The Principessa di Santafede was a lady of gravely gracious manners, iron prejudices and active piety, and she entertained a profound belief in the necessity of her own class to the well-being of the world. So far as she was concerned secular history contained but one record worthy of study and imitation, the record of the noble houses of Rome. Each tradition and regulation connected with these was not only a rubric but a dogma. To believe and act thereupon was to find social salvation; all who rejected these articles of faith perish from her consciousness; their names were erased from her "libro d'oro," and they ceased to be. No taint of novelty had cast its shadow over her education. Except that the history books were thicker and the spelling modernized, the teaching she received in the convent along with all the other noble damsels in Rome was the same as that which had been bestowed on her ancestresses for generations past. It had proved entirely sufficient for those eminent ladies, and neither parents nor instructors could see any reason for changing a detail of it. There would be Roman nobles so long as the world lasted; their vast establishments would move ponderously and surely as they had always moved; and a girl brought from her convent to be placed at the head of such an establishment had but to leaveits conduct to the responsible persons, the major-domos, and stewards, and housekeepers, descended from many generations of officials who had served the same "Eccellentissima Casa" in the same capacities. She had but to watch and copy her seniors in order to fulfill her obligations in society, in matrimony, in maternity, to the complete satisfaction of all concerned. Life was quite simple if only people did their duty.
Political crises would occur, of course; the riots and revolutions of 1848, for instance, had been most disturbing. But they had only strengthened the beliefs of right-thinking persons, for, behold, they had passed by like a wave of the sea breaking against the rocks, leaving everything as it was before and as it would be "in sæcula sæculorum" so far as Rome was concerned—and Rome was the world.
Prince Santafede had died when their only son was quite a child, and the responsibilities thus devolving on her sufficiently accounted for his widow's grave outlook on life. It was, however, a peaceful and happy life, clouded by few real anxieties, since Onorato had now reached the age of eighteen without giving any serious trouble. He was a cheerful, warm-hearted boy, with no more fixed aversion to study than the remainder of his contemporaries. Accompanied by his tutor, a learned ecclesiastic, he had attended the proper lectures at the university, and, though his education included only the classics and humanities, it had given him all that was then required of a gentleman, fluent and elegant Latin,a working acquaintance with his own and foreign literatures, charming manners, and a fitting sense of what was due to himself and others. If there was one cloud in his mother's large sky, it was caused by the fact that he did not take her views on the sacredness of family traditions in one or two minor directions, notably that of the expenditure on the stables. Onorato had no other extravagances, but he insisted on riding and driving magnificent imported horses, declaring that it was a public duty to set a higher standard than the prevailing one in such matters. The Princess and Onorato's lamented father had been perfectly contented with their six pairs of coal-black horses, bred on their own lands with hundreds of others destined to be sold all over Italy and Austria. The animals had been driven and cared for by coachmen and grooms also born on the estates; and the Princess could not imagine anything more splendid and appropriate than the high calèche on C. springs in which she took her daily airing; the deep, hearse-like berline swung on leather bands, which carried her to parties, seemed the perfection of comfort and safety; and she felt something like reverence for the yellow stage coach, with blazoned panels and glass sides, with gold-fringed hammercloth and tasseled straps to which the three dazzlingly arrayed footmen hung behind. It was only brought out on grand occasions, for audiences with the Pope or Ambassadors' receptions, and the Princess felt as if her skies were falling when her son, a "Principe del Solio" (supporter of the throne), climbing into itin all his magnificence of doublet and ruff, gold chain and sword, to go and attend the Holy Father on Easter morning, called it a "lumbering old pumpkin," and declared that if he had his way he would make a bonfire of it in the courtyard. His revolutionary ideas had not only demonstrated themselves by importing foreign horses, but by filling the coachhouses with French carriages and the stables with English grooms, barbarians who, while fulfilling their other duties faithfully enough, grumbled at having to go to church, and thus deeply scandalized the rest of the well-drilled household.
The Princess's brother, Cardinal Cestaldini, Professor Bianchi's learned patron and friend, tried to console his sister for her son's equine irregularities by pointing out that they were not so extravagant as they appeared, since Onorato was bent on improving the Roman breed and thus adding considerable value to the Santafede horse farms; also that a young man might spend his money on worse things than horses. This was at all events an innocent taste, and, seeing that Onorato had no inclination for deeply serious pursuits, and was too young to get married—well, his mother must be patient and not estrange him by any undue severity. Paolo Cestaldini's own happy lot inspired him with much indulgence for those less blessed. He felt that few were as fortunate as himself, delivered from worldly distractions at the start by what he considered the undeserved grace of a religious vocation, and then provided with the most elevating and beneficent occupation for his leisure.In the delights of Art and Archæology, subjects which he could discuss with the most learned, he found an inexhaustible source of interest and recreation. Incapable of an ungenerous or insincere thought, he was merciful and gentle in his judgment of others. Religion, which had built up round his sister a wall of defense against the temptations which assault those in the world, had turned the other side of its golden shield to him, and mellowed and enriched the man's ascetic nature and broadened his mind while it refined his appreciations. To the married woman it was a fortress, to the lonely prelate, a garden.
The Princess listened rather despondently to her brother's encouraging exhortations. They did not alter her conviction that Onorato was on the wrong road, and she resolved to pray more earnestly (good soul, that would hardly have been possible) and to apply herself with more fervor to her many works of charity in order to obtain his reformation. Full of these thoughts, she stopped at the church of San Severino on her way home, dismissed her carriage, since the Palazzo Santafede was only a few hundred yards away, and found a good deal of comfort in saying her prayers in the silent, dusky church.
Emerging half-an-hour later, she saw just before her in the street, a servant woman leading a little girl by the hand. The airy poise of the little figure, the light step and quick turn of the small head, took the Princess's fancy. Above all, the shining golden braids hanging down to the child's waist aroused heradmiration, for to be fair is to be loved, in dark Romagna. Mariuccia and Giannella, unconscious that their unapproachably illustrious landlady was following them, passed up the street, turned into the piazza, and disappeared under the arched entrance of the palace. By the time the Princess reached it, they were lost to view round the turn of the colonnade. She paused to ask the porter, who was grounding his tasseled staff and sweeping the pavement with his hat, if he could tell her who the child was. Did she belong to anyone in the palazzo?
The Excellency was informed that the woman conducting her was Professor Bianchi's servant, and that the little girl had been brought by a contadina from the country a few days before. Nothing more was known. The "donna" rarely spoke to anyone. Did the Excellency wish inquiries to be made?
Certainly not, the Princess replied, Professor Bianchi's family was his private affair. She discouraged all gossip about her tenants. Ferretti, the mæstro di casa, was responsible for them and she never interfered with his wise and careful management. Still, he had told her, when letting the rooms, that the Professor was a bachelor; and Bianchi was sufficiently distinguished in his own learned circle for his rather crabbed characteristics to have become more or less known to the public. The Princess, as she mounted the broad marble stairs to her own apartment, wondered whether the child were some relation of his, and felt a certain pity for the bright little thing if she were really condemned to livewith the parsimonious man of science and his grim-looking servant.
She was soon to know more about Giannella. Mariuccia was just now terribly puzzled by a new responsibility which immediately faced her. At seven years of age children must begin to go to school, and how was this to be managed for Giannella? There were free schools all over the city, kept by the nuns for the children of the poor. The little ones were collected from their homes in the morning by trusty persons who called for them and brought them back in the evening, receiving a tiny monthly sum from the parents for the service. That was all very well, and the nuns took fine care of the small people during the day; but Mariuccia was obstinately set on one point, and she meant to fight for her convictions; la Giannella was a lady. Providence above seemed to have overlooked the fact and had steadily refused to furnish the wherewithal to keep it before the eyes of the world; but the self-constituted representative of Providence on earth would take no denial on the subject, and nothing would have induced her to let Giannella be herded with the children of the city plebeians, to learn their rough ways, their common speech, to remember when she grew up that she had been as one of them. It was one thing to be a paying nursling in the clean, rich country, cared for and cherished by pious, respectable people like Stefano and Candida, who kept their boys and girls in the fear of God and would have punished a bad word, an act of disobedience or even a disrespectfulglance, with a sound beating; it was quite another to mix with low-born children of the city, whose parents, coming from no one knew where, owned no feudal master, no foot of land, and had not been obliged to live up to the stern standard of morals and manners required in the proud "castelli." Giannella had learned her catechism and many pretty hymns from the parish priest, and the first elements of reading from some Franciscan nuns at Castel Gandolfo. Who was to take up the good work and endow her with all the mysterious instruction which it seemed a lady should possess by the time her hair went up and her skirts came down?
Mariuccia put the question to her spiritual director, a Capuchin monk of great age and sanctity, to whom she had been commended by the Curato at home when she first came to Rome as a young woman some eighteen years before, and to whom she had been loyally constant, tramping to his distant monastery on the Palatine once a month from whatever part of the town she happened to be living in. He could not help her much, although he said he would keep the matter in mind and see if some charitable person could get the little girl received as a boarder in one of the many convent schools. But Mariuccia felt that this was a vague outlook, and she confided her trouble to the ever-sympathetic Fra Tommaso, who listened with his usual interest and curiosity to her story.
"But," he objected, when she had ceased speaking, "what has become of the relations who used to sendyou the money for her? Will they not pay any longer?"
"Fra Tommaso mio," she replied, "I must tell you something. It is now a long time since they sent any money for Giannella. Perhaps they are ill—or affairs may not be going so very well over there—what do I know? Meanwhile I could not let the child want, so you see—"
The sacristan pursed his lips and shook his head. "That is bad—very bad. And has Signor Bianchi been paying for her? That would be a miracle indeed."
"No," said poor Mariuccia, driven to tell the humiliating truth at last, "I have had to find the money myself. Of course the relations will repay me when they have time, but meanwhile two of my nieces have got married, and that cost me a great deal; and now, until I hear from over there," her thumb went over her shoulder indicating the unknown regions where the Brockmann family was supposed to have its being, "I do not know what to do. Giannella ought to go to a good school. She is seven years old, and of an intelligence—God bless her! But I cannot manage it."
During this speech Fra Tommaso had been thinking with all his might. Suddenly he banged his forehead with his clenched fist. "Head of a pumpkin that thou art!" he exclaimed to the delinquent member. "We have got it—and I never even thought of it. That Principessa of yours—the Santafede—she was a Cestaldini."
This piece of genealogical information appeared to electrify Mariuccia. "But what are you telling me?" she cried. "Is it true?"
"Of course it is true," he asseverated; "a Cestaldini, the daughter of the old prince who died in his palace at Castel Gandolfo just after Stefano got his leg broken riding the bad mule. Don't you remember, the church was hung with black for a month? And you snipped off a piece of the stuff to dress a doll like a 'seminarista' to tease me with, because I wanted to be a priest? Why, you belong to her father's people—she must help you. Go to the Princess at once."
"Of course she would help me," Mariuccia replied rather sadly, "if I could ever get to speak to her. But that is impossible, quite impossible! I should have to ask the porter to ask the lady's maid to ask Signora Dati, the Princess's companion, to ask the Excellency—and the message would never reach Signora Dati. Those familiars have no hearts. We must think of something else."
"Leave it to me to be done," Fra Tommaso said; "I will see about it."
It was Mariuccia's turn to be curious. "But how?" she asked. "Would it not be as hard for you as for me to speak with the Excellency?"
"No," he replied; "she comes every morning to the seven o'clock Mass, and I could speak to her quite easily. But I have a better way. Behold, is not our Cardinal her brother? And has he not always been for me of a goodness, of a condescension? Alwaysa kind word or a little joke when he sees me. 'How does it go, Tommaso? Have you worn out any more bell ropes with that Herculean ringing?' (Hercules was the first sacristan of St. Peters, you know, Sora Mariuccia, and was so strong that he could ring the big bell with his hands.) Or else he says, 'You are looking thin, my son. You should eat some of your fat pigeons.' Ah, what an egregious ecclesiastic, what a man of learning, and yet so simple! To him I will relate these facts, and he will say to his sister, 'What is this? I learn that you have Botti's Mariuccia in your house and you have never sent for her to let her kiss your hand? But this is great neglect! What would our papa of good memory have said at your thus overlooking one of his people? Let it be remedied at once!'"
Mariuccia clasped her hands, "Fra Tommaso mio," she wailed, "I should die of fright if I had to pass all those famigliari in the sala and go into those fine rooms—and in these old clothes! If I were at home I could wear the costume—but here! No, since you are so condescending, so kind, do this. Tell that good Eminenza all about Giannella and how I am astrologizing my head already to feed and clothe her—for the padrone will not give her so much as a crumb from his table—and get him to ask the Princess to send her to school. That indeed would be an action of the greatest merit and the Madonna will accompany you wherever you go!"
A few days later Fra Tommaso found an opportunity of laying Mariuccia's case before the Cardinal. The latter usually paid a short visit to the church in the late afternoon, on his return from the drive which was as much a part of his daily life as the reading of his breviary. His Mass was always said in his private chapel, but he found in the large, quiet church greater space of detachment, an atmosphere rich with the devotion of centuries, and an impersonal companionship very sympathetic to him in the chapels and monuments which had been the silent witnesses of his silent spirit's growth. It was but a few steps from the church to his own door, and the constant presence of his chaplain and servants on all other occasions made the short solitary walk a pleasure in itself.
Fra Tommaso ventured to ask him to come into the dark home of bell ropes and candlesticks and there with many apologies for obtruding such common affairs on his noble attention, explained poor Mariuccia's perplexities and besought the Eminenza's intervention with his illustrious and charitable sister.
The Cardinal listened to him with much attention, disentangled the real facts from the picturesque accompaniments of explanation and gesture in which the sacristan involved them at every turn. WhenFra Tommaso mentioned Professor Bianchi, the prelate nodded his head, saying, "Ah, the Signor Professore is known to me. He is a man much respected, also very much occupied. Doubtless he has not had time to think about the little girl. He is not rich, and it is not to be expected that he should bear the charges of her education. I will speak to the Princess and see what can be done."
Fra Tommaso broke out into expressions of devout gratitude, and the Cardinal smiled on him and slipped away. He had a strong feeling of kindness for the cheerful, humble servant of the Fathers, a feeling which, years ago, had been one of acute pity for a brokenhearted boy who had nourished high hopes of entering the Church—open to peasant as to prince if God have bestowed on him the needful gifts—and who had found it impossible to assimilate the required learning. All other requisites of the true vocation were there, singleness of heart, deep humility, fervor and faith. But some congenital defect of brain, unperceived until the intellect attempted to grapple with the difficulties of Latin and theology, barred the way for Tommaso. When this was so apparent that his patient instructors were obliged to give their unfavorable verdict, the shock had almost overcome his reason and his faith. Paolo Cestaldini, then a young priest just ordained, had rescued both. He had kept the boy near him for some time, and had only let him go when he saw that resignation had done its work, when he had enabled Tommaso to realize that the glory of God required service of manygrades, and that all the virtues of a religious vocation can be as well acquired, preserved, and practised, in the humblest as in the most illustrious of these.
The result of the conversation under the bell tower was a visit from good Signora Dati, the humble but devoted companion of the Princess and the chief intermediary of her many charities, to Mariuccia, who was quite overcome by such an honor. The Princess had two excellent qualities of the administrator; she spared no trouble and lost no time in learning all that could be learned about a case presented for her consideration; and then she took proper time to decide on her course of action. The immense ramifications of charities in Rome provided answers to almost all the problems connected with the relief of suffering and poverty. The first step was to catalogue the applicant's needs. So Signora Dati was commissioned to find out to what class of society the golden-haired waif on the other side of the courtyard belonged, and also to learn whatever she could of the morals of her defunct parents. The Princess was convinced that heredity played a great part in the drama of development and should be suppressed or fostered according to its character.
The Professor was absent when Mariuccia's visitor climbed the long stairs and rang at the green door. She was a thin, pale little lady, with the eyes of a saint and the mouth of a judge. Her costume gave almost the impression of a conventual habit, with its full black skirt and silk shoulder cape and black lace head covering. This last indicated with delicateprecision the exact rank of the wearer, an educated and refined dependent, placed half way between the woman of rank, who could wear a bonnet, and the woman of the people, who must go bare-headed if she would preserve her reputation.
Signora Dati had become an expert in charity. It was impossible to deceive her as to character and veracity. After half-an-hour's conversation with Mariuccia—conversation during which the latter stood respectfully at a little distance from her interlocutor's chair and gave her story with admirable directness, uncomplicated with legends about Giannella's relations, and with a complete unconsciousness of any merit on her own part—Signora Dati was satisfied on all the points which she had come to investigate. Giannella's parents had been respectable if unfortunate people; they had been duly married; there was apparently no taint of crime or disease to descend to their child. Only one thing more remained to be ascertained—what kind of training in bearing and manners had this good but uneducated woman and her family been able to give the child?
"And now I would like to see the little girl," she said; "will you call her in?"
Mariuccia stamped away into the kitchen and returned, pushing Giannella into the room before her. The child stood still for an instant looking at the visitor. Then she came forward, raised Signora Dati's hand to her fresh young lips, kissed it, and stepped back, looking the lady full in the face with her innocent gray eyes, waiting to be spoken to. Thecommissioner of charities, whose visit had purposely been unannounced, returned the glance, taking in the smoothly braided hair, the round cheeks and clean dimpled hands, the nicely ironed frock and pinafore, the spotless stockings and strong strap shoes. An immense respect for Mariuccia rose in her heart. What it must have cost the woman to keep the child like this—on four scudi a month! It was heroism—nothing less. And the manners were perfect; that, however, was not so surprising, seeing that all Giannella's life had been spent among the rigidly self-respecting inhabitants of the castelli. It was only in large towns that the poorer classes had become insubordinate and vulgar.
After a few questions and answers, Signora Dati rose to go. Mariuccia accompanied her to the door, and there, Giannella having been sent back to the kitchen, she said that the Princess would consider the question of the child's education and would communicate with her as soon as it had been decided upon. Meanwhile it would be well to preserve silence on the matter, as her Excellency did not care to have her charities noised abroad.
When Mariuccia went back to her interrupted task of preparing the padrone's dinner, Giannella was standing at the window watching a flock of pigeons hovering over a small terrace on the roof of the opposite building. It was on a higher level than the Bianchi apartment, and the parapet shut out any view of what might lie behind it, but the parapet itself was gay with flowers; the deep red carnations that the Romanslove hung far over the edge, swaying in the sun and breeze; a little lemon-tree in a green box held up its pale golden fruit among shining leaves; the pigeons whirred about as if in great excitement, while every now and then a dark masculine head bobbed up for a moment above the line of red bricks, and then disappeared again. Giannella had forgotten all about the visitor who had come to decide her fate, and was completely absorbed in the brightness and movement across the way.
Mariuccia came behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder, leaning out to see what so interested the child. Then she smiled, and said, half to herself, "That poor Fra Tommaso! He is at it again, feeding his birds and talking to them as if they were Christians. Shall I tell you something, Giannella? When I took you out to Castel Gandolfo—and you were no longer than that—(she measured half-a-yard on her arm) and as fat as a little calf—I brought back two pigeons in a cage for Fra Tommaso, thinking he would cook and eat them. Figure to yourself piccolina, that he made a little house for them up there on his loggia, and fed them with Indian corn, and now behold, a family! They are his children, those fowls, and he takes as much care of them as I do of you."
"I would like to go up and see them, and get some of the garofoli," Giannella replied wistfully. "Zia Mariuccia, do take me up to Fra Tommaso's loggia."
"What an idea!" Mariuccia exclaimed. "Why, no woman has ever entered that house. It is strictclausura. Only men can go in—the Fathers and their pupils live there. They do not want to see little girls!"
"Are they like the Signor Professore then?" Giannella asked, looking across at the tall conventual building with a shiver of fear. "Is the Signor Professore a padre too?"
"No," said Mariuccia, looking down at the child in amusement. Then she added impressively, "He is a most learned gentleman, and for that reason dislikes noise and disturbance. He was very angry when you knocked over the chair yesterday. You must be more careful, Giannella."
To Mariuccia's amazement the child flung herself against her and broke out into wild entreaty. "Zia Mariuccia, do please take me back to Mamma Candida! It makes me so sad to be so quiet all the time. Mamma Candida never scolded about the noise unless there was quarreling—and I want Annetta and Richetto and the dog and the pigs and the donkey—so much! Oh, do take me back!" Her little mouth was quivering with earnestness and her eyes were brimming with tears which she kept back bravely. The loneliness and confinement of the dull apartment, the terror of the padrone, and Mariuccia's silent, undemonstrative ways, were becoming more than the child could bear. Her heart was breaking for the cheery, populous house in the olive orchard, where something was always happening, where out-of-doors freedom and a tribe ofchildren and animals provided playground and playmates day in, day out.
Her cry brought pain to the staunch heart of the woman. She had not realized that the child could be unhappy while she herself was straining every nerve to assure her welfare. Then, with a sigh, she accepted the fact. Of course it was dull and sad for the little thing here. Who was she, old Mariuccia, to take the place of busy, smiling Candida, of the laughing, chattering boys and girls who had been as brothers and sisters to Giannella? She remembered that even as a grown woman, a confirmed spinster of twenty, she had wept some bitter tears when she realized that she had left her "paese," with all its friendliness and freedom, to live shut up in narrow rooms in the city among strangers. So she sat down and took Giannella on her knee and spoke with unusual gentleness.
"Listen, cocca mia. It is not possible to take you back to Mamma Candida any more, to stay, though if you are good you shall go to see her some day. You know you are a signorina, and your poor papa of good memory would not have wished you to be brought up as a contadina. The good God has caused each one to be born in the position where he can best save his soul. Annetta and Richetto and the others must work among the olives and the grapes, and take care of the animals—that is their destiny, and they will be happy, but it is not yours. You must go to school and learn to read and write, and keep your hands clean for fine embroidery and otherthings that ladies may work at. And I think soon you will go to a beautiful school where there are most instructed nuns who will teach you all this, and also many other children of your own age with whom you can play and study. Thus you will be happy, and by-and-by—"
"Yes, by-and-by? Oh, please go on!" Giannella exclaimed, her eyes shining at the prospect suddenly unfolded to her.
Mariuccia looked up at the blue Roman sky, so near and kind in the clearness of noonday. Yes, by-and-by? What possible future lay before the forsaken child for whom she was so obstinately preserving the privileges of gentle birth? "By-and-by? Hé Giannella, I must not tell you everything at once. Arciprete!" as the midday gun boomed its signal from Sant' Angelo and every bell in the city began to ring. "Run and lay the cloth for the padrone while I get the soup and the bollito off the fire. Poveretta me, the soup is like water. But if that blessed man will only let me buy half-a-pound of meat for it, what am I to do? To think that a man of his instruction can stay hungry with his pockets full of money. What a vice is avarice! Libera nos Domine!"
Mariuccia need really not have prayed against that temptation, though she had often gone hungry of late when there were still a few coppers in the corner of her handkerchief. La Giannella had a fine appetite—and at that age who could have let the child remain unsatisfied?
Another week passed, and when Signora Dati cameto say that on the following day Mariuccia was to bring Giannella to kiss the hand of the Princess, after which she herself would conduct her to a convent of Sisters of Charity on the other side of the river, where the little girl would be received as a boarder, and would have every benefit of education, as well as fine air. The convent, she explained, was really a villa, and the Sisters the kindest and best of instructors. Mariuccia was too overjoyed to speak, until she remembered that for such a school a certain outfit would be necessary; but Signora Dati informed her that the Excellency, out of her great kindness of heart, had provided for this, and that Mariuccia must repay her in prayers for her intentions, and Giannella, the chief beneficiary, by the same, coupled with model conduct and great application to her studies. They were to come to the Princess's apartment at ten o'clock punctually.
So the next morning Mariuccia, leading Giannella by the hand, was met by Signora Dati and conducted through a long series of somberly gorgeous rooms, such as she had never entered in her life, and finally ushered into the presence of her illustrious patroness. The Princess was still a comparatively young woman, tall and graceful, with a calm, thoughtful face, on which her responsibilities had impressed something like austerity. The weight of her guardianship to Onorato, heir to the great Santafede estates, had come upon her so early as to tinge her incompletely developed character with melancholy, loyally combated by religious principle, it is true, yet potentenough to make her a somewhat exigent and depressing parent for her light-hearted son. Naturally inclined to piety, she had come to feel that only by multiplying good works, by denying herself many little pleasures and luxuries in order to respond to every genuine appeal, could she obtain from Heaven the treasure she coveted, sanctification for her son's soul, happiness and prosperity for his material life. She was even now trying to light on the right wife for him, having already reached the point of overstrained conscientiousness which unconsciously treats Providence as the weaker party to an alliance, a party who will not move a step without powerful co-operation. All this was a little morbid, and might in the end endanger both her own happiness and that of Onorato, but meanwhile was an active agent for good in the affairs of obscure and oppressed people, notably, at this moment, those of Giannella Brockmann and her one friend, Mariuccia Botti.
Giannella was big-eyed with awe when she was led to where the Princess was sitting at a writing-table covered with account-books and works of devotion. On entering the dim and splendid rooms the child had felt inclined to make the sign of the cross and go down on her knees; the space and silence and crimson hangings seemed necessarily to belong to a church. The Princess looked at her without speaking for a moment. Giannella was so pretty, so wholesome and sweet in appearance, that Teresa Santafede experienced a passing regret that she had been denieda little daughter to brighten her lonely life. But this weakly human sentiment was at once suppressed, and when Giannella had kissed her hand the Princess made her a stereotyped speech on the moral advantages she was about to enjoy and the obligation to make the most of them by obedience and zeal. Giannella did not understand more than half of it, but she felt that something very important was happening, and when the Excellency gave her a rosary of white beads, with a very bright silver medal, her eyes danced with pleasure. This wonderful lady seemed as kind as the Madonna and as rich as the Befana, the beneficent witch who walks over the roofs at Epiphany and brings presents to good children.
Then Mariuccia was allowed to express her thanks, which she did very eloquently, and without any shyness at all, feeling more at home in the presence of a Cestaldini, one of the rulers of her clan, than she had ever felt since she left the fortress of all her traditions in the hills. The Princess asked one or two questions which showed that she remembered the family; the hand-kissing was repeated; Signora Dati received some murmured instructions, and the audience was over. Five minutes later Mariuccia stood under the porte cochère and watched Giannella being put into the closed carriage by Signora Dati. There was a glimpse of the round little face and the golden hair behind the glass, the carriage rumbled out, and Mariuccia turned to climb the four flights of stairs to the Professor's apartment. There she appliedherself rather vindictively to her work, wondering why the granting of her dearest wish should result in making her feel so cross and lonely.
It was not until three weeks later that Signor Bianchi discovered Giannella's absence. He could not find a certain copy ofThe Archæological Reviewand called Mariuccia to look for it, remarking with asperity, "That is what comes of having a child running about the house. You will have to send the little nuisance away if this happens again. Of course she has taken it."
"Signor Professore," said Mariuccia, facing him with square shoulders and a terrific frown, "it is you who are a child. But no, an infant in arms has eyes and ears—you, man of a thousand learnings, are becoming blind and deaf. Giannella left the house three weeks ago. The 'lustrissima Principessa has sent her to a fine school—and may every benediction be hers for her charity. You say the coffee is like water. Mamma mia, I had to put the last of my own into it to give it a color at all. Yours was finished yesterday, and you would not give me the money to buy any more. Now then, here is your purse—in the pocket of your paletot—I must have two pauls at once, or you will get no supper to-night. Come, padroncino, be good. You frighten me—you consume before my eyes. There, I bring you cheese and dried figs. They have cost you nothing—my brother sent them—eat, and I will find your blessed paper for you."
Giannella was gone; the brief enchanting reign ofher sunny little presence in the dingy apartment was over; and Mariuccia's other child, the owlish old young man who did not know how to take care of himself, was once more received into grace. She had to mother something.
In the sun-flooded gardens and airy rooms of the convent across the river nine radiant years of Giannella's childhood and girlhood slipped happily away. The round of lessons and play, the cycle of workdays and feastdays brought constant interest and variety, and the companionship of children of her own age, passing from class to class with her in the emulation which involved no rivalry or contention, satisfied all the wants of her heart. The nuns were as kind as Mamma Candida, though they inspired a profound respect and an unquestioning awe for their ever-just rulings. There were pets to care for, flowers to tend, beautiful little shrines to decorate them with if one had been very good. All this was consciously enjoyed; less understood, but of lasting importance was the religious training which gathered the little comrades into companies first under the white badge of the Guardian Angels—this for the youngest of all; then, at the time of First Communion, under the green one of St. Joseph; and finally, when the hour was approaching for grown girls to return to their homes in the world and take up the whole duty of women, hung round their necks the coveted blue ribbon and silver medal which marked their worthiness to be enrolled among the "Enfants de Marie." These influences gave a deep stability to Giannella'shealthy normal character, and laid in her heart the foundations of peace and right-thinking for which she was to be deeply thankful later on.
Once or twice in the year Mariuccia was allowed to come early in the morning and take Giannella home for a day, bringing her back before Ave Marie; and whenever it was possible she made time to go to the convent, bearing some humble offering of fruits and cakes from the castello for the "Suore," and satisfy herself that the child was well and happy. The Princess came at stated periods, notably at the great Feasts, when prizes were distributed and wonderful little plays representing religious allegories were got up and acted—with what throbbing excitement—by the best and whitest lambs in the flock, those who had had no bad marks since the last great event of the kind. Since virtue, and not dramatic talent, was the test of proficiency, the good nuns had to work hard over these entertainments, but the result was always satisfactory to them and their troupe, and was believed to afford the highest artistic pleasure to the noble patronesses, of whom Princess Santafede was the most distinguished.
The Sisters kept open school for all the poorer children of the quarter, but this part of their establishment was divided from that devoted to the boarders by a twenty-foot wall, and no taint of the streets was ever wafted across that impassable barrier. Within the charmed circle, the girls, all of the better middle class, were as jealously guarded, as well taught, and fed, and housed, as Teresa Santafedeherself had been in the aristocratic seclusion of her own convent school, where only the daughters of nobles were received. The one difference was that at Santa Eulalia less time was given to books and more to fine needlework and embroidery, the only accomplishments by which in those prehistoric days a refined woman in moderate circumstances could earn a living. There were no lay schools for girls, so there were no openings for teachers except as unpaid assistants to the nuns, who employed some half dozen of their old pupils, homeless orphans like Giannella, to help with the younger children. The Superior confided to the Princess that she would gladly keep Giannella in that capacity, her exquisite needlework and talent for design making her a valuable help in the embroidery department. But the Princess replied that the girl had received special training in these subjects because there was a person—the woman who occasionally came to see her—who had made great sacrifices on her behalf and for whom she could now, at sixteen, do something in return. She could earn money at home; there seemed to be no difficulty about her residing with Mariuccia Botti under Signor Bianchi's roof—and work could always be obtained for her there.
It was with great regret that Giannella left this, her second home, to return to the Professor's apartment in the Palazzo Santafede. Yet she was glad that the moment had come when she could begin to repay the untiring goodness which had saved her from the hard and lonely fate of the forsaken childand procured for her the education which in time would enable her to earn her living in retirement and peace. No anxieties for the future whispered trouble to her heart. Mariuccia would be ever at her side; and in the background was the beneficent Princess, always accessible through kind Signora Dati, promising that materials and sales should not fail for the beautiful work which the girl really loved. So, after tearful partings with teachers and companions, Giannella was fetched home, her little box full of naïf farewell presents of pictures of Saints, tiny pincushions, muslin bags stuffed with "gagia" blossoms and verbena leaves which would keep their sweet scent for twenty years to come—artificial flowers and embroidered handkerchiefs—all her inestimably precious, and quite valueless, earthly possessions.
Mariuccia told her to bestow these in a small empty room beyond the kitchen, where she could set up her embroidery frame close to the big window which looked more to the sky than to the street, and where she could keep her delicate work free from all danger of dust or accident. As for sleeping alone, that was out of the question. Giannella had never tried it in her life and was sure she should never close an eye, accustomed as she was to the big dormitory with its rows of white beds and the curtained sanctuary in the corner, where the guardian nun was supposed to lie awake saying her prayers all night, listening for the first sound of whispering or larking, to issue forth with dire retribution for the offenders. Mariuccia had made full preparation for her Giannella in herown room, a windowless apartment on the dark side of the passage. In it had stood for years a spindle-legged green bed of impaired constitution, replaced, with much grumbling from the padrone, by a stronger one when Mariuccia's wooden weight had three separate times broken through it with a thump on the bricks in the dead of night, causing the Professor to start from his slumbers in such a fright that his nurse and guardian had to administer a sedative and keep him on soup for two days to restore his nerves. The green wreck was to have been sold at once, but just then a thrilling discovery of new antiquities in the Foro Romano came to carry Signor Bianchi's mind beyond the confines of personal subjects, and he had been guilty of the frantic extravagance of forgetting to sell the bed. Mariuccia pushed it into a corner behind the door, and had coaxed the carpenter retainer, who had his workshop in a far recess of the colonnade, and who was forever engaged in repairing some of the hundreds of doors and windows in the vast building, to set the wreck safely on its legs again. One of her own two mattresses was stuffed with fresh cornhusks smelling of the country and brought by the carrettiere ally, and behold a nice white couch, quite fit for a "signorina" like Mariuccia's Giannella.
This time no permission was asked of Carlo Bianchi for her reception; the chains of servitude had changed places in the many years of Mariuccia's abode under his roof and were now firmly riveted on the unconscious man, who grumbled freely when things annoyed him, but was too much afraid of losing hiseconomical housekeeper ever to really quarrel with that grim but faithful domestic tyrant.
So he only nodded in acquiescence when she told him that Giannella had come home—to stay. Giannella herself appeared a moment later, intent upon making her courtesy, inquiring after his respectable health, and thanking him for the permission to remain in his house. The fine gradations of social conditions had been carefully taught her by the nuns. Since she had neither father nor uncles, there was no occasion for her ever to kiss the hand of any gentleman, unless he were an ecclesiastic. Otherwise this honor was to be paid only to women, her superiors either in rank, like the Princess and the other patronesses of the convent, or in age and virtue, like her teachers, Signora Dati, and above all the good Sora Mariuccia, who had done so much for her. How much, the Sisters did not quite know, but Giannella did. Signora Dati had considered it right to make her understand the obligations under which she lay to the unlettered, silent peasant woman who would never refer to them herself; and Giannella, though still remembering "Mamma Candida" with warmer affection, meant to love and cherish "Zia Mariuccia" (as she had learned to call her when among the latter's real nephews and nieces) all her life. But Mariuccia recoiled in horror when Giannella attempted to kiss her hand. A young lady—the daughter of her poor master of good memory? Dove mia? No indeed. Nor was she to call her "Aunt" any longer, now that she was grown up. People must never beled to believe that any relationship existed between the "signorina" and her humble self. She was already busy with Giannella's future and had decided that some splendidly disinterested young man, of much "educazione" and large fortune—fifty thousand scudi at least—was to ask her in marriage at the proper time, which apparently came later for persons of her class than for the country folk, who reckoned sixteen the correct age for taking a husband and twenty the end of all chances in that direction.
It was with real pride that she watched Giannella's dignified little greeting to the Professor and marked the expression of bewilderment which came over his features as he turned and saw the new inmate of his family standing in the doorway of the study. He failed for the moment to connect the apparition with the child who had so incensed him by knocking down chairs nine years before. That criminal had been effaced from his memory for a long time, but was slowly recalled as he gazed at the graceful girl whose deep gray eyes were full of intelligent recollection of him. She had grown tall and straight, her features were delicately aquiline, giving an impression of maturity in spite of the dimple at the corner of her grave, fresh mouth; her faintly rosy skin was translucent with health and vitality, and her hair was still of the pure baby gold which had so delighted the hearts of Mariuccia and Candida in the old days. Now it framed in her pretty face in broad, shining braids hanging low before the ears, after the fashion of the day, and gathered into coils at the back. Theconvent uniform had been laid aside and Giannella was feeling strangely grand in the dark blue dress (touching the ground at last) which she had made for herself, under the direction of the nuns, for her first entrance into the great world. Many earnest warnings against that world's distractions and dissipations had accompanied the making of the dangerously secular garment, in reality so rigid in its simplicity that but for the finely embroidered collar and undersleeves it might have passed for a modification of a religious habit. The kind nuns had sighed in secret over Giannella's hair, the crown of glory which must attract attention in church and street. "Poverina, she is too pretty. That hair is only fit for a Saint in a picture," they would tell each other, "and the world is not the place for it. But there, Our Lady will protect her, and she has good, pious friends, thank Heaven."
The Professor, who was a gentleman, for all his abstracted ways, rose from his chair and bowed to the charming vision, saying something which was meant to be extremely polite. The vision courtesied again and disappeared; Mariuccia followed, closing the door behind her with a joyful snap; and Carlo Bianchi went back to his book, but for at least five minutes did not understand a word of the treatise on African marbles which had so enthralled him earlier. Who was this girl? Where had she come from? What on earth was she doing in his house, in his kitchen, as the companion of that tough old war-horse, Mariuccia from the Castel? He tried to piecetogether the few facts which Mariuccia had told him about her in the dim past. None of them quite accounted for her as he had beheld her just now, and at last he gave the question up, deciding that "Giannella" (that seemed to be her only name) was a problem which he would waste valuable time in trying to solve.
And the Professor, who knew less about her than anyone else, had catalogued Giannella rightly. She was a problem. What future lay before her when she should have read through the odd dozen of gaudily bound prize books that she had brought back from the convent, when she should have exhausted the delights of embroidering Church vestments and bridal trousseaux, the persons most interested in her welfare, with the one exception of Mariuccia, who, loving much, believed all things, would have found it hard to say. After all, that was scarcely their affair. If her fresh youth was destined to burn itself out over the embroidery frame in the bare little room beyond the kitchen, and her bright eyes to grow dim over invisible stitches in gossamer cambric—well, that was destiny's business. They had done what they could.
Giannella herself was not concerned with her future, but she soon came to realize that the present was anything but cheering. The silent house, the confined life, the absence of young companionship, all struck as coldly at her heart now as it had nine years before when she had flung herself into Mariuccia's arms and entreated to be taken back to MammaCandida and the pigs and the donkey. After the breezy, healthy existence at the convent, lighted by a thousand interests and shared by numberless bosom friends with whom she had grown up, it was torturing to sit for hours over the work which had been made so pleasant by talk and variety over there at Santa Eulalia, to have only Mariuccia, ever kind but so unresponsive, as a companion; to see the sunshine through her window and watch the cloudlets chasing across the blue in the breeze, and know that she was a prisoner except for a short walk with Mariuccia in the morning, first to Mass at San Severino and then to the near shops where they did their marketing. Even when work was to be returned to Signora Dati and materials for more brought back, Mariuccia must accompany her, for no girl of her age could cross the threshold of her home alone, much less run the gauntlet of the grooms hanging round the stables and the posse of footmen in the Princess's antechamber. How different from the liberty she had enjoyed in the sunswept gardens of the school beyond the river. But the teachings received there, and a certain strain of courage and hardihood derived from her northern ancestry, helped her to shake off her growing depression and show a cheerful face to life, whatever privations it might choose to bring.
The periodical visits to Signora Dati in the great apartment on the other side of the courtyard became a distinct interest and pleasure. They gave her a glimpse into a large, majestic mode of life which hadits own romance; and though "romance" was a word Giannella had scarcely heard, its glamor warmed and lighted her imagination and brought her much wordless consolation; for romance is the very sap of the tree of youth and finds its own sustenance without external help or guidance. Since Don Onorato had really grown up a certain element of color and change had crept into the over-ascetic atmosphere of his mother's surroundings. Her brother, the Cardinal, had done much to effect this, both openly, by representing that the lad should find brightness and sympathy with his young tastes in his home, and also more subtly, by bringing fresh books, travels, essays, even good novels, always with the plea that they might amuse Onorato and keep him from wasting his time on inferior literature. As the Princess still felt it her duty to read anything she recommended to her son, the Cardinal's contributions helped her to pass many pleasant hours and also to enlarge her views in many directions. When, according to her custom, she visited Onorato's rooms to see that all was right there, she would carry off any suspicious-looking volume and leave something better in its place, and though Onorato was a grown man by this time, his awe of her prevented his ever protesting against these exchanges. As time went on he learned to put away the attractively scandalous French novels which were occasionally smuggled into the city in spite of the tyrannical censorship which examined every atom of print that was put into the post or set in circulation, ruthlessly burned all immoral worksor indecent pictures, and aroused the anger of freeborn foreigners by cutting out of the newspapers all scandalous or revolutionary items. Sad days of bigotry and darkness, when evil was stamped out as thoroughly as organization and power would permit—when any woman, from a foreign peeress to a dancer at the opera, was sent across the frontier the moment her behavior overstepped the bounds of propriety. If well-brought-up young men went wrong, they had at least to take some trouble to accomplish it.
It was ten o'clock in the morning and Giannella was waiting alone in the second anteroom for the advent of Signora Dati. Mariuccia, after also waiting a little, had left her, saying she would return in half-an-hour to fetch her; meanwhile there was work to do at home, and she was loth to waste any more time. At the end of a few months of her new life, waiting had become a familiar trial to Giannella. She often had to sit for a couple of hours in Signora Dati's room while the Princess's lieutenant interviewed the numberless clients and employees of the family, attended to the commands of the Excellency, inspected the mountains of linen in the "guarda roba," and kept an eye on the maids, all of whom were under her supervision and kept entirely apart, in employment, housing, and feeding, from the men-servants, for whom Ferretti, the maestro di casa, was alone responsible. When Signora Dati knew that some time must elapse before she could speak to Giannella, the latter was brought at once to her room, there to occupy herself as best she might until her turn came. When the moment at last arrived the pale little lady would glide in, sink into a chair with a half-suppressed sigh of intense fatigue, and then throw herself gallantly into the matter in hand with as much energy as if it had been the first task of her day.Each question that came up was gone into thoroughly—whether the passion-flowers on the violet chasuble should be picked out with crystal or amethyst beads; whether the web of beauty which was to be the wedding handkerchief of Donna Laura Bracciano, the Princess's niece, should have square or rounded corners; whether the coarse but ample layettes piled up in the left-hand cupboard, for the Foundling Hospital had better be counted over once again to make sure that each was complete? In all these handiworks Giannella was employed as best suited the needs of the moment, and nothing connected with them seemed too infinitesimal for Signora Dati's profound consideration. Giannella, who took her instructions day after day, conceived a deep admiration for the character of the dignified but self-effacing subordinate, who was often white to the lips with weariness but who never neglected one of the thousand minutiæ of her overlapping responsibilities.
On this particular morning a treat was in store for Giannella. After Mariuccia's departure word had come that Signora Dati was obliged to go out and would take the "ricamatrice" (embroideress) with her. She would join her in the sala in a few minutes. After receiving the message Giannella sat tingling with pleasant excitement at the prospect before her and ready to jump up the moment Signora Dati should appear. The door opened suddenly and she ran forward with a smile of greeting, ran almost into the arms of a young man who seemed to be choking with laughter—Onorato, fresh from a longmaternal lecture on the sin and folly of owning too many expensive horses. He stopped half way and just saved Giannella, crimson and rooted to the spot with embarrassment, from impact with his singularly radiant waistcoat. She knew at once who he was; only the son of the house would venture to race through it in that fashion. But he, surprised for once out of his manners, stared at her, took in the charming face with its arrested smile, appraised the Etruscan gold of the hair under its light lace covering, found time to wonder who the girl was and why she had seemed so pleased and then so distressed at seeing him; then, with a word of apology, he passed out of the room, much more sedately than he had entered it. Giannella, conscious of having made an unpardonable mistake in thus thrusting herself into his path, sank back into her seat, pale and trembling. What would Signora Dati say?
Signora Dati, coming upon the scene a moment later, and receiving Giannella's almost tearful apology for her stupidity, smiled away her anxieties at once. The Prince would not be offended—oh dear no. He was most amiable and simple; it might have happened to anybody; it was his fault, not Giannella's. He always rushed about the house in a hurry, knocking things down sometimes as he dashed through the rooms. He was still such a boy! Signora Dati smiled with the incorrigible indulgence of middle-aged spinsterhood for impetuous young masculinity. Yes, Giannella might set her mind at rest, the Prince would certainly have forgotten all about her before he washalf way down the stairs. Had she brought the patterns with her? Here they were at Massoni's, and now for the white velvet for Donna Laura's wedding dress. Oh, Giannella would have to treat the material like melting sugar when she embroidered it. A breath, a speck of dust—and irretrievable ruin would follow. Yes, please Sora Luisa, her Excellency had selected the pattern, and now it must be seen in the piece, in a good light.
The magnificent material was reverently unrolled and spread out in snowy, sumptuous billows in the sunshine. Signora Dati examined it with the gravity of the expert, and Giannella stood by, trying to find the answer to the first disquieting question that had ever presented itself to her mind. What mysterious ruling caused one girl to be born Donna Laura Bracciano, clothed her in robes beautiful enough for an angel, bestowed upon her at seventeen the dignity of espousing a young man as fortunate as herself, amid the rejoicings and congratulations of hundreds of friends—and decided that Giannella Brockmann, without a relation of her own in the world, was to be a dependent on charity, working in a lonely room for ten hours a day to pay charity's account? There was no rebellion in her thoughts as she meditated on the problem, only wonder, and a strange new sense of bereavement—the unconscious hunger for something young and sweet to love and laugh with, the reaching out of the plant in the shade to its comrades tossing their heads in the sun.
The encounter with Don Onorato, the light-heartedheir to accumulated honors and wealth, the catching mirth that seemed bubbling over in his laugh, in his bright face, had shaken her peace in some way, had, as it were, blown aside the gray veil which closed in her own existence, and shown her in a flash all that lay outside of it—for others. And now the pictured vision of the radiant bride on whose finery she must work till her back ached and her eyes smarted, had driven home the sense of privation like a sword. The keenest pain of it all lay in the fact that the few denizens of her tiny world took her fate as a settled question, a matter of course, and considered that she ought to be enthusiastically grateful for it. Ah, she was grateful, yes indeed, she appreciated all that had been done for her by kind human beings; but if they, on whom she had no claim, were so good and generous, could not the Giver of all good things have been a little open-handed too? It all seemed strange and sad, and Divine love just a little less loving than she had been taught to believe.
During the next two or three weeks Giannella had several glimpses of Onorato Santafede. Once she and Mariuccia met him on the great staircase; twice he burst into Signora Dati's room when she was sitting there receiving instructions about the design of orange blossoms and roses to be embroidered in silver on the grand white velvet dress. Signora Dati smiled at the young gentleman, attended to his imperious commands about some silk handkerchiefs which he declared had been vilely mishandled by the laundrymaids, and seemed totally unconscious thatthe true object of his visit was to have another look at the young embroideress, who stood silently aside and never opened her lips during his laughing colloquy with the domestic oracle of the household. No nascent romance had caught him in its web; Onorato was as free from romance as most young Romans of his class, which, whatever its failings, has rarely loved out of its sphere and in which amésallianceis practically a thing unknown. But he frankly admired beauty, and enjoyed looking at Giannella as he would have enjoyed contemplating a charming and rather strange picture. He had discovered that she was the official embroideress for the family, that she was often in the house, and he saw no reason for not taking advantage of the facts to pass a pleasant moment or two in her presence. The instant he entered the room, Giannella seemed relegated to Limbo by its mistress. She simply did not exist until Onorato had departed. And he was in the habit of lingering there sometimes, for it was the room to which he had been accustomed to come all his life, first with childish joys and sorrows, afterwards with his little fastidiousnesses about wardrobe and service; and often, since he was a kind-hearted young autocrat, to cheer up "that victim of piety and recluse of duty," as he called Signora Dati, with some bit of fun and mischief.
But the perspicacious little lady, while smiling at his extravagances, noted that his eyes rested long on the golden head and half-averted face near the window, and she decided that under no circumstancesmust he find Giannella there again. Who could tell what evil snare the devil (whose frantic machinations Signora Dati saw in every departure from the established order of things) might not weave around two young people who saw each other continually, even if no word passed between them? She would say nothing to the Princess, but in future Giannella should only come when she was sent for, and that would be when Onorato was safely out of the house. He probably did not know that she lived just across the courtyard, for he was never up in time to see her go out with Mariuccia. All would be well, and the Excellency, who had so much on her noble mind, need never even hear of her faithful acolyte's passing anxiety.
And all would have been well had not Onorato, who took a profane delight in exploiting his solemn mother's complete lack of humor, come in that evening to take his place at table with a long face and some heavy sighs. To the Princess's anxious questions he replied that he was not ill, but that a strange melancholy had come over him. He believed—mamma must keep his secret—he really believed he had fallen in love! There!
Mamma gave a cry like a soul in pain, and then braced herself for the worst. Onorato had been singularly stubborn in the matter of taking a wife and to all his mother's entreaties had replied that life was very pleasant now, that no one could say what marriage would make of it, and finally that when mamma found a woman as charming as herself topropose to him he would think about it—not till then. Thus placated, the Princess would hold her peace for a while, but Heaven was daily stormed with prayers for the ideal daughter-in-law. Consternation and hope divided her feelings at this sudden announcement. Unaided, unguided—was it yet possible that her son's choice had fallen on some really desirable maiden? With clasped hands she entreated him to speak, she could bear the suspense no longer.
Then the young rascal, with much sham hesitation and contrition, confessed that his heart was gone from him forever—into the keeping of the exquisitely beautiful creature who embroidered the family arms on the sheets and towels! The Princess sank back in her chair, white with the shock. This was the most dreadful thing that could have happened. "My son," she gasped, "do you know what you are saying? But this is perfectly horrible. I cannot believe it."
"I never meant you to, you dear, solemn, innocent mamma," he cried, laughing as he jumped up and came to throw his arms round her neck and kiss her—he was very much of a child for all his twenty-eight years—"I was only joking. Don't you understand? When I fall in love—oh then there really will be trouble, for I intend to devote my whole attention to the accomplishment. But now—no. There mamma mia cara, smile again. Your little embroideress is as pretty as an angel, but I am not going to make a fool of myself by losing my heart to her.Come, let us find her a husband. Wouldn't you like to marry her to Ferretti? They say he is looking out for a second wife."
The Princess rallied her courage with a heroic effort and pretended to believe him. Calling up a strained smile, she said, "These are not proper subjects for joking, my son. Marriage is a sacrament, matrimony a holy state into which I trust you will enter with fitting dispositions when the time comes. You are quite old enough, you know I was thinking—"
"For the love of Heaven," cried Onorato, terrified in his turn, "don't 'think,' I conjure you, don't think. You promised not to speak again on that subject for at least six months. As for fitting dispositions, I have not the first symptom of the disease at present and cannot imagine where I shall find them when the fatal moment arrives. If Churchmen could drive fast horses I assure you I could more easily catch the distemper called a vocation. Uncle Paolo was a wise man and he strikes me as a very happy one."
"Your uncle had two elder brothers when he decided to enter the Church," the Princess replied. "It pleased God to remove them before either of them was married—a great misfortune. Pray speak of these subjects with proper respect, Onorato."
"I will respect everything—so long as it leaves me alone," he said rather crossly. Really dear mamma made every word he spoke the occasion for a lecture. What would become of him if there were another woman in the house doing the same? He saluted her abruptly and went away to his own rooms.
It was a long time before he caught sight of Giannella again. By eight o'clock the next morning a note was brought to her from Signora Dati, stating that there was much going on in the house at present, and that the Excellency had intimated that it would be more convenient for her to have the work sent across to the Professor's apartment, where the writer would call in person on Tuesdays and Saturdays to inspect its progress. Giannella need not come to the piano nobile in future.
So the last door was shut on her prison, doubtless, as she told herself, through some misdemeanor of her own. Tears welled up in her eyes. Life meant to be cruel. For the first time a little line marked itself between her brows and the fresh curves of her mouth closed in a straight line. Then she dried her eyes angrily and sat down to the embroidery frame where the silver orange blossoms on Donna Laura's wedding dress were beginning to cover the material with regal splendor of bloom.