San Severino, as you pass under the portico of its front entrance, appears to be very much like other Roman churches, spacious, marble-floored, roofed with frescoed cupola and rounded arches; its wide nave is flanked with chapels, some unowned and bare; others, the vested property of great families, gorgeously or artistically decorated, marking to the experienced eye the precise date of each family's apogee of power—pure pre-Raphaelite, Renaissance, Barocco, First Empire sham classic, Gregory the Sixteenth tawdry stucco and color. Even the latest abomination, however, is chastened into harmony by the merciful siftings of years, by the ever-lessening light which struggles through the darkened yellow of windows set too high in dome and walls to be meddled with more than once or twice in a century. When the sun strikes them, long swathes of dusty gold shoot transversely down the unpeopled spaces of the church touching the mote-laden air to slow vibrations of light, calling back to a mockery of life some periwigged or pseudo-classic bust on a monument, or lingering on the lovely, flower-tinted lines of a Renaissance tomb. It is Rome in the church as elsewhere, Rome, superbly indifferent to the quality of the spoils Time chooses to fling in her lap, because she has but to let them lie there awhile in the supernal alembicof her glory-haunted air, to have them subdued, ripened, enriched, and finally incorporated into her own stricken yet transcendent beauty.
Out of the last chapel to the right of the High Altar of San Severino a low swing door gives access to a darker, dimmer sanctuary, formerly a choir, as the blackened stalls and lecterns testify, but now used only once a month for the meeting of the Sodality of the Bona Mors. An unlit altar rises against one wall, supporting a painting always curtained from the dampness save when the doors are closed to the public and the members congregate for their exercises. Only a few can tell what the picture represents—whether Saint Joseph breathes his last sigh in the arms of God Incarnate, or the Penitent Thief writhes on his cross beside the King of the Jews. "Morte certa, modo incerto," the veiled shrine seems to whisper, and something cold and deathly in the air brings the first axiom at least shudderingly home to those who pass through.
Beyond this chapel lies a small irregular chamber, its walls and pavement of marble so darkened with age that it is hard to decipher the inscriptions with which both are covered, brief Latin epitaphs recording the names of the dead who lie in the crypt below, good monks of an order which once prayed in the little chapel of the Bona Mors and has been superseded and absorbed in the course of centuries, even as its modest temple has been absorbed and dominated by the great church of San Severino.
A heavy leather curtain hangs over the outer doorof the marble chamber of epitaphs, and is lifted for those who pass in and out by courteous mendicants of a more retiring disposition than those who guard the grand portico. A long, narrow courtyard, high walled but pleasantly open to the sky, and ornamented with a fountain made out of an acanthus capital, marks the final limits of the sacred premises, which run, from the Ripetta, parallel with the Santafede palace, through the entire block to the piazza of that name. The palace has its imposing front on the piazza, but the back door of San Severino leads into an obscure street opening out of the square. The street is narrow and crooked, shut in between the side walls of two or three ancient palaces, great houses of diminished splendors, whose owners do not disdain to let the ground floors of these purlieus as livery stables and small shops. Over one dark, malodorous doorway hangs a picture of a fearfully obese cow, sadly contemplating a yellow ochre field under a cracked blue sky, denoting that milk and butter are to be had within. From a cavernous den opposite, an avalanche of vegetables invades the sidewalk, crisp green lettuces, scarlet tomatoes, the magically fragrant fennel, pumpkins like globes of battered gold—the cornucopia of Ceres seems to be shaken out on the worn stones every morning. But Ceres has grown old; she sits, dark-browed, saturnine, wrinkled, on a low chair in the midst of her trophies, knitting stockings. Customers pause, select their purchases, hold up as many fingers as may represent the coppers they suppose them to be worth, and lookinquiringly at Ceres. She bends a frowning glance on the questioner; if the guess be right, she nods her head; if mistaken, she corrects it by the same finger language; and the coppers drop into the basket where her ball of yarn dances at her feet. Few venture to bargain with Sora Rosa; she considers it waste of time. People pay and carry away the stuff; or they will not pay, and then somebody else will, for there is no other vegetable stall within ten minutes' walk, and who is going to risk an apoplexy from over-exercise?
In the early morning, great ladies, quietly dressed, glide past Sora Rosa, avoid the horses which are being confidentially curried in the street, and disappear through the low doorway into the court of San Severino on their way to Mass. During the rest of the day the genial squalor of the Via Tresette is not disturbed by any jarring reminder of the prosperity and cleanliness of neighboring quarters. Near the ground at any rate all is dark, promiscuous, and prehistoric so far as modern ways are concerned. But the monastery building of San Severino rises up and up, a long, irregular pile, reaching the higher air and the sunshine at last, and breaking out into little terraces and balconies, flowery and bird-haunted, where the Fathers whom Fra Tommaso served with such zeal took their rest after the labors of the day. Fra Tommaso's own little loggia, the hanging garden which Giannella had begged to be taken to see so many years ago, was one of these, the least accessible from the larger apartments, but possessing for itsowner the immense advantage of looking directly down into the Via Santafede and commanding a view of a section of the piazza at one end and of the Ripetta at the other; also of some fifty windows of the palace itself. The incorrigible amateur of the human drama, as he climbed from his forum, the church, to his villa, the loggia, always thanked Heaven for having cast his lines in pleasant places, and pitied his immediate opposite neighbors, Mariuccia and Giannella, for being exposed to the distracting temptations and vanities of the world and at the same time deprived of the delights of flower tending and pigeon feeding which he enjoyed on his terrace.
The vanities of the world had only approached Giannella by proxy for a long time past. Since Onorato's chance admiration and his untimely bit of farce had closed the doors of the piano nobile to her, life had become so narrow, so uniform, that she hardly recognized it for life at all. Three colorless years had slipped by; good Signori Dati was dead; the Princess, busy as ever, but in failing health, seemed to have forgotten her former protegé's very existence. The brief churchgoing and shopping with Mariuccia, the needlework by which she still earned small sums from ladies who remembered her address, the assistance rendered in housework and in waiting on the Professor, who, after his first surprise at her presence, never seemed to know whether she or Mariuccia brought him his meals—these made the round of Giannella's days; and since she had, in obedience to the advice of her spiritual director, put rebelliondown and accepted her fate by sheer effort of will, she lacked even the stimulus of conflict with her unnatural destiny. She had not lost either her health or her beauty in the strait abode of frowning circumstance, but her buoyancy seemed gone; her eyes were deep rather than bright, and no gallant resolve to smile on life could keep the corners of her pretty mouth from drooping pathetically out of the happy upward curves of her childhood. That period was so long past that it seemed to belong to life on another planet, one much nearer the sun than this earth; but when, as in piety bound, she made one meditation a month on the joys of paradise, the angels, and the heavenly gardens and the celestial music, slid into the familiar semblance of her friends and play-fellows at Castel Gandolfo, the vineyards and the chestnut woods, the barking of the old dog—the braying of the donkey—Madonna Santissima, what abominable sacrilege were her thoughts committing? Dogs and donkeys in heaven? Those red-cheeked, dusty-legged contadini children as angels of the Lord? Oh, what a wicked girl Giannella Brockmann must be—and what would Padre Anselmo say when she told him?
She had fallen into this grievous sin for the twentieth time one winter afternoon. The light was failing, and as she rose from her seat to put her work away, the door bell, grown terribly decrepit in its advanced age, jangled with an imperious querulousness which announced a stranger. The Professor always handled it with tender care for fear of expense in repairs. Mariuccia, who seemed to have grown suddenly old, came out from the back room groaningwith headache, for which she had applied her favorite remedy of tufts of "madrecara" stuffed up her nostrils. The sight of her thus adorned was one of the few things which still made Giannella shake with laughter; the dear old face resembled a boar's head in a butcher's window at Christmas time.
"Go back to bed, Mariuccia," said the girl, "I will see who it is. The padrone is in his study. I had better ask him if he wishes to see any visitors."
She went quickly down the passage, pausing to put her head in at the study door. The Professor had grown older too, and bent more closely over his book than of yore. Not risking speech, Giannella looked a question as he raised his head; he nodded assent, and then the bell began its crazy dance again. Giannella hastily opened the front door and found herself face to face with a short, rather stout man, whose features she could not discern in the gloom, but who asked in an imperious tone whether the distintissimo Professor were at home. At the same time he handed her a card, from which she decided that this must be his first visit to the house.
"Favorisca," she murmured, and the stout gentleman followed her to Bianchi's room. She saw the Professor rise and come forward with a puzzled air, and heard the visitor begin an apology for his intrusion. Then she closed the door on them and went back to the kitchen, not sufficiently interested even to glance at the card, which she dropped on the little table beside the umbrella-stand in the passage.
"Is he never going, then, this cataplasm of avisitor?" exclaimed Mariuccia an hour later. "The padrone's supper is ready and spoiling. Take in the lamp, Giannella. They must be in the dark in there."
When Giannella entered the study, lamp in hand, she found that Bianchi had lighted a candle and was examining some papers, which he laid down quickly on seeing her. His sallow cheeks were flushed, and as he glanced up it struck the girl that his eyes looked unusually bright.
Opposite to him, leaning back in an arm-chair, sat the visitor, whom the light revealed as a youngish man with narrow black eyes and a round countenance, evidently intended for smiles, but disciplined just now into a kind of judicial severity which could not altogether suppress the under element of amusement with which he was regarding his host.
He too glanced quickly up at the girl who stood in the doorway, the lamp she carried illuminating her fair hair and grave young face. After a moment's hesitation she advanced and set the lamp on the table between the two men. Bianchi dropped his hands over the papers and looked across to his guest.
"This is Giannella Brockmann, Signor' Avvocato," he said; "you perceive that she is alive and in good health."
The stranger rose to his feet and seemed about to speak, but the Professor raised a warning hand, and, turning to Giannella, dismissed her with a nod of the head. As she closed the door she heard him say hurriedly, "Later, later. Not at present—it is a nervous temperament."
Her curiosity was aroused from its years of sleep, awakened as by the twang of a bowstring letting an invisible arrow fly past her. Was Bianchi referring to her? What was the communication which the other had wished to make and which he had arrested so peremptorily? She had scarcely had time to formulate the queries in her mind when she heard murmurs of farewells, the sound of the front door closing, and the Professor's footsteps returning to his study, where he locked himself in. It was all very unusual.
She did not see the padrone again that evening, for Mariuccia, still wearing her satyr-like adornment, took the tray from her hands and carried in his supper. The next day, however, Giannella was surprised by his pausing, as he met her in the passage, to return her dutiful "good-morning," a mark of interest which he had never shown before. A little later he actually called her by name and showed her a row of books on a lower shelf, which, he said, required dusting. Mariuccia seemed unwell, and she had much to do; would Giannella undertake to dust the books regularly? He would be much obliged.
When she informed Mariuccia of this order the old woman laughed sardonically. "It has taken him a great many years to find out that I have much to do," she sneered, "and I have waited on him when I was so shaking with fever that the plates rattled in my hands—and he never noticed that I was ill. Cipicchia! That visitor must have been an angel in disguise, to have thus opened the padrone's heart to pooryou and me, Giannella. Let us hope that he will soon come again."
He did come again, two or three times in the course of the next fortnight, and with each visit the Professor's kind notice of Giannella increased, until she began to have an uncomfortable feeling in his hitherto impersonal presence. As she came and went, his eyes followed her with a growing lambency behind the big spectacles. She was called into his room on frivolous pretexts, and one day he asked her if she could kindly cook his supper. Mariuccia had brought in some polpetti, and he had remarked that Giannella cooked polpetti divinely.
Mariuccia's sharp eyes had marked the padrone's new attitude and she was much disquieted. Was it possible that at fifty-seven he was committing the folly of falling in love? And that, suddenly and unreasonably, with the girl who had waited on him for years past without winning so much as a word or a glance of recognition from him? If so, it was nothing but bewitchment, dark bewitchment. The lawyer who came to see him now must be quite the opposite of an angel, since the spell dated from his first visit. The spell had evidently been cast by him.
Well, she would counteract it if she could. Giannella should not go near that fatal sitting-room and its occupant if she could help it. Giannella seconded the precautionary measures with all her might. She was thankful to be spared the attentions which were becoming too obvious to be ignored. Resolutely she stayed at the other end of the house, but Bianchitook to wandering over there after her. She pondered on the possibility of paying for a place in the vettura and taking refuge with the old friends at Castel Gandolfo; but money was painfully scarce; she and Mariuccia now depended entirely on the latter's wages and on the fifteen baiocchi a day which her generous master had so unwillingly granted when she first came to live with him twenty years before. No, a journey was out of the question; the prison doors could not be pushed ajar.
The door was opening even now, but Giannella had no premonition of it. Having attained the sober age of twenty without possessing a single young acquaintance in Rome (for none of her former schoolfellows lived in that remote quarter), she was allowed by Mariuccia, when the old joints felt stiff, to go out alone sometimes for Mass and marketing. Mariuccia's dreams of a bright future for her foster-child were fading sadly away at last; Giannella would be considered an old maid in another year or two, and the good young man with fifty thousand scudi had never come. Instead, by an ugly "scherzo" of fate, Carlo Bianchi, the shrunken recluse who had never looked at anything more closely resembling a woman than some statue thousands of years old, dead and cold as the creature deserved to be for having been perpetuated in such indecent nudity, Carlo Bianchi was waking up to the fact that a beautiful young woman was a member of his household; and, unless Mariuccia's own shrewdness was at fault, he would soon propose to install her as its mistress.
With all his failings, his domestic tyrant could not credit him with baser intentions, but this was bad enough. If he should succeed—Mariuccia groaned aloud at the possibility—the rest of Giannella's life would be "in Galera," that of a slave at the galleys. Let the poor child get out into the air and sunshine, exchange a word with Fra Tommaso, with stout, smiling Sora Amalia, who lived under the sign of the cow, even with cross old Sora Rosa, who had so far unbent to "la Biondina" as to make her a present of figs or cherries once or twice. It was hard, after all the struggles to keep Giannella a lady, that she should be reduced to friends like these, that not a person of her own class should ever remember or notice her. But there, it was destiny! "Run along, Giannella, and see if ricotta is cheap to-day. The padrone would like some for his breakfast."
So Giannella came and went a little more freely, and she did not attract the attention which the good nuns had dreaded for that dangerous golden hair when they let their dove fly from the convent ark four years before. Everyone in the vicinity knew her by sight, and it was a vicinity whose staid inhabitants rarely changed. The world, the flesh, and the devil, might go roaring up and down the Corso a few blocks away, but within sound of the bells of San Severino all was calm, ancient, safe. Mariuccia's Biondina, as she was called, could come and go, in her dark dress, with the bit of black lace veiling her modest head, and no curious or disrespectful glance would follow her. She could escape from the house andventure on a little walk by the river, past the palace where kind Cardinal Cestaldini was basking in a rarefied atmosphere of contemplation, good works, and learning, could pass the time of day with Fra Tommaso and the incurables, and linger among the monuments and frescoes of the church or try to decipher the inscriptions in the funereal gallery beyond the chapel of the Bona Mors, all without embarrassment or molestation. And as was natural, the small, new liberty was sweet and reviving to her repressed youth. She saw no tragedy in it, as did Mariuccia, to whom the acknowledgment of Giannella's passing youth and apparently irrevocable spinsterhood was a bitter trial. She was not sure now that in choosing the single state for herself she had not made a big mistake; but then she had chosen it for herself, and that was quite a different thing.
The winter had softened into spring and the spring warmed to summer, when Mariuccia's enemy, the mysterious avvocato, made his last visit to the Professor. He carried an imposing sheaf of papers in his hand and was accompanied by an older man who looked like a notary, for he wore even bigger spectacles than the padrone's and his right forefinger was dyed dark with ink. A few minutes after the two had been admitted, Giannella was summoned to the study. Some very direct questions were put to her by the lawyer, as to her name, age, and recollections of childhood, questions which surprised her greatly, for she could not imagine why these details should interest strangers. Then a paper was laid before her which shewas requested to sign. She drew back, a chill fear coming over her that it might be a marriage contract—that she was being entrapped into a union with Bianchi, who stood beside her, breathing hard with suppressed excitement and considerately holding a sand castor over the page, ready to dry the writing at once. As she hesitated, he touched her arm with his free hand, and the touch spelled compelling will. She was conscious that the other two men were staring at her in bewilderment, and she obeyed—as she had obeyed authority, in one form or another, all her life, and signed her name.
Bianchi instantly took possession of the sheet and handed it to the lawyer, who wrote on it in his turn. Then, as Bianchi signified to Giannella that she might retire, the lawyer came round to her side of the table, shook hands with her, congratulated her on her good fortune, and, with quite a friendly ring in his voice, begged her to consider his services at her disposal in the future. She thanked him, inwardly wondering at his optimism. The only good fortune apparent in her circumstances was the one of having found a shelter and a home—to which she had less future claim than the swallows to their nests in the palace eaves.
Emerging from the study she found Mariuccia hovering near the door, wild with curiosity and suspicion. Giannella described what had taken place, and as soon as the visitors had departed Mariuccia stormed into the study and assailed the Professor with angry questions as to what the child had been made to sign. What was this indecent secrecy? What had anyoneto say to Giannella that she, who had brought her up, might not hear? Was that abominable paper a marriage contract? She would tear it up and light the fire with it. Did he figure to himself that Giannella was to be disposed of without Mariuccia Botti's consent?
Bianchi, who seemed calm and triumphant now, locked the drawer of his secretary and put the key in his pocket before deigning to reply to her tirade; indeed its fluency and fury left no opening for reply until she paused for want of breath, her eyes like coals, her grizzled locks shaking above her brow like angry snakes. The master had never seen her in a passion before, and he shrank back instinctively. Then, as she was opening her lips to speak again, he said quickly and with some dignity, "Calm yourself, Mariuccia. One does not speak to one's padrone in that manner. The paper which Giannella signed was just a legal one, connected with ... business of mine. You cannot write—it would have been useless to call you in. You perceive that you have made a foolish mistake? Oh, I forgive you. You have had no instruction, and you women of the people are ever illogical and suspicious. As to marriage ... listen to me, and do not transport yourself with anger—it sours the blood and might bring on an apoplexy which I have so greatly feared for you, overloading yourself with food as you do. Fifteen baiocchi a day for one woman. Holy Æsculapius, how have you survived it for twenty years?"
"Man without eyes, without vitals," cried Mariuccia, "what do you suppose Giannella has lived on sinceshe came back from the convent? Air? Trevi water? Have I not fed the poor child for years? Have you ever given her a crumb from your table, a sugar-plum at Epiphany, or a maritozzo in Lent? Domine Dio, keep Thy Hand on my head or I shall end by losing patience with this blind and heartless one."
The Professor was roused to reprisals at last. "Do not imagine that I am blind, O female without judgment!" he exclaimed. "Gladly would I have made presents of food to Giannella, though I am a poor man and could ill afford it—but I perceived that your charity to her might be the means of saving your life, preventing you from dying of surfeit—a most painful end. Thus has your good deed already had its reward. But to show you, O ignorant and audacious one, that I have a true affection for Giannella and a mind full of generosity I will now—" He choked, then went on manfully, "I will now give you five baiocchi a day for her board, out of my own pocket. It is imprudent—I shall suffer—but I am resolved. Behold." And he held out five dingy coppers in his half-closed hand.
Then he found out what Mariuccia meant when she spoke of losing patience. She came up to him in two strides and shook both hands in his face. "What?" she screamed, "you want to pay for Giannella now? Why have you never thought of it before? Four years last Easter she came home, and never once have you said, 'Mariuccia mia, there is a paul, to buy something for the girl—what do I know, a cake, a bit of ribbon?' No, she grew up, she haswaited on you and ironed for you and mended your old rags of shirts that only hold together by the grace of God. She has combated with the butcher and the baker and the fishmonger till they had to take something off their prices for you—they fear to see her coming, though she is as beautiful as an angel—and you never even spoke to her till a few weeks ago. But now—the devil in hell alone knows why—you have suddenly found out that she is good and pretty, and you make big eyes at her and call her to dust your wicked old books—and now you have the temerity to offer me money for her! No indeed, Professore mio, this you shall never do. Go back to your Veneres and Giunones—I wonder the Holy Father did not send the shameless females to the galleys for having their portraits taken like that—and leave Giannella to me."
Bianchi had not listened to this tide of reproaches, accompanied as it was by violently menacing gestures, without taking immediate measures for self-preservation. He edged round the room, keeping his back to the wall and facing Mariuccia, who followed him step by step, never allowing the distance between them to diminish by a handbreadth, until the door was reached. Carefully the Professor put out one hand behind him and ascertained that it was ajar. Then with amazing agility he stepped back into the passage, and from there hurled his last bomb. "You spoke of marriage. Yes, woman of hard head and mountainous ignorance, I intend to marry Giannella." Then the door wasslammed in Mariuccia's face and the next moment the padrone was flying down the stairs.
His enemy, haggard, and trembling from reaction, remained in possession of the field, but she knew that she was vanquished. When Giannella heard the front door close she ran to the study, whence sounds of battle had rolled for the last half-hour. She found her old friend with her head sunk forward on the table while slow tears trickled through her knotty fingers all over the padrone's papers. The master had evidently been put to flight, but Mariuccia's victory seemed to have been a costly one. She refused to confide to Giannella the subject of her "piccolo argomento," as she called it, with Bianchi. The long habit of silence gave her strength to keep her counsel about his alarming proposal. Taken together with his changed attitude towards the girl, it could, in her judgment, point to but one thing, "passione," the fatal, sudden, all-devouring passion in which the Roman believes as blindly as did the Greek tragedian. This poisoned arrow had entered the padrone's heart. Mamma mia, here was a complication over which to astrologize her poor head! Who was going to sustain the combat, day in day out, under that narrow roof, with an obstinate man who was undoubtedly being smitten in his dried-up middle age with just retribution for the unnatural repressions of his youth, and who, moreover, held all the advantages of the situation, since he was the master of the house? She did not abandon her belief in the spell which she accusedthe strange lawyer of weaving around the poor man; no, that was a part of the doom; he was Satan's emissary, permitted, for some inexplicable reason, to sow the seed which had taken such violent possession of the unfortunate Professor. He had disappeared when his evil work was done and it could probably not be undone by anyone else. It was all destiny—but most afflicting.
As for telling Giannella—no. Love was not a proper subject to discuss with young girls, and then, such love as this? So she informed Giannella that she had been asked to sign the mysterious paper as a witness to something or other that had no connection with her, and that the slight disagreement had arisen from Bianchi's irritation at being questioned. Why had she been crying? Oh, she was feeling "strana" that day—it was all the fault of the scirocco.
The Professor returned towards evening, very haughty and dignified. Mariuccio contradicted all her explanations of the morning by forbidding Giannella to go near him, and carried in his supper tray herself, in grim silence more aggressive than words, even those of her rich vocabulary. She was only waiting for the rattle of a plate or the turning of a door handle to put an end to the armistice and serve as a declaration of renewed hostilities, but Bianchi was deaf and dumb. He informed her, when she came in to remove his tray, that he would be going to Ostia the next day; his coffee must be ready and his clothes brushed by seven o'clock. Then he returned to the perusal of aletter, and Mariuccia, greatly relieved at the prospect of his absence for so many hours, prayed for the intervention of protecting Providence in Giannella's affairs before his return—and sat up till late, brushing his clothes and preparing the frugal lunch which he always carried with him on such archæological expeditions.
The morning after these disturbing events an exciting stir delighted the inhabitants of the Via Tresette, the street of the cow. The owner of the dairy had in the course of years become the proprietor of the old house which sheltered his trade; and, having prospered of late, he had built on the roof a new apartment, containing four small rooms and a large airy studio, which he hoped to let to some painter. His neighbors had shaken their heads over this bold speculation, but it seemed that his optimism was justified, for here, at the small door beside the shop, stood a handcart loaded with stiff-legged easels, canvases tied together in a red tablecloth, a chair similarly protected by a green one, the disjointed limbs of an iron bedstead, cooking utensils, and various odds and ends, all of which proved incontestably that a tenant had been found for the appartamentino on the roof.
Beside the cart, helping the perspiring facchino to unload the things, stood a young man of cheerful countenance and remarkably dapper costume. Adjuring the porter to move delicately, he unearthed a life-sized mummy-like object swathed in a drab sheet, which he hoisted tenderly on the man's back. Then, turning to the landlord, who stood by, beaming on this visible proof of his own good luck, he begged him, inlanguage more elegant than usually echoed through that obscure thoroughfare, to favor him by keeping an eye on the other belongings while he accompanied the bearer of this particular treasure up the stairs.
No sooner had he disappeared than an excited group gathered round the owner of the premises to find out all about him. What was his name? Had he really taken the new room? What rent was he going to pay? Even Sora Rosa, the sybil among the cabbages opposite, raised her head and cocked an ear to catch the answer.
Why yes, the gentleman had taken the studio apartment for three years, paying half-a-year's rent in advance. (The landlord in the just pride of his heart mentioned precisely double the sum he had asked and received.) The signorino's name was Goffi, Rinaldo Goffi, and he was an artist—but distintissimo. Signor Freschi, the picture dealer in Via Condotti, bought everything he painted, and for sums!
At this juncture the distinguished artist came out from the doorway and, quite unembarrassed by his growing audience, gathered up more of his properties—a paint box under each arm, a saucepan in one hand and a wicker cage tied up in a yellow handkerchief in the other, and, thus loaded, ducked back into the Cimmerian darkness of the passage. The handcart was now empty, the porter paid, with a joke and a "bicchiere" thrown in, and Signor Goffi, rather out of breath, ascended the four flights of stairs and took possession of his new domain.
He was a Roman of the Romans, although not bornwithin the walls of the city. His father, a lawyer of good old provincial stock, had risen to be mayor of his native town, Orbetello, and, being also the owner of rich vine lands, was a man of solid position and comfortable fortune. His eldest son was following in his father's steps, and would inherit the fat Orbetello property; the second was a rising engineer; and the third, Rinaldo, having early shown quick intelligence and some artistic talent, had been sent to Rome for his education, with the understanding that if he satisfactorily completed his studies at the university he should be permitted to devote himself to the career of his choice in the very cradle of Art itself.
The parental allowance, a very modest one, was to be continued until he could earn his own living; but having inherited from a maternal relative a tiny property near Rome, he, as in duty bound, renounced the allowance in order that his sisters' doweries might be increased, and lived as Romans so well know how to live, decorously and comfortably, on a very small income. The "vigna" outside Porta San Giovanni was cultivated by peasants, whose family had tenanted it for some generations, on the mezzadria system, an equal division of profits with the owner. As hardly any taxes were levied in the Papal States, and no duty assessed on provisions passing the city gates, the full value of ownership and labor was reaped from the land, and the half-and-half arrangement, while equally distributing the losses of lean years, insured to both landlord and tenant the entire benefit of fat ones.
The lean years had been few in the garden vineyardoutside the Lateran Gate; the vines flowered into heady fragrance in the divine Roman spring behind their tall hedges of canes and roses, and bore their splendid bunches nobly when the late summer rains came to swell, nearly to bursting, the tightly clustered fruit baked black on the brown stems whence every leaf had been stripped in August to let the sun and air do their magic work. Then came the crown of the year, the October vintage, when every little winepress poured its purple froth from under the bare feet of the treaders into the seething vat below; when the very air was wine, from Lombardy to Messina, and each Sunday of the glowing month brought the population of the city, in gay attire, out to eat and drink, to laugh and dance and make music, from dawn to dark, in the garden of the gods, the vinelands of Romagna.
Rinaldo went with the rest, inviting a chosen party of fellow-students to the vigna, where the padroncino was always delightedly welcomed and the best the house could afford brought out for him and his friends. The meal was served in the open air, by the fountain, under the brown thatch woven in between the branches of the four cypress-trees as a shelter from the sun; old songs and young laughter accompanied the repast; the new wine, cloudy and sweet still and of terrific headiness, was tasted, and healths drunk in the safer product of past years. Then a game of bowls was played, a substantial present made to the "vignarolo," and, in the cool of the evening, the "raggazzi" climbed, six at a time, into the small open carriage hired for the occasion, and were borneback to the town. The jolly driver, who had had his share of the day's good things, cracked his beribboned whip high over the heads of the little black horses, who, with roses on their ears and bows on their tails, frisked gaily along in a cloud of dust, running races with dozens of other vehicles full of noisy, happy people twanging guitars and shaking tamborines, very few of them at all the worse for the innocent orgy. At last came the scamper for the Lateran Gate before Ave Maria rang and it should be closed for the night, and the usually severe guardians only smiled at the merry scramble and closed the huge portals, regretfully when the last carrozzella had romped safely through.
Such holidays were the more enjoyed by Rinaldo because they were rare. In general he led a life as orderly and studious as that of Carlo Bianchi himself; but it was illuminated with hope for the future, with pleasure in the present in spite of the slow labor necessary, in spite of the many discouragements to be lived down before he could attain even modest proficiency in his kindly art. His chief relaxation in the summer time was provided by Father Tiber. The "Cannottieri" club had not been organized in those early days, but its forerunner, a river boating society, drew the young men together in the warm afternoons and gave them many a cool swim and invigorating hour of rowing on the full yellow tide. Rinaldo was a favorite with his compeers, but he never allowed their importunities to interfere with the great business of his life, success in his reasonable aims. He had gone through every step of the art student's course with sturdyconscientiousness, trusting nothing to inspiration, avoiding what he recognized as impressionism (the word itself had not been coined) as he avoided bad women and sour wine. He never imagined himself a genius; he was content to have talent and to cultivate it faithfully. Month after month he copied in the galleries, reverently tracing the perceptive lines of great masterpieces on his canvas and his memory. Constant work in the Life School filled the evening hours when the days were short, and humble acceptance of the master's sharp criticisms corrected any slightest tendency to conceit. With native shrewdness he had understood that there was always a market for good, unostentatious work, and he was not too proud to take commissions for copies when he could not sell his own really charming little pictures. For Rinaldo had an end in view, and he worked steadily towards it. Loneliness did not appeal to his cheerful nature; he meant to find a pretty, sweet-tempered wife as soon as he could support her, and to have a home as strongly foundationed as the one in Orbetello, of which he retained admiring and affectionate memories.
Having no fortune beyond the small income derived from the vigna, he could not expect to marry a girl with much of a dowry; in such matters a certain similarity of circumstances was the accepted rule. So he put by all that it was possible for him to save, resolved to marry while young and in love with life, and equally resolved to feel no pinch of poverty afterwards. His attitude was one not at all uncommon among his fellow-students and contemporaries; nothing could havebeen further from the happy-go-lucky Bohemianism of the foreign artistic coteries, Scandinavian, German, Anglo-Saxon, which swarmed in Rome at that time. There is but one calling which makes Bohemians of the sober-going yet light-hearted children of Latium, the musical one. What would you have? When a man is born with a voice that can sing the stars down from heaven and the angels from paradise, is it not to be expected that he should also be born drunk with celestial wine? When he can compose operas whose airs, after the first hearing, are sung in every alley of the city—as happened the morning after the production of theTrovatore—no one can demand that he should understand the intricacies of account books. It is the world's business to see to the daily wants of its Orpheuses and Apollos—and the world, as a rule, attends to the obligation nobly.
When Rinaldo took possession of his new studio he felt that he was marking an important point on the road of his ambitions. Hitherto he had shared the workshop of a friend, in the warren of studios which climb from the Via Babuino to the lower terraces of the Pincian Hill. Now, having sold some small pictures, and having secured through the dealer an order from a rich foreigner for a large one, he felt justified in assuming the responsibilities of quiet, airy quarters where he could work without interruptions. As he sat among his queer belongings—scattered over the floor in wild disorder—an unreasoning joy took possession of him, a certainty that he had found more in this new home than clean, bright rooms and asuperb north light. He rose and walked about, exploring his new domain, and lingering on the little terrace to breathe in the breeze which, rioting over from the coast, twenty miles away, seemed to disdain ever to sink into the hot streets so far below.
His attention was called to material things by the protests of the inhabitant of the wicker cage, still wrapped in the yellow handkerchief. He took it up gently and in a moment liberated a splendid gray and purple pigeon, which hopped on his shoulder and began to preen its ruffled feathers with a deeply injured air. "My poor Themistocles," Rinaldo apologized, "I had forgotten all about you. And your grain is spilt and your cup is empty." Gravely he attended to the creature's wants, while it fluttered about, taking in all the possibilities of the place. Themistocles was accused by Rinaldo's friends of being a most uncanny bird, watching their actions with a sarcastic eye and understanding many things which did not come within his province at all. Though he was allowed to roam at will over the housetops he always returned to his master in the evening and generally slept on the head of the lay figure, the carefully swathed treasure which had so excited the curiosity of the denizens of the street of the cow.
Rinaldo had become so accustomed to this quaint feathered companion that he would have felt lonely without him; indeed Themistocles had been the recipient of many a confidence and ambition which his master would have betrayed to no articulate listener. One must talk to something about the things nearestone's heart, and it was fine to have a confidant who never objected or contradicted.
In an hour the properties were all in place. The little platform was set in the best light, and the ancient chair, topped with gilt cherubs and covered with ragged crimson velvet, was placed on it at the usual angle. How many cardinals, fair ladies, and swaggering bravos had sat in that chair during the last few years! Of each and all the corporeal body was supplied by the trusty lay figure, which, now liberated from its cerecloth, disclosed the amputation of one leg below the knee, the dislocation of the other, incurable paralysis of the fingers; a pink but blistered countenance, a nose injured by contact with a mahlstick hurled at it by Rinaldo's former studio companion; vacuous blue eyes and a set smile completed the model's attractions, and these were crowned by a damaged wig of a sickly yellow hue, much impoverished by the attentions of Themistocles, who was in the habit of tearing out locks of hair when playing at building a nest in the angle of the least-used easel. In a few minutes, however, the warworn veteran of the studio was sitting in the gilt chair, cleverly robed in the red tablecloth and impersonating a cardinal in full canonicals; a large canvas was brought out, the dear, bedaubed paint boxes opened, the favorite palette loaded with its daily rainbow of colors—and behold Rinaldo, forgetful of everything else, utterly happy, absorbed in his immortal work for the rich foreigner.
That evening he sat and smoked on his loggia, lifted far above the nightmare of fever which stalks in thelowlying streets on summer nights. He felt that he had come into a new world, where stars and sky were a part of the bargain. Going over to the balustrade he leaned out and looked down into the street—a chasm of blackness at that hour—then up at the violet dome of the heavens quivering with a thousand points of tender radiance, and, remembering his schooldays, softly quoted, "Donde uscimmo a riveder le stelle!"
He too had left his purgatory behind and had entered a paradise all-sufficing to his simple soul, save for one thing, it contained no Beatrice. He did not call her that, however. Dante's impersonal goddess would never have filled the vacant throne in Rinaldo's heart. The unattainable had no charms for him, and the idea of worshiping another man's wife at a respectful distance seemed both a mortal sin and a waste of time; he meant to fall joyfully in love with his own wife; and, being a sincere beauty worshiper, permitted himself to paint an enchanting picture of the future Signora Goffi. For hard-working, economical Rinaldo, with all his respect for conventionalities and his sound Roman sense, was at heart an exuberant idealist and had never considered it necessary to even clip the plumes of his radiant imagination. He had not yet beheld, but he was sure he should find, the face of holy fairness, the eyes of innocence and love, the golden hair that was to be crown and halo in one—the dear, pretty sister of angels and pattern of housekeepers whom he resolutely intended to marry.
He fell asleep wondering what kind of paper she would ask him to put on these whitewashed walls,and woke—as it seemed to him, immediately afterwards—with a violent start, to find the air full of the pealing of bells, the bells of San Severino, which Fra Tommaso was ringing with all his might for the first Mass.
He jumped up and ran out on the terrace, pleased as a schoolboy, to see what everything looked like at this early hour. Glancing over the iron balustrade, he discovered that it lay at a right angle to the street and looked directly into the back court of San Severino. The connection with the church was evident, for there was a mendicant lifting the leather curtain for a lady to pass in. The first ray of the sun shot over the farther wall and lit on a golden head just disappearing under the curtain; the beggar made an aggrieved gesture and stretched out his hand for alms. Then the lady stepped back into the sunshine and stood for a moment seeking for something in her purse. Yes, the head was golden—Rinaldo's heart leaped for joy—and the fingers that dropped a copper in the outstretched hand were white and fine. Then the curtain was lifted once more, the lady disappeared, and the court was empty save for the beggar, who at once assumed his professionally forlorn air so as to be ready for the next passer-by.
"I too will go to Mass," said Rinaldo to himself, "it is a pious habit." Having dressed as fast as he could, he flew downstairs and made his way into the church, quiet and dim still, and holding only a few scattered worshipers. Mass had begun in a side chapel, and, kneeling on a prièdieu before the altarsteps was a girl, simply dressed in black, her face hidden in her hands. A smooth roll of hair like spun gold showed under a lace head covering; the figure was young and slight, and the pose perfectly graceful.
Rinaldo turned red with emotion. Might not—oh, Santa Speranza—might not this be the embodiment of his dreams? He actually trembled with apprehension lest the unseen face should fall short of what he asked to find in it; yet how could it, he asked himself, do less than match the harmony of the devout attitude, the fairness of the fingers through which the beads of a white rosary slipped one by one?
He drew nearer and leaned against the wall, where he could see her profile whenever she should raise her head. He crossed himself, took out his handkerchief and knelt down on it at the proper moments, and tried to remember his prayers, but these did not get much further than the attractive apparition before him and resolved themselves into wordless but frightened entreaties that the vision would show its face. The Mass was approaching its end when he was aware of a little stir among the chairs; then an old woman with a scanty handkerchief thrown over her head and its corners tightly held in her mouth, came and knelt down between him and the girl. The latter moved her head slightly in acknowledgment of her neighbor's presence, but continued her devotions without looking up. "What is she praying for so earnestly?" Rinaldo wondered. "Could Heaven refuse anything to such a santarella as that? Oh, what a shame to disturb her."
This was evidently not the old woman's view. Shehad something to say and meant to get it off her mind at once. She pulled at the girl's sleeve and whispered sharply, "Giannella, listen. I must go to the cleaner for the padrone's coat—he is off to Ostia for the day, thank the Lord—so you take the key and go home, and here is the money for the tomatoes, don't forget."
She fished a heavy housekey and some jingling coppers from her bulging pocket and tried to thrust them into the girl's hand. The latter raised her head and looked round slowly, as if coming back to things of earth against her will. And then Rinaldo leaned heavily against the cold wall and felt dizzy and faint. What he beheld was only a pure young face with shadowed eyes and a rather sad mouth, but the expression was one of such grace, sweetness and candor that the young man might be forgiven the cry of his heart, "Amore mio, I have found you!" The morning hour, the quiet church, with its incense-laden air, the first slow sunbeams creeping across the spaces overhead—all combined to make a perfect setting for the picture of his dreams. He closed his eyes so that it should be imprinted on his memory for ever. Then he opened them quickly, for the young girl and the old woman had risen and were moving away. Should he follow them at once? No, better wait a moment; he could catch up with them unnoticed as soon as they should have passed out into the street. Ah, here came a friendly-looking old sacristan to put the chairs back in their places; he might know by what name heavenly visitants were called in this world of sin.
"La Biondina?" queried Fra Tommaso in answer to the eager inquiry. "Oh, she lives with Sora Mariuccia somewhere over there in the Palazzo Santafede. They serve Professor Bianchi, the archæologist—keep him and his books clean and cook his meals when he gives them anything to buy food with. La Giannella was an orphan whom Mariuccia took into compassion and brought up. Now that she has grown big and pretty, they say the Professor wants to marry her—what silliness! But she is a good girl and a great help to Mariuccia. Thank you, Signorino. Arrivederci," as Rinaldo pressed a coin into his hand and scuttled away down the church in most unseemly haste.
Fra Tommaso looked after him and shook his head with an indulgent smile. Youth and romance appealed to the heart of him still, even as the dew and the sunshine penetrate to the heart of the gray old olive-tree and cause it to break out into leaf and fruit.
When Rinaldo reached the street the elder woman had disappeared, but "la Giannella" (he wished her name had not such a Florentine sound!) was standing before the vegetable stall apparently bargaining for tomatoes with the witch who presided there. The girl was smiling down at her, but the witch kept her eyes on her knitting and growled, "Take them or leave them. They are four baiocchi the pound to you as to others."
When Rinaldo, standing in the cover of his own doorway opposite, wondered what would happen next, Giannella stealthily drew the big key from her pocketand let it fall on the stones. The old lady looked up at the sudden clatter to find the girl still smiling at her and holding out three coppers in her hand.
"It is all I may spend, Sora Rosa," she said coaxingly. "Won't you be kind and give me the pound?"
"Ah, furba, cunning one!" exclaimed the other, "you always get what you want when you make me look at you. There, run along with my beautiful pomidori—and I hope they will choke the old miser you work for," she added viciously, as Giannella gathered up her spoils and went quickly down the street.
Of course Rinaldo followed her; that was a compliment one might pay to any woman so long as the regulation distance was maintained and no attempt made to attract her attention. He saw Giannella vanish into the palace, and then he slowly approached the portone, to try and find out which of the various stairways she would ascend. The building was so enormous, reaching the whole length of the street from Piazza Santafede to the Ripetta (on which thoroughfare its second façade opened) that it would be difficult to locate the modest apartment probably occupied by the Professor and his ministrants. Rinaldo gazed through the archway to where a fountain was bubbling in the courtyard, and found courage to put his question to the porter, who was lounging about, smoking a pipe while his wife scrubbed the lower steps of the chief staircase. It was so early that the maestro di casa had not come to open the cancelleria or office, a hall of sepulchral grimness on the ground floor, where the archives were kept and all the business of thehousehold and estates carried on. The palace was still in dressing-gown and slippers, so to speak, and the porter in a fairly condescending mood, so Rinaldo was informed that to find Professor Bianchi he must take the third staircase to the right and ascend to the fourth floor, where he would see the name on the door. Rinaldo passed in, bent on discovering whether the apartment looked into the courtyard or out on the Via Santafede; if the latter, there might be some chance of catching another glimpse of that lovely girl at one of the windows. Passing along under the colonnade, where grooms were whistling and joking as they curried horses and sluiced down carriage wheels, he reached "Scala III." and raced up the long flights of steps, with two doors on every landing, and his heart beat more with exultation than exercise when at last he sprang on to the fourth of these and ascertained that "Bianchi" was the name on a shabby card nailed to the right-hand door. This was the street side.
Ten minutes later he was back on his own terrace, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of the palace. Only a far corner was visible from where he stood. Between him and it, adjoining the side of his loggia, stretched the wide roof of the Fathers' dwelling, most picturesquely diversified, as he now perceived, by detached rooms opening on flowery terraces perched at different levels, connected by irregular little flights of steps, and here and there by a small bridge, railed in where it spanned the depth of some inner court designed to give light to the central rooms of the old pile.
All was deserted at this hour; the Fathers were busy in the church or with their pupils, far below; and Rinaldo, with a thrilling new sense of adventure, started on a voyage of discovery. Vaulting over his own parapet he landed on the flat gray tiles beyond and made his way, after one or two mistakes, which led him to closed doors, to the farther side of the little city on the roof. It struck him as a charming place, quite operatic in arrangement, and much more appropriate for dreaming lovers than meditating monks.
As he dropped over the last division he started back, dazed by a whirr of wings beating against his face. When they rose and hovered above his head he saw that he had disturbed a flock of pigeons who apparently had their home in this delightful retreat. He was standing on a narrow loggia some twenty feet long, protected on the street side by a solid parapet on whose broad top bloomed carnations, roses and verbenas; a big oleander at one end waved its pink fragrant flowers against the stainless blue of the sky; at the other, a fat little lemon-tree displayed its pale rich fruit. Sweet herbs in boxes filled all available corners, and against a side wall, shaded by a tile roof which projected over a glass door, was a neat dovecote, showing that the protesting pigeons were the rightful inhabitants of the place.
The door was open, and Rinaldo, curious as a girl, peeped in. But there was nothing to attract him inside. A pallet bed, a table, a straw chair; a crucifix; and on the brick range a battered cooking pot; these constituted the furniture, and an embrowned old sacredprint the only ornamentation. The explorer made a grimace at the austerity of the abode and stepped back to the parapet to carry out the real object of his visit. Yes, he had come to the right spot. Far below was the Via Santafede, and opposite, on a level slightly lower than the one where he stood, were certain fourth-floor windows which, by all the canons of topography, should belong to the Bianchi apartment. Four were closed and curtained; the fifth and sixth were open and evidently belonged to the kitchen, for Rinaldo could see the bricks of the floor and the corner of the range. There was one more beyond, open too, with a carnation flowering on the sill. Within was a low chair with a basket of work on it. Was this the spot where the Biondina was accustomed to sit? Even as he framed the eager question, she came forward, put the basket down beside the chair and settled herself to her sewing without once glancing up. She had removed her lace veil, and her bent head shone in the morning light as her needle flew in and out of the linen. Once she turned to speak to someone in the room, and Rinaldo ducked behind his flowered defenses in fear of being seen; but in a moment he was leaning over again, taking in every detail of the picture across the street.
Now came another diversion. Giannella found some Indian corn on the window sill and scattered it on the outer ledge, whistling softly. One, two, half-a-dozen pigeons materialized out of blue space, paused a moment among the flower-pots near Rinaldo, cocked their heads, considered well, and then descended in aflock to gather the golden harvest. He heard the girl laugh as she pushed away one which had boldly settled on her shoulder. Then someone within called sharply, and she left her place in haste. Rinaldo lingered awhile, but she did not return; and conscience, suddenly aware of the flight of time, drove him back to his own quarters, to the society of Themistocles, who was sick and sulky to-day, and of the lay figure, fallen stiffly aside in the grand chair, as if the red cotton cardinal were tired of waiting for his truant portrait painter.
Mariuccia regarded it as too drastic an answer to her prayers when the erring padrone returned from Ostia shivering and sneezing, his clothes covered with green mud from the excavations where he had been joyously burrowing over some valuable discoveries just made in Tiber's forgotten port. His boots were soaked—his lunch uneaten.
"Figlio mio," cried Mariuccia, all her animosity quenched in anxious pity as she opened the door and beheld him in this heartbreaking condition. "What have you been doing? But this is fatal. Domine Dio, you shake, you have fever. Animal that I was to let you go in those old boots. Come in and let me put you to bed at once."
Bianchi resigned himself to her ministrations only too gladly, and while she rolled him up in hot blankets and surrounded him with fortifications of scalding bricks, Giannella, all undeterred by the late hour, rushed off to the apothecary for quinine and other potent drugs. She had never found herself in the street after dark before, but charity gave her wings and she was whipped along by remorse. Suppose the poor padrone were to die? And she had been feeling so cross with him lately, had been so ungrateful for the little attentions which he had been trying to show her and which probably only her own stupid conceit haddistorted into anything more alarming than kindness and condescension. Did man but know it, he has only to catch a cold in the head to make the women of his establishment forget all the grumpinesses and tyrannies of years. Poor darling, he wasn't well all the time! What a shame to have resented shortcomings which one ought to have known were but symptoms of approaching indisposition. Quick, cosset him, doctor him, and in a few days perhaps the gentle invalid will feel well enough to put his pretty foot on our necks again.
The Professor basked contentedly enough in the excitement he had caused, and by the end of the second day was feeling much better. Mariuccia having reduced him to a state of apparent subjugation and tucked him up in his blankets with fearful threats of what would overtake him if he put so much as a hand out of bed, hoisted a basket of wet linen on her head and climbed up to the roof where each tenant was allowed a small space for drying clothes.
Giannella had been feeling unusually light-hearted all day. The padrone was better—what a comfort. And the house was peaceful; there had been no more "little arguments" between him and Mariuccia. Then the morning had been so lovely when she slipped out to the five o'clock Mass, a summer morning with fragrance everywhere, as if ghostly violets and roses had been dancing about the streets all night and had left their sweetness behind them when they fled at the coming of the sun. This was not her own idea; Giannella could not be called imaginative; she hadfound it in a book of very sentimental poems which somebody had most inappropriately presented to the Professor. But it struck her as pretty, and she had remembered it as she crossed the cool, empty piazza in the summer dawn. Then it had been most consoling to see a young man devoutly following the Mass. Young men were not in the habit of coming to church on weekdays; Mariuccia said they were too lazy or too frivolous. Mariuccia had a bad opinion of men in general, and Giannella accepted it, as she accepted most axioms enounced by her elders, in unruffled good faith. But here was living contradiction to such pessimism, a sprightly-looking young gentleman, as well dressed as Don Onorato himself, kneeling piously on a pretty silk handkerchief from the "Deus in adjutorium" to the "Ite Missa Est." Giannella was sure that she had never turned her head to look at him, and was a little puzzled to know how she had ascertained all these attractive details. True, she had dropped her rosary—very stupidly—and he had picked it up and returned it to her with grave politeness but without attempting to meet her glance of thanks. Ah, how comforting it was to a Christian heart to witness such faith and piety. The world was perhaps not so evil after all. Mariuccia, and the dear nuns who used to rail at it, and Padre Anselmo, who told her to give special thanks for her separation from it, had never seen a good, handsome young man saying his prayers!
So Giannella, singing softly to herself, was moving about, tidying up the kitchen (still redolent with dampsoap from Mariuccia's washtubs) when she heard the Professor calling for her. She ran to his door and looked in. There was very little of the Professor to be seen except a pair of mournful eyes and a long nose; all the rest was blanket. "Please give me my spectacles," he whispered hoarsely, "she took them away, and I am like one blind. They are over there on the bureau. Santa Pazienza! May I die of an apoplexy if I am ever so stupid as to catch cold again. She makes me do my purgatory, that woman."
Giannella brought the spectacles and respectfully placed them on the sufferer's nose; he beamed at her through them gratefully. Then he asked for something else, the Report of the Archæological Society, there on the chair, under the coat. She handed it to him and was about to move away when he slipped the pamphlet under his pillow and, forgetting all his promises, put out a hand to detain the girl, saying, "Wait a moment, Giannella. I have something to say to you—we may not be alone again."
Giannella gazed at him in surprise, "Well, Signor Professore?" she asked.
"It is this," he said; "but pray sit down. I fear you will be agitated. Calm yourself, my child, and be prepared for a beautiful piece of news."
He had never spoken to her so kindly before. What was coming? Something very pleasant, certainly. Giannella carefully removed the coat and sat down on the only chair, directly facing him, an expectant smile on her pretty face.
The Professor coughed and took a sip of barleywater. "Giannella, you are a good girl," he said solemnly, "and you are about to be rewarded. Now—control your feelings—I intend to make you my wife."
Giannella sprang to her feet with a shriek. He smiled indulgently. "I warned you not to give way to emotion," he continued; "of course you could not figure to yourself that this good fortune awaited you. There, there, Giannella—be calm, I entreat you."
The girl's face had turned crimson, she appeared about to choke. Then she hid her face in her hands and turned away her head over the back of the chair. Her shoulders were heaving convulsively.
The grating of a key in the lock of the front door brought the interview to a sudden end. "Run," whispered Bianchi, ducking down under his coverings with an expression of terror, "she is coming. Not a word to her. Run, you can thank me another time."
Giannella was gone already, flying to the most distant corner in the house, the corner behind her embroidery frame. There she stood, close in the angle of the wall, her apron over her face, trying to suppress all sound of the hysterical laughter which shook her from head to foot.
Mariuccia's war-horse tread resounded on the bricks of the kitchen. She called out through the open door, "Are you there, Giannella? Eh, but the roof is scorching to-day. I thought the soles of my shoes would come off." Receiving no answer she came and peered into the work-room, saw the bowed figure in the corner, rushed to the girl and tore the apron awayfrom her face. "Giannella, what is the matter?" she cried. "For the love of Heaven tell me what has happened."
"Go to the padrone, quick," gasped Giannella, looking up at her with scarlet cheeks and tear-drowned eyes. "Oh, mamma mia, I shall die of laughing—it hurts—speak gently to him—he has gone mad."
Mariuccia turned pale and her jaw fell. "Madonna Santissima," she whispered, "give me strength. Has he got a knife?" In imagination she saw the Professor leaping wildly round his room seeking for someone to kill.
"No, no, he is quiet—there is no danger, but he is quite mad, I fear. It must be the fever, I suppose."
"Leave it to me," Mariuccia exclaimed. "I will give him a calmante. Where is the camomile?"
A few minutes later she entered his room on tiptoe, inwardly cursing the "scrocchio," the bit of hard-creaking leather which the shoemaker always put into the soles of the boots (and charged extra for, the brigand!) to make them sound new to their dying day. Bianchi was pretending to be asleep. His nurse came and leaned over him anxiously. He was breathing with suspicious regularity, and the confiscated spectacles were still on his nose.
"He has been getting up," she whispered to herself, "and the poor boy has caught a chill. It has sent the blood to his head. But he shall perspire, I will put on leeches—it will pass. Padroncino," she murmured coaxingly, "wake up for a moment.Drink this." And she held the scalding cup to his lips.
The invalid was astute enough to see his advantage in her anxiety. He opened his eyes wearily and gazed up at her. "I do feel very ill," he said, "and it is less from the cold I caught than from the agitation I suffered before going to Ostia. Oh, my nerves are in a terrible state. I was not fit to go—after you had made me that scene. My poor Mariuccia, you must never so upset me again. It is not safe. I do not know now whether I shall ever recover from the shock."
"What do you feel?" she asked anxiously. "Is it the head? Oh, you break my heart. Rash beast that I was to let my evil tongue so disturb you."
"And all for nothing," continued the patient reproachfully. "What had I done? Merely proposed an act of benevolence—which I intended to follow up with one of noble generosity. But your ignorant impetuosity shall not turn me from my purpose. If I recover from this terrible illness, this fire in my head, this numbness in my limbs, then, my good Mariuccia, you shall carry the burden of maintaining Giannella no longer. That pertains to me in future. Have you not realized that I am going to marry her?"
"Dio mio," wailed the old woman, "the girl is right, the fever has gone to his head." Then, forcing herself to be calm for the sick man's sake, she said in soothing tones, "Padroncino mio bello, you are agitating yourself again. You must not talk anymore. Go to sleep—and when you are better you shall say all that is in your mind. There, are you comfortable?" She smoothed the pillows, drew up the coverings, and left him in the darkened room.
Outside in the passage she leaned back against the wall, faint with fear and remorse. It was all her fault. Who could say how this dreadful visitation would end? In a fatal illness, or in permanent derangement of that illustrious understanding? She would fetch a doctor at once—God send she should not have to go for the priest!
There was an anxious consultation between the two women over the kitchen table that night. The doctor, put in possession of the facts, had diagnosed the distemper as "rabbia rientrata" (unvented anger), one of the most dangerous known to the faculty. How many regrettable losses to society had it not caused! And how unfortunate that the aid of science should not have been invoked at once. What could one do after well-intentioned but ignorant persons had taken it upon themselves to treat it for forty-eight hours?
Mariuccia and Giannella collapsed under this bitter reproach, and it was only when the afflicted Professor had been finally lured to slumber by innocent opiates of orange-flower water that Giannella recovered sufficiently to remark to her companion, "I do not think we really made so many mistakes, after all. What did the doctor order but just what you had done? Leeches, quinine, a sedative—I wonder if he knows so very much more than you do?"
"Tell me, Giannella?" Mariuccia asked, lifting herhead and looking at the girl curiously, "I had not time to ask you before—what did the padrone say to you? What was it that first showed you he was delirious?"
Giannella thought for a moment, then she replied, while the lamplight showed a gleam of rebellious amusement in her eyes, "He told me that he had a piece of beautiful good news for me, and I sat down to hear it—and then he said he—he intended to marry me. I could not help laughing. He looked so funny, and the thought was such craziness. But I am sorry—I should have had more heart."
Mariuccia reflected; then she shook her head sagely. "This craziness has been coming on for a long time, I believe," she said, "it is not all the result of our little argument the other day. I must tell you now—though I did not mean to—that we were talking about you then, Giannella. He said he wished to pay for your board—he, who counts his coins as if they were beads of a rosary. 'Santo Baiocco, ora pro nobis!' Proverino, it is his only fault. I ought not to speak of it now that he is in such danger. And then I was angry—and he said to me what he said to you this morning, that he intended to marry you. Now let us reason a little, figlia mia. You have been at home for over four years, and the padrone hardly seemed to see you till three months ago. He changed then, suddenly. Now have you no suspicion of what was the cause?"