“Would it not be safer to reverse that arrangement?” said Gonsalvo, significantly,—“to retain Aurelia here in prison; and suffer you, Arionelli, in whom I trust more than you credit, to depart?”
A long silence followed, which was broken at last by the robber; but the tone in which he spoke, and his manner, was, for the first time, strangely contrasted with the expression of his features. “My Lord!” he said, interrupting the Gonfalonière, “let us close this conference.” (And his voice was steady, even to seeming unconcern; though his countenance was deadly pale, and his eye was livid and glassy, and his lips seemed to perform their office with an effort—as if some swelling in the throat choked up the utterance.) “The proof which Signor Gonsalvo demands may be furnished more easily than I had recollected. Two men of my band are now in your jails of Florence. One of them is named Vincentio Rastelli: he is the lesser offender—set him free. Let Aurelia and myself then be carried back to prison—only one demandmustbe conceded—that our dungeon shall be the same. Let Rastelli have free access to me at will, and free passage to go and come, unfollowedand unwatched, wherever I shall send him. Promise that, my bond being kept—before I die—I shall see Aurelia at liberty. And before midnight to-morrow, Signor Gonsalvo shall have that put into his hands, which shall for ever set his mind at rest as to the fate—whatever it has been—of Lorenzo di Vasari.”
It was the hour of midnight on the morrow; and Gonsalvo di Vasari sat in his library alone; and he rejoiced in the fortune of his arrangements. The robber Rastelli had been set at liberty. He had visited Arionelli in his prison. He had gone upon one mission, and had returned as unsuccessful; but at once again he had sped forth upon another. Was it possible that the outlaw might yet fail? Scarcely so! for Aurelia’s sake, his strength would be put forth to the utmost. Would the agent make sure of his own safety and escape? This was not likely, for already he had once returned; and the fidelity of such people, generally, to their friends and leaders, was as well known as their enterprise and ferocity.
It was not likely either that Arionelli would have taken his course, without feeling a strong reliance upon its success. A few hours then—nay, a few moments now—were to put him in possession of that evidence which would end all doubt as to his cousin’s rich inheritance. For Aurelia—her safety was promised; but her liberty—this evidenceobtained—might be a matter for consideration. The outlaw himself would die upon the scaffold. It was pity that so much beauty as Aurelia’s should be cast away.—Meantime Gonsalvo di Vasari sat alone in his palace; and the hour of midnight was passed, and yet there was no messenger. He arose and opened the lattice—the moon shone brightly—but the streets of Florence were at rest. Was it possible that he should be trifled with! A servant was summoned. But—no!—no person had appeared.
At that instant, a man, wrapt in a dark cloak, was seen stealing across the Piazza of St Mark. His form was robust, and his step firm; it was the figure of the robber—of Rastelli. He paused a moment under the shadow of the church of St Benedick, as if to watch if any one observed him; then crossed the square—the portico concealed him;—but it was the hour—the very moment—it must be the messenger!
There was a hasty tap at the door of the cabinet——
“My lord—he has come.”
“Admit him.”
“He did not stay.”
“Where is his message?”
“My lord, it is here.”
The servant placed a small iron casket in thehands of his master; a folded packet accompanied it; and retired.
Gonsalvo broke the seal of the packet. There was not a word—the paper was blank. But it contained a small key, apparently that of the casket, of a singular form and workmanship.
The letter was a blank! The chest then, which was in his hands, contained the secret? Gonsalvo hesitated. Was it fit that the deposit should be at once opened? Was it not more fit that the disclosure (whatever it was) should be public—in the presence of the Gonfalonière, and in the apartment of the Senate?
And yet it might be that the casket contained matter hostile to his desires, rather than tending to assist them. It might be that the proof even of Lorenzo’s death failed wholly; and such truth, once openly declared, could never be got rid of.
He poised the chest in his hands. It weighed heavily. What could be its contents? Perhaps the written confession of Arionelli, or some of his companions. At all events, the course of a private search was safe: a public one might be made formally, in the morning, if convenient.
He took the key, secured the door, approached the taper, and cautiously examined the lock of the casket.
The key entered freely. It turned in the lock.The bolt shot. The hand that lay upon the lid tightened its grasp to lift it open.
At that moment the magazine within exploded. The chest, with a report that shook the apartment, burst into a thousand atoms. The household of Di Vasari was alarmed. His domestics rushed in a body to their master’s chamber. They tried to enter, but the door was fast. They knocked, but no answer was returned. While they stood irresolute in horror and alarm, an officer of justice, attended, came thundering at the gate. The prison of the Seralio had been alarmed in the night. The robber Arionelli and his wife were dead by poison, and the Gonfalonière in council desired the presence and assistance of Signor di Vasari. The affrighted domestics burst the door open. The message from the State was answered by the spectacle within. On the floor lay Gonsalvo di Vasari—dead; his garments scorched; his face and hands discoloured; his body mangled with a shower of balls; and the shell of the fatal casket at his feet.
“Then lay us together for ever to rest,For the grave ends all strife, and all sorrow:As the sun, which, at eve, sinks in blood to the west,Rises calm and serene on the morrow!”
“Then lay us together for ever to rest,For the grave ends all strife, and all sorrow:As the sun, which, at eve, sinks in blood to the west,Rises calm and serene on the morrow!”
Forty years had passed over from the date of these events; and the horrors of the plague of Florence were forgotten. The tale lived in the recollection of a few old people who had escaped the wreck; but their accounts wavered between fiction and reality, and were held as exaggerations among the juniors. Times had changed, and things had changed with them. The ploughshare passed over that ground which had been the site of palaces in the time of the pestilence; and churches stood, and streets, where cemeteries had been glutted with the remains of thousands. Those who listened to the stories of mortality—of five hundred dead in one week, and three hundred in another—counted the numbers as men hear of thousands dead upon a field of battle: they believed the fact, because it was avouched, but scarcely could understand the possibility.
And with the traces of the plague, other wonders of the time had disappeared. The mystery of Lorenzo di Vasari’s fate was forgotten. The desperate revenge of the outlaw Arionelli lived only in the songs of the lower classes, or in the legends of those who still exercised his dangerous profession.The Count Arestino had long paid the debt which all men owe. His sins might, or they might not, be forgiven; but he was gone to his reckoning—had briefly, indeed, followed her whom his vengeance had sent thither perhaps too soon. The great crowd who had lived in that earlier day were now departed or departing; they gave up the post of action and existence to those who had been children in their day.
And in the Chateau Arestino now, there was feasting and all delight. It was the autumn again, and the hedges of myrtle on the banks of the Arno gave out their most delicious scent. The roses that hung faint with the noonday’s heat, gathered new life in the cool of the twilight, as they drooped their heads to drink of that fresh stream; and the last rays of the sun fell with a mellowed brightness upon the red and yellow leaves of the chestnut tree, or lingered, where the eye paused with less effort, among the dark-green branches of the olive.
And in the halls of the castle, too, there was a sound of music, and of dancing, and of revelry. And gay forms flitted lightly along its lofty corridors, or dashed in mimic pursuit, with the light step and lighter laugh of youth, through its water-side arbours and gardens. And there were gallant forms of cavaliers, their crests nodding brightly in the sun; and fair, transparent, sylph-like figures of females, their flowing drapery catching in the lightbreeze, and but adorning the form it seemed to hide, sported gaily through hall and bower. That day was the new lord’s wedding-day. He had wandered long abroad, unknowing of his rich inheritance. But all since his return was splendour and fitting and decoration. For he had sighed sometimes at the thought of that palace when he had little hope to possess it. And now it would become his favourite seat—he kept his day of bridal there.
And his bride was come, and her fair bridesmaids; and she was welcomed by the grey-haired domestics who hoped to live yet in ease and comfort from her bounty. And all was gaiety and sparkle. There was the light boat plied upon the river, filled with such freight as showed as though the nymphs fabled to dwell in ocean’s depths had risen to glide upon its surface. And the speckled trout checked at the long line, or snapped the brittle wand, while shouts of triumph or of laughter—equally gay—hailed his appearance above water or his escape.
And in the midst of all this tumult, the bride and her attendants, with girlish curiosity, wandered through the rich saloons, and even through every chamber in the castle. The pictures—the china—the statues—nothing was spared from their curious view. “And what was this? and whence came that? This painting, was it from Venice or from Rome? That armour, was it of the French or ofthe Danish workmanship? Those jewels too—and those rich plumes, now of past fashion, that filled the Garde-robe—whose had they been? from what great ancestor of Theodore’s had they descended?”
The attentive governante’s answer was always ready. She had the knowledge and the memory fitting to her station. The china was from one illustrious house—the statues, in succession, from another—the armour had belonged to the first or to the third Lord of Arestino, famous for his conduct in the wars of Charlemagne, against the Saracens or elsewhere. But the jewels and plumes had been the property of the Lady Angiolina Arestino, the wife of the last Count Ubaldi, and one of the handsomest women of her time; “Who died,” said the ancient governante, “on this very day forty-four years, even on the very night of the Vigil of St Luke; and on the same night that the young Chevalier di Vasari, whom some—Heaven pardon them!—accounted her lover, was basely murdered. How my lady met her death, some doubted, for the Lord Arestino was of an unforgiving temper, and severe! But it was a strange business, at least for the Chevalier and his attendant, who disappeared on that night, and no traces were ever heard of them more!”
“But the Chevalier’s body was found, was it not, good Beatrice?” said a fair Florentine girl; “I am sure I have heard that it was; and that he wasone of the noblest cavaliers of his time. And that is a beautiful bust—if it was like him—which stands in the Church of St Marco, on the tomb erected to his memory!”
“Hisbodywas found, with your ladyship’s leave, three months after he was missing; but never the persons by whom he met his death. And up to this time, the servant who waited on him, and who I always thought had a share in his murder, has never been heard of. Some say that there were signs of his escape to France, and that his master’s famous black horse, Bayard, was many years afterwards recognised in the capital of that country. I do not know how that was; but I just recollect the finding of the Chevalier Lorenzo’s body, poor gentleman! He was found dead in a ravine, scarce four miles from the city; stripped of everything—naked—no doubt by those who had robbed and murdered him; and would never have been recognised but for his sword, which was found beside him, lying broken within a few yards of the spot where he fell!”
“But the Count Ubaldi——, my Lord Theodore’s ancestor—he died, too, early—did he not?” said the fair Lady Amina.
“He did, by your ladyship’s pleasure—alas! he did—soon after his lady; and her death was sudden—it was said that she was poisoned. It was all in the dreadful time of the plague, before the eldestof you, fair signoras—before your mothers almost, I might say—were born. Poor lady! it was in this very chamber, this chamber we now stand in, that she died.”
“Good Heaven!” said the Lady Amina, “in this chamber? Surely this was not the Countess Angiolina’s bed on which I am leaning?”
“Not the bed, your ladyship,” said Beatrice, “but all the other furniture of the room is exactly the same. These are the pictures which used to hang in it; and the marble busts; and those fine flower-vases, of which my lady was so fond. This cabinet contained her jewels, and many of them remain still. Some of the diamonds his lordship, the count, presented to the nuns of St Agnes la Fontagna. But the turquoises are here, that my lady wore mightily, for they became her complexion. And the pearls, too; but they are spoiled, quite black with age and want of wearing! That robe-chest, too—I pray your ladyship’s pardon for the dust upon it—this house has been unused and empty so long—and servants will neglect where one is not always—that chest was her ladyship’s, and I daresay contains choice fineries, for it stood always in her chamber, and has never been opened since she died.”
This last fact seemed more extraordinary than any of the wonders which had preceded it. “Has it really never been opened!” said the young LadyOlympia. “But what a pity that such beautiful ornaments should have been left to decay!”
“Never opened, may it please your ladyship; nor could it, but by violence,” returned the governante. “For it is a Spanish piece of work, and was sold to my lady by a foreign merchant, who told the secret of opening it only to her. It opens, your ladyship sees, with some spring—Heaven knows where! but there is neither lock nor bolt. Nobody could open it ever but my lady; and I am sure, since I lived in this house, I have tried a hundred times.”
There could scarcely fail, in such an assembly, to be some desire as strong as the governante’s to see the fair Countess’s hidden treasure; but the having to open the chest by force was a difficulty too formidable rather to surmount. To have performed such a feat (independent of any other objection) would apparently have required strong assistance; and therefore, whatever anxiety curiosity felt, modesty checked its expression; and the gay party proceeded on their rambling review, amidst various strange conjectures as to the manner of Di Vasari’s death; or comments upon the conduct of the Count Ubaldi, and the unhappy fate of his fair lady.
But at the close of the evening, when the song rose loudest, and the feast was still enlivening the hall, there were two female forms seen to glide with lighted tapers along the oaken gallery, and enterthe light-blue chamber; it was the beautiful bride—the Lady Amina—and her favourite companion, Olympia Montefiore.
The Lady Amina led the way, laughing; but there was a touch of apprehension mingled in her smile. “For Heaven’s sake,” said she, pausing in the doorway, “let us go back!”
“What folly! what can we have to apprehend!” was the reply.
“But Theodore may have missed us.”
“And if he has!—Is it not his wedding-night, and can anything you do displease him? Besides—to-morrow he will cause the chest to be opened himself.”
“Then let us wait until to-morrow; and we can then see it.”
“Yes! and then everybody will have seen it—and it will not be worth seeing!”
As the beautiful tempter passed her companion, and knelt beside the case, her figure looked like that of Psyche, bending on the couch of Cupid.
“If we should not be able to open it after all!” said the bride, half fearful, half laughing.
“We will—depend on me,” said the other, anxious and excited. “I know the secret of these Spanish chests. My father has one—they are common now in Venice—the spring is concealed—but once know the situation of it—as I do—and it is simple.”
“But—I tremble all over!”
“Why, what nonsense!”
“But—I’ll go away if you don’t stop.”
“But only think how we shall laugh at Lavinia and Euryanthe! Now—hold the taper. It is but one touch. Now—I have it. There!—do you see?—Now—Amina—now—hold here—help me while I lift thelid——”
Within the chest there lay a skeleton—stretched at its length, and bleached to whiteness. There was a jewel mocked one of the bony fingers; and a corslet of mail enclosed the trunk. And the right hand clutched—as though yet in question—a long and massive dagger. Its handle was of gold embossed; its blade was of the manufacture of Damascus. And on that blade, though rusted here and there, were characters which still appeared distinctly. Their pale brightness flashed as the light of the taper fell upon them; they formed the name—and they told the fortunes—ofDi Vasari.
It was a November night of the year 184-. For a week past the play-bills, upon the convenient but unsightly posts that disfigure the boulevards, had announced for that evening, in conspicuous capitals, the first performance of a new opera by a popular composer. Although the season of winter gaieties had scarcely begun, and country-houses and bathing-places retained a portion of the fashionable population of Paris, yet a string of elegant carriages, more or less coroneted, extended down the Rue Lepelletier, and deposited a distinguished audience at the door of the Académie de Musique. The curtain fell upon the first act; and a triple round of applause, of which a little was attributable to the merits of the opera, and a good deal to the parchment palms of a well-drilledclaque, proclaimed thecomposer’s triumph and the opera’s success, when two men, entering the house at opposite sides, met near its centre, exchanged a familiar greeting, and seated themselves in contiguous stalls. Both belonged to the class which the lower orders of Parisians figuratively designate asgants jaunes; the said lower orders conscientiously believing primrose gloves to be a covering as inseparable from a dandy’s fingers as the natural epidermis. The younger of these two men, the Viscount Arthur de Mellay, was a most unexceptionable specimen of thoselions doréswho, in modern French society, have replaced themerveilleux, theroués, andraffinésof former days. Sleek of face and red of lip, with confident eye and trim mustache, his “getting up” was evidently the result of deep reflection on the part of the most tasteful of tailors and scrupulous of valets. From his varnished boot-heel to the topmost wave of his glossy and luxuriantchevelure, the severest critic of the mode would in vain have sought an imperfection. Born, bred, and polished in the genial atmosphere of the noble faubourg, he was a credit to his club, the admiration of the vulgar, the pet of a circle of exclusive and aristocratic dames, whose approving verdict is fashionable fame. His neighbour in the stalls, some years older than himself, was scarcely less correct in externals, although bearing his leonine honours much more carelessly. Like Arthur, he was a very handsome man, but hispale face and fair mustache contrasted with the florid cheek and dark hair of his companion. The Austrian baron Ernest von Steinfeld had acquired, by long and frequent residences in Paris, rights to Parisian naturalisation. He had first visited the French capital in a diplomatic capacity, and, after abandoning that career, had spent a part of every year there as regularly as any nativehabituéof the Club Grammont, the Chantilly race-course, and the Bois de Boulogne. Although a German and a baron, he was neither coarse, nor stupid, nor smoky. He did not carry a tobacco-pipe in his pocket, or get muddled at dinner, or spit upon the floor, or participate in any other of the nastinesses common to the majority of his tribe. A nobleman in Austria, he would have been accounted a gentleman, and a highly bred one, in any country in the world. He was of old family, had been much about courts, held a military rank, possessed a castle and fine estate in the Tyrol, mortgaged to the very lastzwanzigerof their value, was somewhatblaséand troubled with the spleen, and considerably in debt, both in Vienna and Paris. He had arrived in the latter capital but a fortnight previously, after nearly a year’s absence, had established himself in a small but elegant house in a fashionable quarter, and as he still rode fine horses, dressed and dined well, played high and paid punctually, nobody suspected how near he was to the end of his cash and credit:and that he had sacrificed the last remnant of his disposable property to provide ammunition for another campaign in Paris—a campaign likely to be final, unless a wealthy heiress, a prize in the lottery, or an unexpected legacy, came in the nick of time to repair his shattered fortunes.
The second act of the opera was over. The applause, again renewed, had again subsided, and the hum of conversation replaced the crash of the noisy orchestra, the warbling of Duprez, and the passionate declamation of Madame Stolz. The house was very full; the boxes were crowded with elegantly dressed women, a few of them really pretty, a good many appearing so by the grace of gas, rouge, and costume. The curtain was no sooner down than de Mellay, compelled by the despotism of the pit to silence during the performance, dashed off at a colloquial canter, scattering, for his companion’s benefit, a shower of criticisms, witticisms, and scandal, for which he found abundant subjects amongst his acquaintances in the theatre, and to which the baron listened with the curled lip and faint smile of one for whose palled palate caviare no longer has flavour, scarcely vouchsafing an occasional monosyllable or brief sentence when Arthur’s gossip seemed to require reply. His eyes wandered round the house, their vision aided by the double glasses of one of those tremendous opera-telescopes by whose magnifying powers, it is said, the incipientwrinkle and the borrowed tint are infallibly detected, and the verytricotof Taglioni is converted into a cobweb. Presently he touched the arm of Arthur, who had just commenced an animated ocular flirtation with a blue-eyed belle in a stage-box. The baron called his attention to a box on the opposite side of the theatre.
“There is a curious group,” he said.
“Oh, yes,” replied de Mellay, carelessly, levelling his glass for a moment in the direction pointed out. “The Fatellos.” And he resumed his mute correspondence with the dame of the azure eyes.
Steinfeld remained for a short space silent, with the thoughtful puzzled air of a man who suspects he has forgotten something he ought to remember; but his efforts of memory were all in vain, and he again interrupted Arthur’s agreeable occupation.
“Whom did you say?” he inquired; indicating, by a glance rather than by a movement, the group that had riveted his attention.
“The Fatellos,” replied de Mellay, with a sort of surprise. “But, pshaw! I forget. You were at Venice last carnival, and they have not been twelve months at Paris. You have still to learn the affecting romance of Sigismund and Catalina: how the red knight from Franconie did carry off the Paynim’s daughter,—his weapons adapted to the century—bank-notes and bright doubloons, in lieu of couched lance and trenchant blade. Why, whenthey arrived, all Paris talked of them for three days, and might have talked longer, had not Admiral Joinville brought over from Barbary two uncommonly large baboons, which diverted the public attention. They call them Beauty and the Beast—the Fatellos, I mean, not the baboons.”
The persons who had attracted Steinfeld’s notice, and elicited this uncomplimentary tirade from the volatile viscount, occupied one of the best boxes in the theatre. In front were two ladies, likely to be the more remarked from the contrast their appearance offered with the Parisian style of beauty. Their jet-black hair, large almond-shaped eyes, and complexion of a rich glowing olive, betrayed their southern origin. Behind them sat a man of five-and-thirty or forty; a tall, high-shouldered, ungainly figure, with a profusion of reddish hair, and a set of Calmuck features of repulsive ugliness. His face was of an unhealthy paleness, excepting about the nose and cheekbones, which were blotched and heated; and the harsh and obstinate expression of his physiognomy was ill redeemed by the remarkably quick and penetrating glance of his small keen grey eyes.
“Do you mean to say yonder ungainly boor is the husband of one of those two beautiful women, who look as if they had stepped out of a legend of the Alhambra, or of a vintage-piece by Leopold Robert?”
“Certainly—husband of one, brother-in-law of the other. But I will tell you the whole story. Sigismund Fatello is one of those men born with a peculiar genius for money-getting, who, if deposited at the antipodes without a shoe to their foot, or a sou in their pocket, would end by becoming millionnaires. Although little heard of in good society till a year ago, he has long been well known on the Bourse, and in foreign capitals, as a bold financier and successful speculator. Two years ago he had occasion to go to the south of Spain, to visit mines offered by the Spanish government as security for the loan of two or three of his millions. Amongst other places he visited Seville, and was there introduced to Don Geronimo Gomez Garcia Gonfalon (and a dozen other names besides), a queer old hidalgo, descended from Boabdil of the Bloody Crescent, or some such Moorish potentate. The don dwelt in the shadow of the Giralda, and possessed two daughters reputed fair;—you see them there—judge for yourself. With one of these Fatello fell desperately in love, and asked her in marriage. The lady, who had no wish to abandon her native land for the society of so ugly and unpleasant a helpmate, demurred. But the suitor was urgent and the papa peremptory. Old Boabdil had an immense opinion of Fatello, was dazzled by his wealth and financial reputation, and insisted on his daughter’s marrying him, vowing that he himself waspoor as a poet, and that if she refused she should go to a nunnery. After the usual amount of tears, threats, and promises, the marriage took place. The descendant of the Saracen made an excellent bargain for his child. Fatello, infatuated by his passion, would have agreed to any conditions, and made immense settlements on the beautiful Catalina. His father-in-law, like an old semi-African hunks as he was, pleaded poverty, hard times, forced contributions, and so forth, as excuses for giving his daughter no other portion than a few rather remarkable diamonds, and some antiquated plate dating from the kings of Granada, and better suited for a Moorish museum than a Christian sideboard. Fatello, whose dealings with the Spanish government had given him no very exalted idea of the opulence of Spanish subjects, cared not for the old boy’s maravedis, and credited his plea of poverty. A few weeks afterwards, Fatello and his wife being still in Seville, Boabdil retired for his usual siesta; but not reappearing at the usual hour, a servant went to awaken him, and found him purple with apoplexy. The unfortunate Saracen never spoke again. The next day he was buried (they lose no time in those warm latitudes); and behold, when the will was opened, he had left upwards of three millions of reals to his disconsolate daughters—about four hundred thousand francs to each of them. When the decencies had been observed in the way ofmourning, and Fatello had finished his affairs, he brought his wife and her sister to Paris, took a magnificent hotel in the Faubourg St Honoré, and gave Lucullian dinners, and entertainments such as are read of in the Arabian Nights, but rarely seen in the nineteenth century.”
“And were his fêtes well attended?”
“Not quite immediately. At first everybody asked who this M. Fatello was, and nobody could tell. All sorts of queer stories were got up about him. Some said he was a Polish Jew, formerly well known in Prague, and who had commenced his fortune by attending horse-fairs. Others—misled by his name, which has an odd Italian sound—swore he was a Lombard, continuing the financial and speculative traditions of his race. He himself claims to be of a good Alsatian family; and I believe the truth is, that his father was a small proprietor in a northern department, who sent his son to Paris, as a boy, to seek his fortune, which, by virtue of industry and arithmetic, he has been lucky enough to find. But people got tired of askingwho, and changed the interrogation towhat. This was much more easily answered—‘The signature of Sigismund Fatello is worth millions upon every Exchange in Europe,’ was the prompt reply. You know our good Parisians, or rather, you know the world in general. If John Law or Dr Faustus returned upon earth, with wealth proceeding from thedevil or a swindle, and gave banquets and balls, their rooms would not long be empty. No more were those of Fatello, against whom, however, nothing improper was ever substantiated, except a want of ancestors,—a venial offence, in these days, to be charged against a millionnaire! With a citizen king, and Jews in the chamber,oruponargentis the truest blazonry, my word for it.”
“By their assistance, then, he has got into good society?” said Steinfeld.
“Into almost the best. He has not made much progress beyond the Seine; but on this side the water he is everywhere in good odour. They make much of him at the Tuileries and in diplomatic circles; and in the Chaussée d’Antin, amongst the aristocracy of finance, his money gives him right to a high place. And if he plays the Amphitryon this winter in the style he did the last, there is no saying whether some of our stiff-necked countesses of thevieille rochemay not relent, and honour his halls with their transcendental presence. His entertainments of all kinds are quite superlative; and if he be a plebeian and a brute, his wife and sister, on the other hand, are graceful as gazelles, and date from the Deluge. He is an ugly-looking monster, certainly,” added the handsome viscount; “but fortune has atoned for nature’s stinginess. A man may forget his resemblance to a chimpanzee when he has millions in his strong-box, one of the finesthouses, and best filled stables, and prettiest wives in Paris,—when he possesses strength and health, and has every prospect of living long to enjoy the goods the gods have showered upon him.”
“Wrong in the last particular,—quite wrong, my dear viscount,” said a bland and unctuous voice behind de Mellay. The young men turned and found themselves face to face with a comely middle-aged personage, whose smug costume of professional black was relieved by a red ribbon in the button-hole, and who, gliding into the stall in their rear, whilst they were engrossed with their conversation, had overheard its latter sentences.
“Ha! doctor,” exclaimed the viscount, “you here, and eavesdropping! How am I wrong, most sapient and debonair of Galens?”
Dr Pilori was a physician in high practice, and of a class not uncommon in Paris,—at once a man of pleasure and a votary of science. With a fair share of talent and an inordinate one of self-conceit, he had pushed himself forward in his profession, applying himself, in conformity with the Parisian rage forspécialités, particularly to one class of complaint. The lungs were the organ he had taken under his special protection: his word was law in all cases of pulmonary disease. He was physician to an hospital, member of the Legion of Honour, and of innumerable learned societies; his portrait graced the shop-windows of medical booksellers, whilst hisworks, on maladies of the lungs, occupied a prominent place on their shelves. His patients were numerous and his fees large. So far the man of science. The man of pleasure occupied a gorgeous apartment in the vicinity of the Madeleine; gave smart and frequent soirées (as one means of increasing his connection), where singers of the first water gave their notes in payment of his advice. He was frequently at the opera,—occasionally at the Café de Paris,—lived on bad terms with his wife, and on good ones with a ballet-dancer, and was in request as an attendant at duels amongst the young dandies of the clubs, with most of whom he was on a footing of familiarity amounting almost to intimacy.
“How am I wrong, doctor?” repeated de Mellay.
“In your prediction of Fatello’s longevity. Of course it is of him you speak?”
“Of no other. What ails him?”
“He is dying of consumption,” gravely replied Pilori.
The viscount laughed incredulously, and even Steinfeld could not restrain a smile, so little appearance was there of a consumptive habit in the robust frame, and coarse, rough physiognomy of the financier.
“Laugh if you please, young gentlemen,” said the doctor. “It is no laughing matter for Monsieur Fatello, I can tell you. His life is not worth a year’s purchase.”
“You have been prescribing for him then, doctor?” said Arthur, maliciously.
“I have,” said the physician, suffering the hit to pass unnoticed. “No longer ago than yesterday he consulted me for a trifling indisposition, and, in studying his idiosyncrasy, I detected the graver disease. What do you think he called me in for? I ought not to tell these things, but the joke is too good to keep. He was annoyed about the blotches on his face—anxious for a clear complexion. In what strange places vanity finds a corner! Poor fellow! he little thinks how soon the worms will be at work upon his cuticle.”
“You did not tell him, then?” said de Mellay, still doubtful of the doctor’s sincerity, and with a sort of shudder at his dissecting-room style.
“What was the use? The seeds of decay are too deeply set to be eradicated by the resources of art. Although to a non-medical eye he presents little appearance of pulmonary derangement, the malady has already taken firm hold. Probably it is hereditary. It advances slowly but surely, and will not be turned aside. The forms of that terrible disease are many and various, from thepulmonia fulminanteof Spain, and thegalloping consumptionof our island neighbours, to those more tedious varieties whose ravages extend over years, to kill as surely at last. But I do not tell you that Ishallnot inform M. Fatello of his condition. It is ourduty to strive to the last, even when we have no hope but in a miracle. I shall see him to-morrow and break the matter to him.”
“And send him to Italy or Madeira, I suppose,” said Steinfeld, with an appearance of greater interest than he had previously taken in the conversation.
“What for? As well let him die in Paris, where he will at least have all the alleviations the resources of art and high civilisation can afford. But enough of the subject. And you, young gentlemen, say nothing of what I have told you, or you will damage my reputation for discretion.”
The rise of the curtain put a period to the conversation, and, before the act was over, a box-keeper delivered a letter to Dr Pilori, who, after reading it, rose with a certain air of importance and solicitude, and hurried out of the theatre,—his sortie provoking a smile amongst some of the habitual frequenters of the stalls, who were accustomed to see this manœuvre repeated with a frequency that gave it the air of an advertisement. The opera over, Steinfeld and de Mellay left the house together, and, whilst driving along the boulevard, the sentence of death pronounced so positively by Pilori upon Fatello was the subject of their conversation. The viscount was incredulous, took it for a hoax, and would have amused the club by its repetition, and by a burlesque of Pilori’s dogmatical and pompous tone, hadnot Steinfeld urged him to be silent on the subject, lest he should injure the indiscreet physician. Arthur promised to say nothing about it, and soon forgot the whole affair in the excitement of abouillotte-table. Steinfeld, equally reserved, neither forgot the doctor’s prophecy, nor doubted the conviction that dictated it. De Mellay’s gossip about the Fatellos had doubtless excited his curiosity, and given him a wish to know them; for, two days afterwards, his elegantcoupédrove into the court of their hotel, and a dandified secretary of legation presented, in due form, the Baron Ernest von Steinfeld to the wealthy financier and his handsome wife and sister.
Three months had elapsed, and Paris was in full carnival. Since the beginning of the year the town had been kept in a state of unusual excitement by the anticipation of a ball, for which the rich and fashionable Countess de M—— had issued invitations to her immense circle of friends and acquaintances. The position of the countess—who, herself the daughter of an illustrious house, and reckoning amongst her ancestors and their alliances more than one sovereign prince and constable of France, had married a man enriched and ennobled by Napoleon—gaveher peculiar facilities for collecting around her all that was distinguished and fashionable in Paris, and for blending the various coteries into which political differences, as much as pride of descent on the one hand, and pride of purse on the other, split the higher circles of Parisian society. Her invitations included stiff-necked Legitimists from the dull but dignified streets of St Germain’s faubourg, noble as a La Tremouille or a Montmorency, and still sulking against the monarchy of the 7th August; wealthyparvenusfrom the Chaussée d’Antin, military nobles of imperial fabrication, Russian princes, English lords, Spanish grandees, diplomatists by the dozen, and a prince or two of the reigning family. Under ordinary circumstances, Madame de M—— might have hesitated to bring together so heterogeneous an assemblage—to have mingled in the same saloons all these conflicting vanities, opinions, and prejudices; but the character of her entertainment removed the inconveniences of such confrontation. It was no ordinary ball or commonplace rout of which the palatial mansion of the countess was upon this occasion to be the scene. She had conceived the bold idea of resuscitating, upon a large scale, an amusement which, in Paris, has long since degenerated into vulgar license and drunken saturnalia. Her entertainment was to be a masquerade, to which no one was to come with uncovered face or in ordinary costume. A maskand a disguise were as essential to obtain entrance, as was the ticket of admission sent to each individual invited, and which was to be delivered up at the door, accompanied by the holder’s engraved visiting-card. This precaution was to guard against the recurrence of an unpleasant incident that had occurred two years previously at a minor entertainment of similar character, when two ingenious professors of legerdemain, better known to the police than to the master of the house, found their way into the ball-room under the convenient covering of dominoes, and departed, before their presence was discovered, carrying with them a varied assortment of watches, purses, and jewellery.
The night of the much-talked-of fête had arrived; the tailors, milliners, and embroiderers, who for a month past had slaved in the service of the invited, had brought home the results of their labours: the fashionable hair-dressers had had a hard day’s work—some hundreds of wreaths and nosegays, which in June would have been beautiful, and in January seemed miraculous, and whose aggregate cost was a comfortable year’s income, had been composed by the tasteful fingers of the Parisian flower-girls. The hour was at hand, and many a fair bosom palpitated with pleasurable anticipations. The hotel of the rich Fatello, as the successful speculator was usually called, had its share of the bustle of preparation; but at last knotty questions of costume were satisfactorilysettled, and the ladies committed themselves to the hands of their tirewomen. In his library sat Sigismund Fatello, opening a pile of notes and letters that had accumulated there since afternoon. Some he read and put carefully aside; to others he scarcely vouchsafed a glance; whilst a third class were placed apart for perusal at greater leisure. At last he opened one by whose contents he was strangely moved, for, on reading them, he started and turned pale, as if stung by an adder. Passing his hand over his eyes, as though to clear his vision, he stood up and placed the paper in the very strongest glare of the powerful Carcel lamp illuminating the room. A second time he read, and his agitation visibly increased. Its cause was a small note, containing but four lines, written in a feigned hand. It was an anonymous letter, striking him in his most vulnerable point. Again and again he perused it, striving to recognise the handwriting, or conjecture the author. All his efforts were in vain. Once, inspired by his good genius, he crushed the treacherous paper in his hand, and approached the fireplace to destroy it in the flames. But as he drew near the logs that glowed and crackled on the hearth, his pace became slower and slower, until he finally stood still, smoothed the crumpled paper, and once more devoured its contents. Then he walked several times up and down the apartment with a hurried step. The three months that hadelapsed since Arthur de Mellay and Baron Steinfeld had met in the stalls in the opera, had not passed over the head of Fatello without producing a certain change in his appearance. He was thinner and paler, his eyes were more sunken, and a dark line was pencilled beneath them. The change, however, was not such as an indifferent person would notice; it might proceed from many causes—from mental labour, uneasiness, or grief, as well as from bodily disease—the idea of which latter was unlikely to enter the head of a careless observer of his massive frame and features, and of the general appearance of great muscular strength, still remarkable in the ill-favoured financier. Now, however, he was unusually pale and haggard. The letter he still held in his hand had worked upon him like a malevolent charm, hollowing his cheek and wrinkling his brow. For nearly half an hour he continued his monotonous walk, alternately slackening and accelerating his pace. At times he would come to a momentary halt, with the absent air of one absorbed in working out a puzzling problem. At last he opened a secretaire, touched a spring which made a secret drawer fly open, placed in this drawer the letter that had so greatly disturbed him, closed the desk, and, lighting a taper, took the direction of his wife’s sitting-room, in the opposite wing of the hotel.
Madame Fatello and Mademoiselle Sebastiana Gonfalon were equipped for the ball and in readinessto depart. Between the two sisters, in whose ages there was a difference of two years, so strong a resemblance existed that they frequently were taken for twins. Exactly of the same stature, they had the same large dark eyes, abundant hair, and brown tint of skin, and the same mouth, not very small, but beautiful in form, and adorned with teeth of dazzling whiteness. Both had the grace and fascination for which their countrywomen are renowned. The chief difference between them was in expression. Catalina was the more serious of the two: her gravity sometimes verged upon sullenness, and this was especially observable since she had been compelled to a marriage repugnant to her feelings, but which she had lacked energy and courage to resist. Her father would have found it a far less easy task to force Sebastiana to a union opposed to her inclinations. As high-spirited as her sister was irresolute, Mademoiselle Gonfalon was one of those persons whose obstinacy is increased by every attempt at coercion. Laughing and lively amidst all her gay coquetries, there still was a decision in her classically moulded chin and slightly compressed lip, and a something clandestine but resolute in her eye, which a physiognomist would have interpreted as denoting a degree of intelligence and a passionate strength of character denied by nature to her feebler sister. Upon this evening, however, it might have been thought the two young women hadexchanged characters. Sebastiana, in general all smiles and sprightliness, was thoughtful and preoccupied, almost anxious; whilst the listless and melancholy Catalina had an unusual appearance of gaiety and animation. Her cheek was flushed, her eyes were brilliant, and she looked repeatedly at a jewelled bijou-watch, as though she would fain have advanced the hour at which she could with propriety make her entrance into Madame de M——’s saloons.
The door opened and Fatello came in. By a powerful exertion of that self-command which he possessed in no ordinary degree, he had banished from his countenance nearly every trace of recent agitation. He was perhaps a shade paler than usual, but his brow was unclouded, and his uncouth countenance was lighted up by the most agreeable smile it could assume.
“So, ladies,” he said, with a liveliness that sat but clumsily upon him, “you are armed for conquest. Accept my compliments on the excellent taste of your costumes. They are really charming. If you are detected, it will hardly be by your dress. Those loose robes and that convenient cowl are the best possible disguises.”
“All the better!” cried Sebastiana. “Nothing like the dear black domino, under which you can be impertinent as you like, with scarce a possibility of discovery. There will be fifty such dresses as ours in the room.”
“No doubt of it,” replied her brother-in-law, thoughtfully. And his piercing green-grey eye scanned the dominoes that shrouded the graceful figures of his wife and her sister. They were of plain black satin; but the art of the maker had contrived to impart elegance to the costume which, of all others, generally possesses it the least. The two dresses were exactly alike, except that Catalina’s was tied at the wrists with lilac ribbons, whilst nothing broke the uniform blackness of her sister’s garb. Black gloves and masks, and two bouquets of choice exotics, the masterpieces of the celebrated bouquetière of the Madeleine boulevard, completed the ladies’ equipment.
“I am sorry,” said Fatello, “to deny myself the pleasure of accompanying you to the Countess’s fête, but I am behindhand with my correspondence, and have received important letters, which I must answer by the morning’s post. My night, a part of it at least, will be passed at the desk instead of in the ball-room.”
There was nothing in this announcement to excite surprise; the tone and manner in which it was made were perfectly natural; but, nevertheless, Sebastiana Gonfalon darted a keen quick glance at her brother-in-law, as though seeking in his words a double meaning or disguised purpose. Madame Fatello showed neither surprise nor disappointment, but, approaching a table, she took from a costlybasket of gold filagree, overflowing with cards and invitations, an envelope containing three tickets for the masquerade. Selecting two of them, she threw the third into the basket, and again looked at her watch. At that moment the door opened, and her carriage was announced.
“Come, Sebastiana,” said Madame Fatello, impatiently. “Good-night, M. Fatello.” And, with a slight bow to her husband, she passed into the anteroom.
“Good-night, Sigismund,” said Sebastiana. “Change your mind and follow us.”
“Impossible,” said Fatello, with the same smiling countenance as before.
Sebastiana followed her sister. Fatello lingered a few moments in the drawing-room, and then returned to his study. As he entered it, he heard the roll of the carriage-wheels driving out of the court.
The masquerade given by the Countess de M—— was that kind of magnificent and extraordinary entertainment which formstheevent of the year in which it occurs; which is long held up as a pattern to gala-givers, and as marking a red-letter epoch in the annals of fashion and pleasure. Nothing was spared to make it in all respects perfect. An entire floor of the Countess’s vast mansion had been cleared, for the occasion, of all superfluous furniture; three splendid saloons were appropriated to dancing:two others, equally spacious, to refreshments. In these, the appetites of the guests had been richly catered for. One was the coffee-house, the other therestaurant. In the former, on a multitude of small marble tables, a regiment of attentive waiters served ices and sherbets, wine and chocolate, coffee and liqueurs. In the latter, tables were laid for supper, and upon each of them lay a printed bill of fare, where the hungry made their selection from a list of the most delicate dishes, whose appearance followed the order with a celerity that would have done honour to the best-appointed hotel in Paris. A long, wide gallery, and some smaller rooms, were used as a promenade, where the company freely circulated. In a music-hall, a strong party of professional singers kept up an unceasing concert for the entertainment of all comers; and in a chamber fitted up as a tent, an Italian juggler, with peaked beard, and in antique costume of black velvet, performed tricks of extraordinary novelty and ingenuity. Every part and corner of this magnificent suite of apartments was lighteda giorno, draped with coloured silks and muslins, and enlivened by a profusion of tall mirrors, multiplying tenfold the fantastical figures of the maskers and the flame of the countlessbougies. Many hundreds of porcelain vases, containing the choicest plants forced prematurely into flower, and all remarkable for brilliancy of colour or fragrance of perfume, lined thebroad corridors and the recesses of the windows, which latter were further filled by admirably executed transparencies, forming a series of views from the Italian lakes. The whole resembled a scene from fairyland, or an enchanted palace, raised by the wand of some benevolent gnome for the delectation of the sons and daughters of mortality. If the entertainment was of unparalleled magnificence, the appearance of the guests did it no discredit. Tasteful and ingeniously devised costumes crowded the apartments; history and romance had been ransacked for characters; the most costly materials had been lavishly employed in the composition of dresses for that one night’s diversion. All was glitter of jewels, wave of plumes, and rustle of rich brocades. In diamonds alone an emperor’s ransom was displayed; and more than one fair masker bore upon her neck and arms, and graceful head, the annual revenue of half-a-dozen German princes.
As Sebastiana had predicted, there was a considerable sprinkling of dominoes amongst the motley throng; and as usual, of those who had selected that dress, more favourable to concealment and intrigue than to display of personal graces or costly ornaments, at least one-half had preferred black to any other colour. These latter seemed the subject of the particular attention of one of their number, who, soon after twelve o’clock, made his appearancein the ball-room. Impatience to share in the much-talked-of fête had rendered the invited punctual; by that hour nearly all had arrived, and in such numbers that the rooms, though so large and numerous, were crowded at least as much as was convenient and consistent with circulation. Hence the black domino was frequently impeded in the rapid movements he commenced whenever one of his own species—that is to say, a domino of the same colour—caught his eye, movements which had for their object to meet or overtake the person of garb similar to his own. On such occasions, so great was his impatience, that in a public ball-room he would surely have incurred a quarrel by the somewhat too vigorous use he made of his elbows. But Madame de M——’s well-bred guests merely shrugged their shoulders, and wondered who themanantcould be who thus imported into their élite society the unceremonious usages of an opera-house masquerade. The black domino heeded not their mute wonderment, nor cared for the unfavourable impression he might leave upon the ribs and the minds of those he jostled. He was evidently looking for somebody, and however discouraging the task of seeking one particular black domino in a crowded masquerade, where there were two or three score of them, he persevered, in spite of repeated disappointments. At last it seemed as if success had rewarded his constancy. With the suddennessand certainty of a well-broken pointer, he came to a dead stop at sight of a black satin domino leaning on the arm of an elegant Hungarian hussar. To the steps of this couple he thenceforward attached himself. Whithersoever they went he followed, keeping at sufficient distance to prevent their noticing his pursuit; regulating his pace by theirs, but occasionally accelerating it so as to pass them, and lingering for a second when close at their side, as if trying to distinguish the tones of their voices, or to catch a few words of their discourse. Whilst thus engaged, he did not observe that he had himself become an object of attention to a third black domino, who, previously to him, had been dogging, but at greater distance, and with still more precaution than he observed, the steps of the hussar and his companion. The curiosity and caution of domino No. 3 appeared to receive fresh stimulus from the apparition of a rival observer, over whose movements he kept careful watch, but from afar, and concealed as much as possible amongst the crowd, somewhat after the fashion in which the Red Indian observes, from his shelter amidst the trees of the forest, the movements of the hunter, who himself watches from an ambush the course of a herd of deer.
The only portion of the apartments thrown open to the maskers that was not rendered light as day by a profusion of wax candles, was a vast conservatory,the entrance to which was through two large French windows, opening out of one of the dancing-rooms. Paved with a mosaic of divers coloured marbles and fanciful device, it contained a choice collection of exotics and evergreens, of such remarkable size and beauty that the topmost leaves of many of them rustled against the elevated glass roof. These trees and shrubs were so arranged as to form a sort of miniature labyrinth, upon whose paths a mild light was thrown by lamps of coloured glass suspended to the branches. This illumination, although ample to guide the steps of the promenaders between the verdant and flowering hedges, seemed but a twilight, from its contrast with the broad glare of the adjoining apartments. The change from a strong to a subdued light had been purposely contrived by the judicious arrangers of the fête, as a relief for eyes wearied by the brilliancy of the ball-room. As yet, however, few persons seemed eager for the transition, and the conservatory was little resorted to except at the close of a dance, when its comparatively fresh atmosphere was gladly sought.
Quadrilles had just commenced in all the dancing-rooms, when the Hungarian hussar and his domino, making their way slowly and with some difficulty in rear of the dancers, took refuge in the conservatory from the din of music and pressure of the crowd. They were evidently so absorbed in theirconversation, so much alone in the midst of the multitude, that their eternal pursuer ventured unusually near to them, and was close at their heels when they passed through the glass door. Then, instead of continuing to follow them, he struck into another path, which ran nearly parallel to the one they took. On reaching a circle of beautiful arbutus, whose white bells and bright strawberries gleamed like pearls and blood-drops in the light of the purple lamps that hung amongst them, the hussar and his companion paused beside a porphyry basin, supported by a sculptured pedestal of the same material. For a few moments they stood silent, gazing at the gold-fish that swam their monotonous circle in the basin; and at the little fountain that spouted up in its centre. Then, leaning upon the edge of the vase, they resumed their conversation in tones less guarded than before, for here they might almost consider themselves alone—the few groups and couples sauntering in the conservatory being too much engrossed in their own discourse to heed that of others. The Hungarian removed his mask, still, however, holding it ready to apply to his face in case of intrusion; whilst the domino contented herself with raising the silken beard of hers, to allow the musical tones proceeding from a pair of rosy and youthful lips to fall more clearly upon her companion’s ear. Thus they continued a conversation apparently of deep interestto both, and which they suspended only when some passing party of masks lingered for an instant beside the fountain, until the end of the quadrille brought a throng of dancers into the conservatory. Then they left the place, and sauntered back into the ball-room.
Meanwhile the third domino watched the conservatory doors with a lynx-eyed vigilance worthy a pupil of the celebrated Vidocq. Although the loose black dress might have covered either a short man or a woman of the middle stature, the delicacy of the gloved fingers, and of the tiny foot that peeped from below its border, left little doubt as to the sex of its wearer. From a convenient position on the steps leading up to an orchestra, the fringe of her mask confined by her hand, so as to prohibit even a glimpse of her ivory chin, she subjected to a rigid scrutiny all who issued from the conservatory. Suddenly, from the door nearest to her, the hussar and his companion made their appearance, and, as they passed, she shrouded herself behind the portly figure and sumptuous embroideries of a Venetian doge. Then she resumed her watch, and a minute had not elapsed when she saw the tall black domino, whom she had observed during the evening, re-enter the dancing-room and make his way as fast as the crowd would allow him to the nearest door of exit, with a hurried and irregular step, hardly to be explained otherwise than by sudden illness orviolent emotion. She followed him to the head of the staircase, down which he rushed, disappearing at its foot through the crowd of lackeys in the hall. Having seen this, she re-entered the ball-room, sought out the hussar and his companion, and soon afterwards was whirling with the former in the giddy circles of a waltz.
Some hours later, as the Hungarian retired from the ball, almost borne along in the dense stream of masks that now flowed through the rooms, he felt a momentary pressure of his hand. A paper remained in its palm, upon which his fingers mechanically closed. Amidst the ever-moving throng it was impossible to detect the person from whom he had received it. By this time a large portion of the company, oppressed by the heat, had unmasked, but he knew none of the faces he saw around him, whilst of those who had preserved their vizards he could fix on none as object of suspicion. So soon as he could extricate himself from the crowd, he unfolded the paper. It contained the following mysterious words, hastily scrawled with a pencil:—