babbo; ‘he was not handsome, though he could do many a thing well-favoured ones couldn’t attempt. He was a sore loss to us,’ said he, with a deep sigh.
‘There wasn’t a beast of the field nor a bird that flies he couldn’t imitate,’ broke in Marietta; ‘and with some wondrous cunning, too, he could blend the sounds together, and you ‘d hear the cattle lowing and the rooks cawing all at the same time.’
‘The owl was good; that was his best,’ said Babbo.
‘Oh, was it not fine!—the wild shriek of the owl, while the tide was breaking on the shore, and the waves came in plash, plash, in the still night.’
‘May his toil be hard and his chains heavy!’ exclaimed the hag; ‘we have had nothing but misery and distress since the day he was taken.’
‘Poor fellow,’ said Gerald, ‘his lot is harder still.’ The girl’s dark eyes turned fully upon him, with a look of grateful meaning, that well repaid his compassionate speech.
‘So may it be,’ chimed in the hag; ‘and so with all who ill-treat those whose bread they’ve eaten,’ and she turned a glance of fiery anger on the girl. ‘What art doing there, old fool!’ cried she to the Babbo, who, having turned his back to the company, was telling over his beads busily. He made no reply, and she went on: ‘That’s all he’s good for now. There was a time he could sing Punch’s carnival from beginning to end, keep four dancing on the stage, and two talking out of windows; but now he’s ever at the litanies: he’d rather talk to you about St. Francis than of the Tombola, he would!’
As the old hag, with bitter words and savage energy, inveighed against her old associate, Gerald had sense to mark that, small as the company was, it yet consisted of ingredients that bore little resemblance, and were attached by the slenderest sympathies to each other. He was young and inexperienced enough in life to imagine that they who amuse the world by their gifts, whatever they be, carry with them to their homes the pleasant qualities which delight the audiences. He fancied that, through all their poverty, the light-hearted gaiety that marked them in public would abide with them when alone, and that the quips and jests they bandied were but the outpourings of a ready wit always in exercise.
The Babbo had been a servitor of a convent in the Abruzzi, and, dismissed for some misdemeanour, had wandered about the world in vagabondage till he became a conjurer, some talent or long-neglected gift of slight-of-hand coming to the rescue of his fortune. The woman, Donna Gaetana, had passed through all the stages of ‘Street Ballet,’ from the prodigy of six years old, with a wreath of violets on her brow, to the besotted old beldame, whose specialty was the drum. As for Marietta, where she came from, of what parentage, or even of what land, I know not. The Babbo called her his niece—his grandchild—his ‘figliuola’ at times, but she was none of these. In the wayward turns of their fortune these street performers are wont to join occasionally together in the larger capitals, that by their number they may attract more favourable audiences; and so, when Gerald first saw them at Rome, they were united with some Pifferari from Sicily; but the same destiny that decides more pretentious coalitions had separated theirs, and the three were now trudging northward in some vague hope that the land of promise lay in that direction. It is needless to say how Gerald felt attracted by the strange adventurous life of which they spoke. The Babbo, mingling his old convent traditions, his scraps of monkish Latin, his little fragments of a pious training, with the descriptions of his subtle craft, was a study the youth delighted in, while from his own early teaching, it was also a character he could thoroughly appreciate. Donna Gaetana, indeed, offered little in the way of interest, but did not Marietta alone compensate for more than this? The wild and fearless grace of this young girl, daring to the very verge of shamelessness, and yet with a strange instinctive sense of womanly delicacy about her, that lifted her, in her raggedness, to a sphere where deference was her due; her matchless symmetry, her easy motion, a mingled expression of energy and languor about her, all met happily in one who but needed culture to have become a great artiste. She possessed, besides, a voice of exquisite richness, one of those deep-toned organs whose thrilling expression seems to attain at once the highest triumph of musical art in the power of exciting the sensibilities: such was that poor neglected child, as she hovered over the brink where vice and wretchedness and crime run deep and fast below!
When the meal was over, and the little vessels used in preparing it were all duly washed and packed, old Gaetana lighted her pipe, and once in full puff proceeded to drag from a portentous-looking bag a mass of strange rags, dirty and particoloured, the slashed sleeves and spangled skirts proclaiming them as ‘properties.’
‘Clap that velvet cap on thy head, boy, and let’s see what thou lookest like,’ cried she, handing Gerald a velvet hat, looped up in front, and ornamented with an ostrich feather.
‘What for?’ cried he rudely; ‘I am no mountebank.’ And then, as he caught Marietta’s eyes, a deep blush burned all over his face, and he said, in a voice of shame, ‘To be sure! Anything you like. I’ll wear this too,’ and he snatched up a tawdry mantle and threw it over his shoulders.
‘Come e bellino!’ said Marietta, as she clasped her hands across her bosom, and gazed on him in a sort of rapture. ‘He’s like Paolo in the Francesca,’ muttered she.
‘He’ll never be Chico,’ growled out the hag. ‘Birbante that he was, who ‘ll ever jump through nine hoops with A lighted taper in his hand? Oh,Assassino!it won’t serve you now!’
‘Do you know Paolo’s speech?’ whispered Marietta.
‘No,’ said he, blushing, half angry, half ashamed.
‘Then I ‘ll teach it to you.’
‘Thou shouldst have been an acolyte at San Giovanni di Laterano when the Pope says the high mass, boy,’ cried Babbo enthusiastically. ‘Thy figure and face would well become the beauteous spectacle.’
‘Does not that suit him?’ cried the girl, as she replaced the hat by a round cap, such as pages wear, with a single eagle’s feather. ‘Does not that become him?’
‘Who cares for looks?’ muttered the hag. ‘Chico was ugly enough to bring bad luck; and when shall we see his like again?’
‘Who knows! who knows?’ said Babbo slowly. ‘This lad may, if he join us, have many a good gift we suspect not. Canst sing?’
‘Yes; at least the litanies.’
‘Ah, bravo, Giovane!’ cried the old man. ‘Thou It bring a blessing upon us.’
‘Canst play the fife, the tambourine, the flute?’ asked Gaetana.
‘None of them.’
‘Thou canst recite, I’m sure,’ said Marietta. ‘Thou knowest Tasso and Petrarch, surely, and Guarini?’
‘Yes; and Dante by heart, if that be of any service to me,’ said Gerald.
‘Ah! I know nothing of him,’ said she sorrowfully; ‘but I could repeat the Orlando from beginning to end.’
‘How art thou on the stilts or the slack-rope?’ asked the old woman; ‘for these other things never gave bread to any one.’
‘If I must depend upon the slack-rope, then,’ said Gerald, good-humouredly, ‘I run a good chance of going supperless to bed.’
‘How they neglect them when they’re young, and their bones soft and pliant!’ said Gaetana sternly. ‘What parents are about nowadays I can’t imagine. I used to crouch into a flower-pot when I was five years old; ay, and spring out of it too when the Fairy Queen touched the flower!’
Gerald could with great difficulty restrain the burst of laughter this anecdote of her early life provoked.
‘Oh, come with us; stay with us,’ whispered Marietta in his ear.
‘If thou hast been taught the offices, boy,’ said Babbo, ‘thou deservest an honester life than ours. Leave us, then; go thy ways, and walk in better company.’
‘Corpo del diavolo!’ screamed out the hag. ‘It’s always so with him. He has nothing but hard words for the trade he lives by.’
‘Stay with us; stay with us,’ whispered the girl, more faintly.
‘Thou mightst have a worse offer, lad; for who can tell what’s in thee? I warrant me, thou ‘It never be great at jumping tricks,’ said Babbo.
‘Wilt stay?’ said Marietta, as her eyes swam in tears.
‘I will,’ said Gerald, with a glance that made her cheek crimson.
I am not certain that a great ‘Impressario’ of Paris or London would have deemed the document which bound Gerald to his new master a very formal instrument. But there was a document. It was written on a fly-leaf of old Babbo’s Breviary, and set forth duly that for certain services to be afterward detailed, ‘un certo Gherardi’—so was he called—was to eat, and drink, and be clothed; always providing that there was meat, and drink, and wearables to give him; with certain benefices—small contingent remainders—to accrue when times were prosperous and patrons generous, and all this for the term of a twelvemonth. Donna Gaetana stoutly fought for five years, then three, and then two: but she was beaten in all her amendments, though she argued her case ably. She showed, with a force derived from great experience, that theirs was a profession wherein there was much to learn; that the initial stages developed very few of those gifts which won popular applause; that, consequently, the neophyte was anything but a profitable colleague; and it was only when his education was perfected that he could be expected to repay the cost of his early instruction. ‘At the end of a year,’ to borrow her own forcible language, ‘he ‘ll have smashed a dozen basins and broken twenty poles, and he ‘ll just be as stiff in the back as you see him today.’
‘He ‘ll have had enough of a weary life ere that,’ muttered the Babbo.
‘What haveyouto complain of, I ‘d like to know?’ asked she fiercely; ‘you that sit there all day like a prince on a throne, never so much as giving a blast of a horn or a beat on the drum; but pulling a few cords for your puppets, and making them patter about the stage while you tell over the self-same story I heard forty years ago. Ah, if it was Pierno! that was something indeed to hear! He came out with something new every evening—droll fellow that he was—and could make the people laugh till the Piazza rung again.’
‘Well, well,’ sighed Babbo, ‘his drollery has cost him something. He cut a jest upon the Cardinal Balfi, and they sent him to Molo di Gaeta, to work at the galleys. My pulcinello may be stupid, but will not make me finish my days in chains.’
Whether Marietta feared the effect these domestic discussions might produce upon Gerald, newly come as he was among them, or that she desired to talk with him more at her ease, she strolled away into the wood, giving one lingering glance as she left the place to bid him follow. The youth was not loth to accept the hint, and soon overtook her.
‘And so,’ said she, taking his hand between both her own, ‘youwillstay?’
‘I have promised it,’ replied Gerald.
‘All for me, all for me, as the little song says.’
‘I never heard it. Will you sing it, Marietta?’ said he, placing his arm around her waist.
‘I ‘ll go and fetch my guitar, then,’ said she, and bounding away, was soon once more beside him, sweeping her fingers over the cords as she came.
‘It’s nothing of a song, either words or music; but I picked it up at Capri, and it reminds me of that sweet spot.’ So saying, and after a little prelude, she sang the canzonette, of which the following words are a rude version:
‘I know a bark on a moonlit sea,Pescator! Pescator!There’s one in that bark a-thinking of me,Oh, Pescator!And while his light boat steals along,Pescator! Pescator!He murmurs my name in his evening song,Oh, Pescator!He prays the Madonna above my head,Pescator! Pescator!To bring sweet dreams around my bed,Oh, Pescator!And when the morning breaks on shore,I’ll kneel and pray for my Pescator,Who ventures alone on the stormy sea,All for me! all for me!’!!!!
Simple as were the words, the wild beauty of the little air thrilled through Gerald’s heart, and twice did he make her repeat it.
‘Oh, if you like barcarolles,’ said she, ‘I’ll sing you hundreds of them, and teach you, besides, to sing them with me. We shall be so happy,Gherardi mio, living thus together.
‘And not regret Chico?’ said Gerald gravely.
‘Chico was very clever, but he was cruel. He would beat me when I would not learn quickly; and my life was very sad when he was with us. See,’ said she, drawing down her sleeve from her shoulder, ‘these stripes were of his giving.’
‘Briccone!’ muttered Gerald, ‘if I had him here.’
‘Ah, he was so treacherous! He ‘d have stabbed you at the altar-foot rather than let a vengeance escape him. He was a Corsican.’
‘And are they so treacherous always?’
‘Are they?’ cried she. ‘Per Dio, I believe they are.’
‘Well, let’s talk of him no more. I only mentioned his name because I feared you loved him, Marietta.’
‘And if I had!’ asked she, with a half-malicious drollery in her dark eyes.
‘Then I ‘d have hated him all the more—hatedyou, perhaps, too.’
‘Poverino!’ said she, with a sigh which ended in a laugh.
And now they walked along, side by side, while she told Gerald all about her life, her companions, their humours, their habits, and their ways. She liked Babbo. He was kind-hearted and affectionate; but Donna Gaetana was all that was cruel and unfeeling. Chico, indeed, had always resisted her tyranny, and she counselled Gerald to do the same. ‘As for me,’ added she sorrowfully, ‘I am but a girl, and must bear with her.’
‘But I’ll stand by you, Marietta,’ cried Gerald boldly. ‘We ‘ll see if the world won’t go better with each of us as we meet it thus,’ and he drew her arm around his waist, while he clasped hers with his own.
And what a happy hour was that as thus they rambled along under the leafy shade, no sound but the wild wood-pigeon’s cry to break the silence! for often they were silent with thoughts deeper than words could render. She, full of that future where Gerald was to be the companion of all her games; he, too, ranging in fancy over adventures wherein, as her protector and defender, he confronted perils unceasingly. Then he bethought him how strangely destiny should have thus brought them together, two forsaken, friendless creatures.
One falls in love at eighteen, at eight-and-twenty, and at eight-and-forty, with very different reasons for the process. Silky hair, and long eye-lashes, and pearly teeth get jostled as we go on through life, with thoughts of good connections and the three per cents., and a strange compromise is effected between inclination and self-interest. To know, however, the true ecstasy of the passion, to feel it in all its impulsive force, and in the full strength of its irresponsibility, be very young and very poor—young enough to doubt of nothing, not even yourself; poor enough to despise riches most heartily.
Gerald was young and poor. His mind, charged with deep stores of sentiment, was eagerly seeking where to invest its wealth. The tender pathos of St. Pierre, the more dangerous promptings of Rousseau, were in his heart, and he yearned for one to whom he could speak of the feelings that struggled within him. As for Marietta, to listen to him was ecstasy. The glowing language of poetry, its brilliant imagery, its melting softness, came upon her like refreshing rain upon some arid soil, scorched and sun-stricken: her spirit, half-crushed beneath daily hardships, rose at once to the magic touch of ennobling sentiment. Oh! what a new world was that which now opened before them: how beautiful, how bright, how full of tenderness, how rich in generous emotions!
‘Only think,’ said she, looking into his eyes, ‘but this very morning we had not known each other, and now we are bound together for ever and ever. Is it not so,Gherardi mio?’
‘So swear I!’ cried Gerald, as he pressed her to his heart; and then, in the full current of his warm eloquence, he poured forth a hundred schemes for their future career. They would seek out some sweet spot of earth, far away and secluded, like that wherein they rambled then, only more beautiful in verdure, and more picturesque, and build themselves a hut; there they would live together a life of bliss.
It was only by earnest persuasion she could turn him from at once putting the project into execution. ‘Why not now?’ cried he. ‘Here we are free, beyond the wood; you cross a little stream, and we are in Tuscany. I saw the frontier from the mountain-top this morning.’
‘And then,’ said the girl, ‘how are we to live?’ We shall neither have the Babbo nor Donna Gaetana; I cannot dance without her music, nor have you learned anything as yet to do.Mio Gherardi, we must wait and study hard; you must learn to be Paolo, and to declaim “Antonio,” too. I’ll teach you these; besides, the Babbo has a volume full of things would suit you. Our songs, too, we have not practised them together; and in the towns where we are going, the public, they say, are harder to please than in these mountain villages.’ And then she pictured forth a life of artistic triumph—success dear to her humble heart, the very memory of which brought tears of joy to her eyes. These she was longing to display before him, and to make him share in. Thus talking, they returned to the encampment, where, as the heat was past, the Babbo was now preparing to set out on his journey.
An autumnal night, in all its mellow softness, was just closing in upon the Lungo l’Arno of Florence. Toward the east and south the graceful outlines of San Miniato, with its tall cypresses, might be seen against the sky, while all the city, which lay between, was wrapped in deepest shadow. It was the season of the Ville-giatura, when the great nobles are leading country lives; still the various bridges, and the quays at either side of the river, were densely crowded with people. The denizens of the close and narrow streets came forth to catch the faint breath of air that floated along the Arno. Seated on benches and chairs, or gathered in little knots and groups, the citizens seemed to enjoy this houral frescowith a zest only known to those who have basked in the still and heated atmosphere of a southern climate. Truly, no splendid salon, in all the gorgeous splendour of its gildings, ever presented a spot so luxurious as that river-side, while the fresh breeze came, borne along the water’s track from the snow clad heights of Vallombrosa, gathering perfume as it came. No loud voices, no boisterous mirth disturbed the delicious calm of the enjoyment, but a low murmur of human sounds, attuned as it were to the gentle ripple of the passing stream, and here and there a light and joyous laugh, were only heard. At the Pont St. Trinita and immediately below it the crowd was densest, attracted, not impossibly, by the lights and movement that went on in a great palace close by, the only one of all those on the Arno that showed signs of habitation. Of the others the owners were absent; but here, through the open windows, might be seen figures passing and repassing, and at times the sounds of music heard from within. With that strange sympathy—for it is not all curiosity—that attracts people to watch the concourse of some gay company, the ebb and flow of intercourse, the crowd gazed eagerly up at the windows, commenting on this or that personage as they passed, and discussing together what they fancied might form the charm of such society.
The faint tinkling of a guitar in the street beneath, and the motion of the crowd, showed that some sort of street performance had attracted attention; and soon the balcony of the palace was thronged with the gay company, not sorry, as it seemed, to have this pretext for loitering in the free night air. To the brief prelude of the guitar a roll of the drum succeeded, and then, when silence had been obtained, might be heard the voice of an old, infirm man, announcing a programme of the entertainment. First of all—and by ‘torch-light, if the respectable public would vouchsafe the expense’—The adventures of Don Callemaoho among the Moors of Barbary; his capture, imprisonment, and escape; his rescue of the Princess of Cordova, with their shipwreck afterward on the island of Ithica: the whole illustrated with panoramic scenery, accompanied by music, and expressed by appropriate dialogue and dancing. The declamation to be delivered by a youth of consummate genius—the action to be enunciated by a Signorina of esteemed merit. ‘I do not draw attention to myself, nor to the gifts of that excellent lady who presides over the drum,’ continued he. ‘Enough that Naples has seen, Venice praised, Rome applauded us.
We have gathered laurels at Milan; wreathed flowers have fallen on us at Mantua; our pleasant jests have awoke laughter in the wild valleys of Calabria; our pathos has dimmed many an eye in the gorgeous halls of Genoa; princes and contadini alike have shared in the enjoyment of our talents; and so, with your favour, may each of you,Gentilissimi Signori.’
Whether, however, the ‘intelligent public’ was not as affluent as it was gifted, or that, to apply the ancient adage, ‘Le jeu ne valait pas la chandelle,’ but so was it, that the old man had twice made the tour of the circle without obtaining a single quatrino.
‘At Bologna,O Signori, they deemed this representation worthy of wax-light. We gave it in the Piazza before two thousand spectators, who, if less great or beautiful than those we see here, were yet bountiful in their generosity! Sound the drum,comare miasaid he, addressing the old woman, ‘and let the spirit-rousing roll inspire heroic longings. A blast of the tromb,figlio miowill set these noble hearts high-beating for a tale of chivalry.’ The deafening clamour of drum and trumpet resounded through the air, and came back in many an echo from across the Arno; but, alas! they awoke no responsive sympathies in the audience, who probably having deemed that the spectacle might be partly gratuitous, showed already signs of thinning away. ‘Are you going,Illustrissimi Signori, cried he, more energetically, ‘going without one view, one passing glance at the castle on the Guadalquivir, with its court of fountains, all playing and splashing like real water; going without a look at the high-pooped galleon, as she sailed forth at morn, with the banner of the house of Callemacho waving from the mast, while the signal guns are firing a salute, the high cliffs of Carthagena reverberating with the sound? ‘A loud ‘bom’ from the drum gave testimony to the life-like reality of the description. ‘Going,’ screamed he, more eagerly still, ‘without witnessing the palace of the Moorish king, lit up at night—ten thousand lanterns glittering along its marble terraces, while strains of soft music fill the air? A gentle melody,figlio mio, whispered he to the boy beside him.
‘Let them go, in the devil’s name!’ broke out the old woman, whose harsh accents at once proclaimed our old acquaintance Donna Gaetana.
‘What says she—what says the Donna?’ cried three or four of the crowd in a breath.
‘She says that we ‘ll come back in the daylight, Signori,’ broke in the old man, in terror, ‘and sing our native songs of Calabria, and show our native dances. We know well, O gentle public, that poor ignorant creatures like ourselves are but too rash to appear before you great Florentines, citizens of Michel Angelo, dwellers with Benvenuto, companions of Boccaccio!’
‘And not a quatrino among ye!’ yelled out the old hag, with a laugh of scorn.
A wild cry of anger burst from the crowd, who, breaking the circle, now rushed in upon the strollers.
In vain the Babbo protested, explained, begged, and entreated. He declared the company to be the highest, the greatest, the richest, he had ever addressed; himself and his companions the vilest and least worthy of humanity. He asseverated in frantic tones his belief, that from the hour when he should lose their favour no fortune would ever attend on him, either in this world or the next.
But of what avail was it that he employed every eloquence at his command, while the Donna, with words of insult, and gestures more offensive still, reviled the ‘base rabble,’ and with all the virulence of her coarse nature hurled their poverty in their teeth?
‘Famished curs!’ cried she. ‘How would ye have asoldo, when your nobles dine on parched beans, and drink the little sour wine of Ponteseive?’
A kick from a strong foot, that sent it through the parchment of the drum with a loud report, answered this insolent taunt, and gave the signal for a general attack. Down went the little wooden edifice, which embodied the life and fortunes of the Don and the fair Princess of Cordova; down went the Babbo himself over it, amid a crash of properties, that created a yell of laughter in the mob. All the varied insignia of the cunning craft, basins and bladders, juggling sticks, hoops, and baskets, flew right and left, in wild confusion. Up to this time Gerald had witnessed the wreck unmoved, his whole care being to keep the crowd from pressing too rudely upon Marietta, who clung to him for protection. Indeed, the frantic struggles of old Gaetana, as she laid about her with her drum-sticks, had already provoked the youth’s laughter, when, at a cry from the girl, he turned quickly around.
‘Here’s the Princess herself, I ‘ll be sworn,’ said a coarse-looking fellow, as, seizing Marietta’s arm, he tried to drag her forward.
With a blow of his clenched fist Gerald sent him reeling back, and then, drawing the short scimitar which he wore as part of his costume, he swept the space in front of him, while he grasped the girl with his other arm. So unlooked-for a defiance seemed for an instant to unman the mob, but the next moment a shower of missiles, the fragments of old Babbo’s fortune, were showered upon them. Had he been assailed by wild beasts, Gerald’s assault could not have been more wildly daring: he cut on every side, hurling back those that rushed in upon him, and even trampling them beneath his feet.
Bleeding and bruised, half-blinded, too, by the blood that flowed from a wound on his forehead, the youth still held his ground, not a word escaping him, not a cry; while the reviling of the mob filled the air around. At last, shamed at the miserable odds that had so long resisted them, the rabble, with a wild yell of vengeance, rushed forward in a mass, and though some of the foremost fell covered with blood, the youth was dashed to the ground, all eagerly pressing to trample on and crush him.
‘Over the parapet with him! Into the Arno with them both!’ cried the mob.
‘Stand back, ye cowardly crew!’ shouted a loud, strong voice, and a powerful man, with a heavy bludgeon in his hand, burst through the crowd, felling all that opposed him; a throng of livery servants armed in the same fashion followed; and the mob, far more in number though they were, shrank back abashed from the sight of one whose rank and station might exact a heavy vengeance.
‘It is the Principe. It is the Conte himself,’ muttered one or two, as they stole off, leaving in a few moments the space cleared of all, save the wounded and those who had come to the rescue. If the grief of Donna Gaetana was loudest, the injuries of poor Gerald were the gravest there. A deep cut had laid open his forehead, another had cleft his shoulder, while a terrible blow of a stone in the side made his respiration painful in the extreme.
‘Safe,Marietta mia; art safe?’ whispered he, as she assisted him to rise. ‘My poor boy,’ said the Count compassionately; ‘she is safe, and owes it all to you. You behaved nobly, lad. The Don himself, with all his Castitian blood, could not show a more courageous front.’
Gerald looked at the speaker, and whether at the tone of his voice, or that the words seemed to convey an unseemly jest at such a moment, he flushed till his cheek was crimson, and drawing himself up said: ‘And who are you? or by what right do you pronounce uponmyblood?’
‘Gherardi mio, caro fratellino,’ whispered the girl. ‘It was he that saved us, and he is a Prince!’
‘For the first, I thank him,’ said the youth. ‘As to his rank, it is his own affair and not mine.’
‘Well spoken, faith!’ said the noble. ‘I tell thee, Giorgio,’ added he to a friend at his side, ‘poets may well feel proud, when they see how the very utterance of their noble sentiments engenders noble thoughts. Look at that tatterdemalion, and think how came he by such notions.’
The abject expression of Babbo’s gratitude, and the far more demonstrative enunciations of old Gaetana’s misery, here interrupted the colloquy. In glowing terms she pictured the calamity that had befallen them—a disaster irreparable for evermore. Never again would human ingenuity construct such mechanism as that which illustrated Don Callemacho’s life. The conjuring tools, too, were masterpieces, not to be replaced; and as to the drum, no contrivance of mere wood and ram-skin ever would give forth such sounds again.
‘Who knows, worthy Donna?’ said the Count, with a grave half-smile. ‘Your own art might teach you, that even the great drama of antiquity has its imitators—some say superiors—in our day.
‘I ‘d say so for one!’ cried Gerald, wiping the blood from his face.
‘Would you so, indeed!’ asked the Count.
‘That would I, so long as glorious Alfieri lives,’ said Gerald resolutely.
‘What hast thou read of thy favourite poet, boy?’ asked the Count.
‘What have I not?—the Saul, the Agamemnon, Oreste, Maria Stuart.’
‘Ah, Signor Principe, you should hear him in Oreste,’ broke in Gaetana; ‘and he plays a solo on the trombone after the second act: he sets every ass in the Campagna a-braying, when he comes to one part. Do it,Gherardi mio; do it for his Highness.Oh me!we have no trombone left us,’ and she burst out into a torrent of grief.
‘Take these people to the inn at the Porta Rossa,’ said the Count to one of his servants. ‘Let them be well cared for and attended to. Fetch a surgeon to see this boy.Adio, my friends. I ‘ll come and see you to-morrow, when you are well rested and refreshed.’
In a boisterous profusion of thanks, old Babbo and the Donna uttered their gratitude, while Gerald and Marietta kissed their benefactor’s hand, and moved on.
‘He’s a noble Signor,’ muttered old Gaetana; ‘and I’d swear by the accent of his words he is no Florentine.’
‘Thou art right for once, old lady,’ said the servant, as he led the way; ‘he’s of the north, and the best blood of Piedmont.’