"I understand very well, signor captain," she said with increasing coldness, "that you ask for no other reward but my esteem; but I repeat that I have proved it to you on this very occasion, and I think that your pride should be satisfied."
"Yes, signora, my pride; but it is not a question of my pride alone. Nor are you sufficiently well acquainted with it to measure its extent and to know whether it is not superior to any pecuniary sacrifice that you could make in my favor. I do not want your will, I want no part of your fortune, now or ever, do you understand?"
And he knelt at her feet and took her hand with savage vehemence.
Agatha rose, and yielding to an indignant, perhaps injudicious impulse, she took the will from the console.
"Since that is so," she said, trying to tear it, "it is as well that this fortune should be neither mine nor yours, for the recovery of this paper is the least important service you have rendered me, captain; and had it not been connected with another of much greater importance, I should never have asked you to do it. Let me destroy this will, and then you can ask me for a legitimate share of my affection, without my blushing to listen to you."
But the parchment resisted the efforts of her weak hands, and the Piccinino had time to take it from her and place it under a large piece of Roman mosaic, which lay on the console, and which she would have had even more difficulty in lifting.
"Let us put this aside," he said, with a smile, "and think no more about it. Let us suppose even that it never existed; we are well aware that it cannot be a bond between us, and that you owe me nothing in exchange for your fortune. I know that you are already rich enough to do without these millions; I know too that, if you were penniless, you would not give your friendship as the reward of a mere pecuniary service which you expected to pay for with money. I admire your pride, signora; I appreciate it, and I am proud to appreciate it. Ah! now that we have put that prosaic thought out of our hearts, I feel much happier, for I hope! I feel much bolder, too, for the friendship of such a woman as you seems to me so desirable that I would risk everything to obtain it."
"Do not speak of friendship," said Agatha, pushing him away, for he was beginning to handle her long tresses and to wind them about his arm as if to chain himself to her; "speak of the gratitude I owe you; it is very great, I shall never deny it, and I will prove it to you when occasion offers, against your will if I must. The service you have rendered me entitles you to services from me, and some day we shall be quits! But friendship implies mutual sympathy, and, in order to obtain mine, you must earn it and deserve it."
"What must I do?" cried the Piccinino, vehemently. "Speak! oh! I implore you, tell me what I must do to win your love!"
"Respect me in the depths of your heart," she replied, "and do not approach me with those bold eyes and that self-satisfied smile, which are an insult to me."
Seeing her cold and lofty bearing, the Piccinino was angry; but he knew that anger is an unwise counsellor. He desired to please her, and he controlled his temper.
"You do not understand me," he said, leading her back to her chair and sitting down beside her. "Oh! no, you fail utterly to understand a heart like mine! You are too much the woman of the world, too politic, and I am too ingenuous, too rough, too uncivilized! You are afraid of wild outbreaks on my part, because you see that I love you madly; but you are not afraid of causing me pain, because you have no conception of the pain your indifference may cause me. You think that a mountaineer of Ætna, a brigand and adventurer, can know only sensual transports; and when I ask you for your heart, you think that you have to defend your person. If I were a duke or marquis, you would listen to me without alarm, you would console me for my grief; and, pointing out to me that your love was out of the question, you would offer me your friendship. And I should be gentle, patient, prostrate at your feet in melancholy and affectionate gratitude. It is because I am of the common people, a peasant, that you deny me even your sympathy! Your pride takes fright because you think that I demand something as a right acquired by my services, and you continue to throw my services at my head as if I relied upon them as entitling me to a recompense from you, as if I remembered them when I am looking at you and talking with you! Alas! I do not know how to express myself; I simply say what I think, without torturing my mind to find a way to convince you of it without saying it. I know nothing of the art of your flatterers; I am no more a courtier of beauty than of power, and the curse that rests upon my life makes it impossible for me to play the attendant cavalier like the Marquis della Serra. I have but an hour at night to come, at the risk of my life, to tell you that I am your slave, and you answer that you do not choose to be my sovereign, but my debtor, my customer, who will pay me handsomely! Fie, fie, signora! you place an ice-cold hand upon a burning heart!"
"If you have in your mind nothing more than friendship," said Agatha, "if you really aspire to be one of my friends simply, I will promise you that that may come about——"
"Let me speak!" rejoined the Piccinino, with renewed animation, his face lighting up with the beauty which was his when he was really moved. "At first I dared not ask you for anything more than your friendship, and it was your childish fright that forced the word love from my lips. Very good! what more can a man say to a woman to restore her courage? I love you, therefore you should not tremble when I take your hand. I respect you, as you see, for we are alone, and I am in perfect control of my passions; but I cannot control my thoughts and the outbursts of my love. I have not my whole life in which to prove it to you. I have but this instant in which to tell you of it, so listen. If I could pass six hours of every day at your feet, like the marquis, I might perhaps be satisfied with the feeling that you have for him; but, as I have only this hour which is passing before me like a vision, I must have your love, or else a despair which I dare not imagine. So let me speak of love; listen to me and do not be afraid. If you say no, it shall be no, but if you would listen to me without thinking of protecting yourself, if you would deign to understand me once for all, if you would forget the world you live in, and the pride which is out of place here, and which has no existence in the sphere in which I live, you would be touched because you would be convinced. Oh! yes. If you were a simple soul, and if you did not put prejudices in the place of the pure inspirations of nature and of truth, you would feel that there is one heart more youthful and more ardent than all those you have spurned, the heart of a lion or tiger with men, but a man's heart with women, a child's heart with you! You would pity me at least. You would see my life as it is: constantly tormented and threatened, a never-ending nightmare! And solitude! Ah! it is solitude of the heart above all else which is killing me, because my heart is even harder to please than my senses. You know how I bore myself with Mila this morning, do you not? She is beautiful, surely, and neither in character nor in mind is she one of the common herd. If I had chosen to love her, and if I had felt for a single moment that I did love her, she would have loved me, she would have been mine all her life. But with her I thought only of you. You are the one whom I love, and you are the only woman I have ever loved, although I have been the lover of many women! Love me then, though it be but for a moment, just long enough to tell me so, or else, when I return to-night by a certain spot called theDestatore'sCross, I shall go mad! I shall dig into the earth with my nails, to insult and cast to the winds the ashes of the man who gave me life."
At these last words Agatha lost all her strength; she turned pale; a shudder ran through her every limb, and she threw herself back in her chair as if a blood-stained spectre had passed before her eyes.
"Oh! hush, hush!" she cried; "you do not know the pain you cause me!"
The Piccinino could not understand the cause of this sudden and intense emotion; he misunderstood it utterly. He had spoken with a vehemence of voice and expression which would have persuaded any other woman than the princess. He had fascinated her with his gleaming eyes; he had intoxicated her with his breath, at all events he thought so. He had been so often justified in thinking so, even when he had not felt a tithe of the desire this woman inspired in him! He believed that she was vanquished, and, putting his arms about her, seeking her lips, he felt sure that her passions, taken by surprise, would do the rest. But Agatha eluded his caresses with unexpected vigor, and as she rushed toward a bell-cord, Michel darted between her and the Piccinino, with blazing eyes and with a dagger in his hand.
The Piccinino was so taken aback by this unexpected apparition that he stood perfectly still, without a thought of attacking or of defending himself. So that Michel, as he was about to strike him, held his hand, bewildered by his own precipitation; but, with a movement so swift and adroit that it was invisible, the Piccinino's hand was armed when Michel withdrew his.
But the brigand, after a single furious gleam had shot from his eyes, recovered his cold and disdainful attitude.
"Excellent," he said; "I understand everything now, and rather than bring about so absurd a scene, Signora Palmarosa should have carried her confidence so far as to say to me: 'Leave me, I cannot listen to you; I have a lover hidden behind my bed.' I would have retired discreetly, whereas now I must needs administer a lesson to Master Lavoratori, to punish him for having seen me play an absurd rôle. So much the worse for you, signora; the lesson will be a bloody one!"
300AGATHA PROTECTS MICHELANGELO.He leaped at Michel with the agility of a wild animal. But, quick and nimble as his movement was, the miraculous power of love made Agatha even quicker than he.
AGATHA PROTECTS MICHELANGELO.He leaped at Michel with the agility of a wild animal. But, quick and nimble as his movement was, the miraculous power of love made Agatha even quicker than he.
AGATHA PROTECTS MICHELANGELO.
He leaped at Michel with the agility of a wild animal. But, quick and nimble as his movement was, the miraculous power of love made Agatha even quicker than he.
He leaped at Michel with the agility of a wild animal. But, quick and nimble as his movement was, the miraculous power of love made Agatha even quicker than he. She rushed to intercept the blow, and would have received it in her breast had not the Piccinino thrust the dagger into his sleeve so swiftly that it seemed as if his hand had always been empty.
"What are you doing, signora?" he said. "I do not propose to murder your lover but to fight with him. You do not wish it? Very good! You protect him with your breast! I will not insult such a rampart, but I will find him at another time—mark my words!"
"Stay!" cried Agatha, seizing his arm as he walked, toward the door. "You will renounce this insane purpose of revenge and give your hand to this alleged lover of mine. He will gladly do the same, for which of you two desires to kill or curse his brother?"
"My brother?" said Michel, in utter bewilderment, dropping his dagger.
"He, my brother?" said the Piccinino, his weapon still within his grasp. "This extemporized relationship is most improbable, signora. I have always heard that Pier-Angelo's wife was very ugly, and I doubt if my father ever played tricks upon husbands who had no reason to be jealous. Your expedient is not at all ingenious! Farewell for the present, Michelangelo Lavoratori!"
"I tell you that he is your brother!" repeated the princess, earnestly; "your father's son and not Pier-Angelo's; the son of a woman whom you cannot insult by your contempt, and who could not have listened to you without committing a crime and an act of madness. Do you not understand me?"
"No, signora," said the Piccinino, with a shrug; "I cannot understand the fables that come to your mind at this moment to save your lover's life. If this poor boy is my father's son, so much the worse for him; for he has many other brothers beside myself, who do not amount to much, and whom I do not hesitate to strike over the head with the butt of my pistol when they fail in the obedience and respect they owe me. So, too, this new member of my family—the youngest of all, I am inclined to think—will be punished by my hand as he deserves; not in your presence, for I am not fond of seeing women in convulsions. But this pretty darling will not always be hidden in your bosom, signora, and I know where I shall find him at need!"
"Have done with insulting me," rejoined Agatha, in a firm tone; "you cannot wound me, and, unless you are a coward, you should not speak thus to your father's wife."
"My father's wife!" exclaimed the bandit, beginning to listen and to desire to hear. "My father was never married, signora! Do not make sport of me."
"Your father was married to me, Carmelo, and, if you doubt it, you will find the authentic evidence in the archives of the convent of Mal Passo. Go and ask Fra Angelo. This young man's name is not Lavoratori; his name is Castro-Reale. He is the son—the only legitimate son—of Prince Cæsar de Castro-Reale."
"Then you are my mother?" cried Michel, falling on his knees and embracing Agatha, with a sensation of terror, remorse and adoration all in one.
"You know it," she said, pressing his face against her heaving breast. "Now, Carmelo, come and kill him in my arms; we will die together! But, after seeking to commit incest, you will commit fratricide!"
The Piccinino, torn by a thousand conflicting sensations, folded his arms across his breast, and, leaning against the wall, gazed in silence at his brother and stepmother, as if he were still inclined to doubt the truth. Michel rose, walked toward him, and held out his hand.
"Your ignorance was the cause of your crime," he said, "and I must needs forgive you, for I too loved her not knowing that I was fortunate enough to be her son. Oh! do not cast a shadow on my joy by your resentment! Be my brother, as I long to be yours! In the name of God, who orders us to love each other, put your hand in mine and come to my mother's feet, so that she may forgive and bless us both."
At these words, uttered with the effusive warmth of a noble and sincere heart, the Piccinino came very near being moved. His bosom heaved as if he were about to burst into tears; but pride was stronger than the voice of nature, and he blushed at the emotion which had threatened to overcome him.
"Away from me," he said to Michel. "I do not know you; I have no sympathy with all this mawkish family sentimentality. I loved my mother, too, but all my affection died with her. I never had any feeling for my father,—whom I hardly knew and who cared very little for me,—unless it may be that I was a little vain of being the only acknowledged son of a prince and a hero. I thought that my mother was the only woman he ever loved, but I learn now that he deceived my mother; that he was another woman's husband; and I cannot be overjoyed by that discovery. You are a legitimate son, and I am only a bastard. I have been accustomed to believe that I was the only one who was really entitled, if I chose, to adorn myself with the name which you will bear in the world, and which no one will dispute your right to bear. And you expect me to love you, who are of patrician blood on both sides, by your father and by your mother? you who are rich, and will soon be powerful in the land where I am a wanderer and an outlaw? You who, whether you are a true or false Sicilian, will be flattered and handled gently by the Court of Naples, and who, perhaps, will not consider that you can afford to refuse favors and offices forever? You who will, perhaps, command hostile armies and lay waste the homes of your countrymen? You who, as general, minister or magistrate, may order my head cut off and a sentence of degradation nailed to the scaffold on which that head is fastened, to serve as an example and a menace to our other brothers of the mountain? You expect me to love you? On the contrary, I hate you and curse you!
"And this woman," continued the Piccinino, with intense bitterness,—"this false, cold-blooded woman, who fooled me to the end with infernal cunning,—you expect me to prostrate myself before her, and ask a blessing from her hand which, for aught I know, is stained with my father's blood! for now I understand more than she intended, I fancy. I will never believe that she married with a good grace the ruined, outlawed, hounded brigand, depraved by misfortune, who had then no other name than theDestatore! He must have abducted her and outraged her.—Ah! yes, now I remember! There is a tale of that sort to which Fra Angelo refers vaguely at times. A child, surprised by the brigands when out walking with her governess, carried off with the governess to the chief's lair, and dismissed two hours later, outraged and half dead! Ah! father, you were a villain as well as a hero! I know it; and I am a better man than you, for I detest such deeds of violence, and Fra Angelo's tale has preserved me forever from seeking enjoyment by such means. So it was you, Agatha, who were Castro-Reale's victim! I understand now why you consented to marry him secretly at the convent of Mal Passo; for that marriage is a secret—probably the only secret of that sort that never transpired! You have been very adroit, but the rest of your story is clear to me. I know now why your parents kept you secluded for a year, so carefully that you were supposed to be dead or to have turned nun. I know now why my father was murdered, and I would not swear that you were innocent of his death!"
"Wretch!" cried the princess, indignantly; "to dare to suspect me of the murder of the man I had accepted for my husband!"
"If it was not you, then it was your father or someone of your kindred!" retorted the Piccinino, in French, with a bitter laugh. "My father did not kill himself," he continued in the Sicilian language, and with a wild expression. "He was capable of a crime, but not of a dastardly act, and the pistol that was found in his hand at theDestatore'scross never belonged to him. He was not reduced, by the partial defection of his followers, to the necessity of committing suicide in order to escape from his enemies, and the piety which Fra Angelo tried to inspire in his heart had not yet disturbed his mind to the point where he thought it his duty to punish himself for his sins. He was murdered, and to have been surprised so easily—so near the town—he must have been lured into a trap. Abbé Ninfo had something to do with that bloody drama. I shall find out, for I have him in my clutches; and, although I am not cruel, I will torture him with my own hands until he confesses! For it is my mission to avenge my father's death, as it is yours, Michel, to make common cause with those who ordered it."
"Great God!" said Agatha, paying no attention to the Piccinino's accusations against herself, "it seems that each day must bring with it the discovery of some new deed of rage and vengeance in my family! O blood of the Atrides, may the Furies never rouse you to life in my son's veins! Ah! Michel, what duties your birth imposes on you! By what great virtues must you redeem so many crimes committed both before and since your birth! Carmelo, you think that your brother will turn against his country and against you some day! If it could be so, I would ask you to kill him to-day, while he is pure and honorable; for I know too well, alas! what becomes of the men who renounce love of country and the respect due to the vanquished!"
"Kill him at once?" said the Piccinino; "I am strongly tempted to take that metaphor literally; it would take but a moment, for this Sicilian of recent date knows no more about handling a knife than I about handling a brush. But I didn't do it yesterday, when the thought came to my mind by our father's grave, and I will wait until my present anger has subsided; for one should kill only in cold blood and in accordance with the dictates of logic and conscience.—Ah! Michel de Castro-Reale, I did not know you yesterday, although Abbé Ninfo had already pointed you out to my vengeance. I was jealous of you because I believed you to be the lover of this woman who says to-day that she is your mother; but I had a presentiment that she did not deserve the love which was beginning to set my blood on fire for her, and when I saw how bravely you faced me, I said to myself: 'Why kill a brave man for the sake of a woman who may be a coward?'"
"Hush, Carmelo!" cried Michel, picking up his dagger; "whether I know how to handle a knife or not, if you add another word to your insults to my mother, I will have your life or you shall have mine."
"Hush, yourself, boy!" said the Piccinino, presenting his half-naked breast to Michel with an air of contempt; "the virtue of legitimate society makes men cowards, and you are a coward too, for you have been reared on the ideas of that society; you would not dare to scratch my lion's skin, because in my person you respect your brother. But I have no such prejudices, and I will prove it to you some day when I am calmer. To-day I am angry, I admit, and I will tell you why: it is because I have been deceived, and I did not believe that any human being was capable of playing on my credulity; it is because I put faith in this woman's words when she said to me last night, in yonder flower-garden where I can hear the fountains plashing at this moment, under the eyes of the moon, which seemed less pure and tranquil than her face: 'What can there be in common between that child and myself?' What can there be in common? and you her son! and you knew it, and you deceived me too!"
"No, I did not know it, and as for my mother——"
"You and your mother are two cold-blooded serpents, two venomous Palmarosas! Ah! I hate that family which has persecuted me and my family so cruelly, and some day I will make a bloody example, even of those members of it who claim to be good patriots and nobles who sympathize with the people. I hate all nobles for my part! and you whose mouths blow hot and cold in turn may well tremble before my frank declaration! I have hated the nobles for the last few moments, since I have found that I am not noble, because I have a legitimate brother and am only a bastard. I hate the name of Castro-Reale, since I can no longer bear it. I am envious, revengeful, and ambitious as well! my intelligence and my adroitness were a stronger justification of that claim on my part than the art of painting on the part of the nursling of the Muses and of Pier-Angelo! I should have made a greater name than he if our conditions had remained unchanged. And the thing that makes my vanity more endurable, Prince Michel, is that I proclaim it proudly, while you conceal it shamefacedly, on the pretext of modesty. In short, I am the child of uncivilized nature and of unshackled liberty, while you are the slave of custom and of fear. I practise cunning after the manner of wolves, and my cunning leads me to my goal. You play with falsehood, after the manner of men, and you will always miss your goal, without having had the merit of sincerity. Our lives are before us. If yours annoys me overmuch, I shall rid myself of you as of any other obstacle, do you understand? Woe to you if you irritate me! Farewell; do not try to see me again; this is my brotherly greeting!
"And as for you, Princess of Castro-Reale," he said, bowing ironically to Agatha, "who might well have refrained from making me crawl at your feet, whose share in the catastrophe by theDestatore'sCross is now very clear in my mind, who did not deem me worthy to be informed of the mischance of your youth, but preferred to pose before my eyes as a spotless virgin, caring not whether you caused me to pine away in frenzied anticipation of your priceless favors—I wish that you may be happy and forget what has taken place between us; but I shall remember it, and I warn you, signora, that you gave a ball over a volcano, in reality as well as figuratively."
As he spoke, the Piccinino threw his cloak over his head and shoulders, walked into the boudoir, and not deigning to wait for the door to be opened, leaped through one of the large panes of glass into the flower-garden. Then he returned to the door leading into the passage, which he had not chosen to pass through, and, after the manner of the authors of the Sicilian Vespers, cut with his dagger a cross over the crest of the Palmarosas, which was carved on that door. A few moments later he was on the mountain, flying like an arrow.
"O mother!" cried Michel, passionately embracing the horrified Agatha, "you have made an implacable enemy in order to preserve me from enemies who, if not imaginary, are powerless! Dear, adored mother, I will never leave you again, by day or night. I will sleep across your door, and if your son's love is helpless to preserve you, it will be because Providence abandons mankind altogether!"
"My child," said Agatha, pressing him to her heart, "have no fear. I am sorely distressed by all that that man has brought back to my mind, but not alarmed by his unreasonable anger. The secret of your birth could not safely have been revealed to him any sooner, for you see the effect that revelation produced upon him. But the time has come when I have nothing to fear, so far as you are concerned, save his personal resentment, and that we will find a way to disarm. The vengeance of the Palmarosas will die out with Cardinal Hieronimo's last breath, which it may be that he is breathing at this very moment. If it was an error to turn that vengeance aside by the help of Carmelo, that error is chargeable to Fra Angelo, who thinks that he knows mankind because he has always lived with men outside the pale of society, brigands and monks. But I trust still to his marvellous instinct. This man, who has just shown himself to us in such an evil light, and whom I cannot look upon without the most intense suffering, because he reminds me of the author of all my misfortunes, is not unworthy perhaps of the generous impulse which led you to call him brother. He is a tiger in his wrath, a fox in his reflections; but between his hours of rage and his hours of treachery, there may be intervals of prostration when human feelings resume their sway and extort from him tears of regret and longing; we shall be able to reform him, I trust! Kindness and loyal dealing should find the weak spot in his armor. At the moment that he cursed you, I saw that he hesitated, forced back his tears. His father—your father, Michel!—had a profound and intense susceptibility even amid his wild and wicked habits; I saw him sob at my feet after he had almost strangled me to stifle my shrieks. Later I saw him at the altar, ashamed and penitent, when he married me; and despite the abhorrence and terror with which he always inspired me, I was sorry myself, when he died, that I had not forgiven him. I trembled at the thought of him, but I never dared to curse his memory; and since I have had you with me once more, O my beloved son! I have tried to rehabilitate him in my own eyes, so that I might not have to condemn him before you. Do not blush, therefore, to bear the name of a man, whose life was fatal to none but me, and who did great things for his country. But retain for him who brought you up, and whose son you have believed yourself to be until this day, the same love, the same respect which you felt for him this morning, noble-hearted boy, when you handed him Mila's marriage portion and told him that you would remain a workman in his service all your life, rather than abandon him!"
"O Pier-Angelo, father!" cried Michel, with a vehemence which caused his heart to overflow in sobs, "nothing has changed between us, and on the day when my entrails no longer quiver for you with filial affection, I think that I shall have ceased to live!"
Agatha was completely shattered by so much agitation and fatigue. Her health was delicate although her spirit was strong, and when Michel saw how pale she was, and that her voice had become almost inaudible, he was terrified. He began to be conscious of the loving and poignant anxiety born of a sentiment that was altogether new to him. He had hardly known the love that a child feels for its mother. Pier-Angelo's wife had been kind to him, to be sure, but he had lost her when he was very young, and she had left on his memory the impression of a robust and domineering virago, irreproachable in her conduct, but somewhat violent, and, although devoted to her little ones, inclined to talk loud and strike hard. What a contrast to that exquisite disposition, that soft beauty, that poetic creature who was called Agatha, and whom Michel could admire as the ideal of an artist while adoring her as a mother!
He begged her to lie down and to try to obtain an hour's rest.
"I will stay with you," he said; "I will sit by your pillow, I shall be perfectly happy, just looking at you, and you will find me here when you open your eyes."
"But this will be the third night that you will have passed almost without sleep," she said. "Ah! how it pains me on your account to think of the life we have been leading for several days past!"
"Do not worry about me, darling mother," replied the young man, covering her hands with kisses. "I have slept a good deal in the morning these three days; and now I am so happy, notwithstanding what we have just gone through, that it seems to me that I shall never sleep again. I tried to sleep in order to see you again in my dreams: now that the dream has become reality, I should be afraid of losing it if I slept. But you must rest, mother.—Ah! how sweet that name mother is!"
"I am no more inclined to sleep than you are," she said; "I would like not to leave you for an instant. And as the thought of the Piccinino still makes me tremble for your life, you shall remain with me until daylight, whatever the consequences. I will lie down on the bed, as you insist upon it; sit in this easy chair, with your hand in mine, and if I haven't the strength to talk to you, I can at all events listen to you; we have so many things to say to each other! I want to know about your life from the first day that you can remember down to this moment."
They passed in this way two hours, which seemed to them like two minutes; Michel told her the whole story of his life, and did not conceal even his recent emotions. The passionate attachment which he had felt for his mother before he knew her no longer raised in his mind any question too delicate to be translated by words befitting the sanctity of their new relations. The words he had used to himself had assumed a new meaning, and whatever impropriety there might have been in them had vanished like the incoherent words one utters in fever, which leave no trace when health and reason have returned.
Moreover, except for a few outbursts of vanity, Michel had had no thoughts for which he need blush now upon searching his conscience. He had believed that she loved him, and therein he was hardly in error! He had been assailed by an ardent passion, and he felt that he loved Agatha, now that she had become his mother, with no less warmth, gratitude, even jealousy, than an hour earlier. He could understand now why he had never seen her without feeling that his heart went out to her with irresistible force, without an all-powerful attraction, a secret thrill of pride which had its echo in himself. He remembered that, when he first saw her, it seemed to him that her face had always been familiar to him; and when he asked her to explain that miracle, she replied: "Look in the mirror, and you will see that my features placed your own image before you; this resemblance, which Pier-Angelo constantly observed with delight, and which filled my heart with pride, made me tremble for you. Luckily nobody has noticed it, unless possibly the cardinal, who ordered his bearers to stop so that he could look at you, on the day that you arrived in the neighborhood, and, as if guided by an invisible hand, paused at the gate of your ancestor's palace. My uncle was formerly the most suspicious and most keen-eyed of persecutors and despots. Certainly, if he had seen you before he was stricken with paralysis, he would have recognized you and have had you cast into prison, then exiled—perhaps assassinated!—without putting a single question to you. Enfeebled as he was ten days ago, he fastened upon you a glance which aroused the suspicions of Abbé Ninfo, and his memory revived so far as to lead him to inquire your age. Who knows what fatal light might have found its way into his brain, if Providence had not inspired you to answer that you were twenty-one years old instead of eighteen!"
"I am eighteen," said Michel, "and you, mother? You seem to me as young as I am."
"I am thirty-two," replied Agatha; "didn't you know?"
"No! if I had been told that you were my sister, I should have believed it when I saw you. Oh! what good fortune that you are still so young and so lovely! You will live as long as I do, won't you? I shall not have the misfortune to lose you! Lose you!—Ah! now that my life is bound to yours, the thought of death frightens me, I would like to die neither before nor after you. But is this the first time that we have ever been together? I am searching the vague memories of my infancy in the hope of finding some trace of you."
"My poor child," said the princess, "I never saw you before the day when, as I looked at you through a window of the gallery where you were sleeping, I could not restrain a cry of love and of agonizing joy, which woke you. Three months ago I did not even know of your existence. I believed that you died on the day you were born. Otherwise, do you suppose that I would not have come to Rome, in some disguise or other, to take you in my arms and rescue you from the dangers of a solitary life? On the day that Pier-Angelo told me that he had rescued you from the hands of a villainous midwife, who was about to put you in a hospital, by order of my parents, that he had fled with you to a foreign country, and had brought you up as his son, I insisted upon starting for Rome. I would have done it too, but for the prudence of Fra Angelo, who pointed out to me that your life would be in danger as long as the cardinal lived, and that it was better to await his death than to expose us all to suspicions and investigations. Ah! my son, how horribly I suffered while I lived alone with the ghastly memories of my youth! Branded from my girlhood, maltreated, secluded and persecuted by my family, because I would not disclose the name of the man whom I had consented to marry as soon as the first symptoms of pregnancy appeared; parted from my child, and cursed for the tears which his alleged death caused me to shed; threatened with the horror of seeing him killed before my eyes, when I yielded to the hope that they had deceived me—the best years of my life passed amid tears of despair and shudders of horror.
"I gave birth to you in this room, Michel on this very spot. It was then a sort of garret, long unused, which had been transformed into a prison, in order to conceal the shame of my condition. Nobody knew what had happened to me! I could hardly have described it, I had hardly understood it, I was so young and my imagination was so pure. I foresaw that the truth would bring fresh disasters upon the child I was carrying within me, and on his father. My governess had died on the day after our catastrophe, without saying a word, whether because she could not or did not choose to. No one could extort my secret from me, even during the pains of childbirth; and when my father and my uncle, standing by my bed, as pitiless as inquisitors, threatened me with death if I did not confess what they called my sin, I replied simply that I was innocent before God, and that it was for Him alone to punish or save the culprit. Whether or not they ever discovered that I was the wife of Castro-Reale, I could never find out; his name was never mentioned to me, I was never questioned concerning him. Nor do I know whether they procured his assassination, or whether Abbé Ninfo assisted them to surprise him; but unfortunately I do not think them incapable of it. I know only this, that at the time of his death, when I had barely recovered from my confinement, they tried to compel me to marry. Hitherto they had held up before me as an everlasting punishment, the impossibility of finding a husband. They took me from my prison, where I had been secluded so carefully that everyone supposed that I was in the convent at Palermo, and nothing had transpired out-of-doors. I was rich, fair, and of noble birth. Twenty suitors came forward. I repelled with horror the idea of deceiving an honest man, or of confessing my misfortune to a man who was mean-spirited enough to accept me because of my wealth. My resistance irritated my father to frenzy. He pretended to take me back to Palermo. But he brought me back to this room at night, and kept me imprisoned here for another whole year.
"It was a ghastly prison, as stifling as the leads of Venice; for the sun beat down upon a thin covering of metal, this part of the palace having never been finished and being roofed over temporarily. I endured thirst, mosquitoes, neglect, solitude, and lack of the fresh air and exercise which are so essential to the young. But I did not die, I contracted no disease, the vital principle was so strong within me. My father, unwilling to entrust the duty of guarding me to any other person, fearing that the compassion of his servants would lessen my sufferings, brought me my food himself; and when his political schemes kept him away from home for days at a time, I underwent the tortures of hunger. But I had acquired a stoical firmness of will, and I did not stoop to complain. I also acquired a certain amount of courage and of faith during that trial, and I do not rebuke God for having inflicted it on me. Consciousness of duty and regard for justice are great blessings for which one cannot pay too high a price!"
Agatha, as she spoke, was half reclining, and her voice, feeble at first, gradually became animated. She raised herself on her elbow, and, shaking her long black hair, and calling her son's attention with a gesture to the luxurious apartment in which they were, she continued:
"Michel, I pray that material enjoyments and the pride of birth and fortune may never dazzle you! I have paid dearly for those advantages; and, in the horrible solitude of this chamber, so bright and cheerful for us two to-day, I have passed many long sleepless hours, lying on a wretched pallet, consumed by fever, and asking God why He had not caused me to be born in a goatherd's cave or on a pirate's ship. I sighed for liberty, and the lowest of beggars seemed to me more blessed than I. If I had been poor and obscure, I should have received from my parents consolation and sympathy in my misfortune; whereas the illustrious Palmarosas heaped abuse upon their child and accused her of committing a crime because she would not be compelled to lie, and because she refused to bolster up the honor of her family by an imposture. I had no books in my prison; I had received only the most superficial education, and I utterly failed to understand the persecution of which I was the object. But, during that tedious and cruel inaction, I reflected, and I discovered for myself the emptiness of human pride. My moral being was transformed, so to speak, and everything that gratifies and enhances the vanity of men appeared to me, at my own expense, in its true light.
"But why should I say at my expense rather than to my advantage? What are two years of torture compared with the blessing of truth? When I returned to liberty and life, when I found that I readily recovered the vigor of youth, and that I had the necessary time and means to benefit by the ideas that had come to me, a great calmness overspread my heart, and I voluntarily adopted the habit, theretofore forced upon me, of self-denial and resolution.
"I renounced forever all idea of love and marriage. The thought of that bliss was marred and sullied in my imagination; and as for the cravings of the heart, there was no longer anything individual in mine. They had extended beyond the circle of selfish passions; I had conceived in my suffering one genuine passion, the object of which was not the enjoyment and triumph of one human being standing apart from the general misery by virtue of her own prosperity. That passion, which consumed me like a fever, and I may say with feverish intensity, was the longing to fight for the weak against their oppressors, and to be as lavish of benefactions and consolation as my family had been of persecution and dread. I had been brought up to respect and fear the court, to detest and distrust my unhappy countrymen. Had it not been for my own catastrophe I should probably have followed those precepts and examples of hideous cruelty. My heedless nature, wherein I resembled the women of my country, might never have conceived anything better than the principles of my family, which was not one of those that were subjected to persecution, and in which exile and suffering have inspired horror of the foreign yoke and love of country. My kinsmen, being ardently devoted to the ruling powers, had always been overwhelmed with favors, and the renewed prosperity which we shall soon owe to the cardinal's inheritance makes us a shameful exception among the many illustrious families whom I have seen ground into the dust by exorbitant taxes and by outlawry.
"I was no sooner mistress of my actions and my property than I devoted my life to the relief of the unfortunate. As a woman I was debarred from taking an interest in politics, the social sciences or philosophy. And indeed what man can possibly do it under the yoke that is crushing us? But what I could do was to assist the victims of tyranny, to whatever class they might belong. I soon found that their number was so great that my income would not suffice, even if I deprived myself of the necessaries of life. Thereupon my mind was soon made up. I had determined not to marry. I was ignorant of your existence, and I looked upon myself as alone in the world. I caused an exact statement of my fortune to be prepared—a precaution which the wealthy patricians of our province very rarely take; their indifference keeps them from visiting their estates when they are in the interior of the island, and many have never set foot upon them. I investigated my property and made myself familiar with it; first of all, I sold a part in small lots, intending to supply the poor people of these regions with a little land at a very low price, in a majority of cases for nothing. That was unsuccessful. A people that has fallen into the lowest stage of poverty and slavery cannot be saved with a stroke of the pen. I tried other methods which I will describe to you in detail at another time. They failed. Everything is bound to fail when the laws of a country have decreed its ruin. I had no sooner made a family happy, than the taxes, increasing with its prosperity, made a poverty-stricken family of it. How can order and stability be secured when the state seizes sixty per cent of the income of the humble workingman as well as of the idle rich man?
"Thus I learned, with profound sorrow, that in conquered and downtrodden countries there is no resource but almsgiving, and I devoted my life to that. It required much more activity and perseverance than gifts outright and sacrifices of capital. This life of small benefactions and constant sacrifices is a task without respite, without limits and without recompense; for almsgiving affords only a momentary remedy; it creates the necessity of being repeated and extended ad infinitum, and one never sees the result of the toil one imposes upon oneself. Oh! how cruel it is to live and love when one dresses every hour a wound that cannot be healed, when one unceasingly casts one's heart and strength into a pit which can no more be filled than the crater of Ætna!
"I accepted this task, and I devote all my time to it; I realize its inefficiency, and I am not discouraged. I no longer cry out against sloth, debauchery and all the vices that poverty engenders; or, if I do, my anger is no longer against those who acquire these vices but against those who impose them and perpetuate them. I do not quite understand what is meant by discernment in almsgiving. That is all very well for free countries, where a reprimand may serve some purpose, and where the precepts of practical morality are for the use of all men. Among us, alas! misery is so widespread that good and evil are to many persons of mature years words devoid of sense; and to preach orderliness, honesty and prudence, amid suffering and hunger, is almost ferocious pedantry.
"My income has not always been sufficient to meet so many calls, Michel, and you will find your mother's fortune secretly undermined by excavations of such depth that it may perhaps crumble on my grave. Were it not for the cardinal's inheritance, I should regret to-day that I had not saved for you sufficient means to serve your country as you will; but to-morrow you will be richer than I have ever been, and you will administer your fortune according to your principles and the dictates of your heart. I shall impose no task upon you. To-morrow you will enter into possession of this great power, and I shall not be at all disturbed as to the use you may make of it. I am sure of you. You have been brought up in a good school, my son—the school of poverty and toil! I know how you repair trivial faults; I know of what sacrifices your heart is capable when it is at odds with a consciousness of duty. Prepare, therefore, to bear the burden of your misfortune—to be a prince in fact as well as in name. Within three days you have embarked upon what seem to be strange adventures; you have received more than one valuable lesson. Fra Angelo, the Marquis della Serra, Magnani—even Mila, the sweet child—have spoken to you in a language which has made a profound impression on you, I know. I saw it in your conduct, in your determination to remain an artisan; and from that moment I promised myself that I would disclose to you the secret of your destiny, even though the cardinal should live on and compel us to take extraordinary precautions."
"O mother, how noble you are! and how little people know you when they think that you are a mere devotee, apathetic or eccentric? Your life is the life of a saint or martyr: nothing for yourself, everything for others!"
"Do not give me so much credit, my child," replied Agatha. "Innocent as I was, I had no claim to share in the general happiness. I was borne down by a fatality which all my efforts had succeeded only in making more burdensome. By denying myself love, I was simply fulfilling the plainest duty that honor imposes upon a woman. So, too, in becoming a sister of charity I obeyed the imperative outcry of my conscience. I had been unfortunate; I knew unhappiness by personal experience; I was no longer one of those who can refuse to credit the sufferings of others because they have never suffered themselves. I may, perhaps, have done good without judgment; at all events, I have done it without remission and with the utmost zeal. But, in my eyes, to do good does not amount to so much as is generally supposed. To do good in this way is simply not to do evil; not to be selfish means simply that one is not blind nor detestable. I have such unbounded pity for those who are vain of their good works, that I have hidden mine almost as sedulously as I kept the secret of my marriage and your birth. My character has never been understood. I did not wish that it should be. So that I have no right to complain of having been misjudged."
"Ah! but I know you," said Michel, "and my heart will repay you a hundredfold for all the happiness of which you have been deprived."
"I know it," she replied. "Your tears prove it, and I feel it; for, since you have been with me, I should have forgotten that I had ever been unhappy, if I had not had my story to tell you."
"Thank you, mother, but do not say that you leave me at liberty to do as I please. I am only a child, and I feel so insignificant beside you that I never desire to see anything except through your eyes, or to act except by your orders. I will help you to carry the burden of wealth and of almsgiving, but I will be your man of business—nothing more. I, a rich man and a prince! I, endowed with any sort of authority when you are here! when I am your son!"
"My child, you must be a man. I have not had the happiness of bringing you up; I could have done it no better than worthy Pier-Angelo. It is my business now to love you—nothing more—and that is enough. To justify my love, you will not need to have your ancestors' portraits say to you: 'I am not pleased with you.'—You will so conduct yourself that your mother will always say to you: 'I am pleased with you.' But listen, Michel! the bells are tolling; all the bells in the city are tolling the knell of a dying man, and it must be some great personage. It is your kinsman—your enemy—Cardinal Palmarosa, who is about to be called to account by God for his crimes. It is daylight, and we must part. Go and pray to God to be merciful to him. I go to receive his last breath!"
While the princess rang for her maid and ordered her horses, that she might go and pay her last respects to the moribund cardinal, Michel went down into the park from the flower garden by the staircase cut in the lava; but, when he was only halfway down, he spied Master Barbagallo, who was already on his feet and beginning his conscientious day's work, very far from believing, the excellent man, that that splendid palace and those beautiful gardens were no longer aught save the deceptive symbol and the vain simulacrum of a handsome fortune. In his eyes to expend one's income in almsgiving was a lordly and estimable custom. He seconded the princess zealously in her charitable work. But to encroach upon one's capital was a heinous sin, inconsistent with the hereditary dignity of a great name; and, if Agatha had enlightened him or consulted him in that respect, all his genealogical learning would have been none too much to prove to her that no Palmarosa had ever committed that crime of lèse-nobility, unless at the bidding of his king. What! deprive oneself of the real source of one's power for the benefit of miserable wretches! Fie! unless it were a question of founding a hospital or a monastery, monuments which endure, and which transmit the renown and virtue of the founder to posterity, and impart new glory to a name instead of dimming its lustre.
Michel, when he saw the majordomo innocently blocking his path—for Barbagallo was gazing fixedly at an East India shrub which he had planted with his own hands at the foot of the staircase—determined to lower his head and pass rapidly on without any explanation. A few hours later, he would have no motive for concealment, but, for propriety's sake, it would be much better to await the princess's public declaration.
But the majordomo seemed to be planted beside his shrub. He was surprised that the climate of Catania, which, according to him, was the most salubrious climate in the world, did not agree with that rare plant better than the climate of the tropics; which fact proves that he understood the cultivation of genealogical trees better than that of real trees. He was stooping—almost lying oh the ground—to see if some destructive worm had not attacked the roots of the languishing plant.
Michel, having reached the lowest stair, decided to leap over Master Barbagallo, who uttered a loud yell, thinking perhaps that it was the beginning of a volcanic eruption, and that a stone vomited forth by some near-by crater had fallen beside him.
His exclamation had such a comical, rancous sound that Michel laughed heartily.
"Cristo!" cried the majordomo, as he recognized the young artist, whom the princess had ordered him to treat with great consideration, but whom he was very far from believing to be Agatha's son or lover.
But, when his first fright had passed, he tried to collect his thoughts, while Michel walked swiftly across the park. He awoke to the fact that Pier-Angelo's son had come from the flower garden before sunrise; from the princess's flower garden! that private, fortified sanctuary, to which none but a favored lover could gain an entrance at night!
"Princess Agatha have a lover! and such a lover! when the Marquis della Serra, who is hardly worthy to aspire to the honor of winning her favor, never goes in or out except by the principal door of the palace!"
That was an impossible supposition. So Master Barbagallo, having no means of denying so palpable a fact, and not presuming to comment upon it, limited himself to a frequent repetition of the wordCristo! And, after standing like a statue for some moments, he concluded to attend to his duties as usual, and to forbid himself to think upon any subject whatsoever until further orders.
Michel was hardly less surprised by his own situation than the majordomo by what he had seen. Of all the dreams he had dreamed in the last three days, the most unexpected, the most prodigious, beyond any question, was this one that had crowned and elucidated the others. He walked straight ahead, and the instinct born of habit guided him toward his father's house in the suburb, although he had no idea where he was going. Every object upon which his eyes rested seemed new and strange to him. The magnificence of the palaces and the squalor of the houses of the common people presented a contrast which hitherto had saddened him only as a condition by which he himself had to suffer, and which he had accepted as an inevitable law of society. Now that he felt that he was a free and powerful member of that society, compassion and kindliness poured into his heart, broader and less selfish than before. He felt that he was a better man since he had been numbered among the fortunate few, and the consciousness of the duty resting upon him vibrated in his breast under the impulsion of his mother's generous breath. He felt that he had increased in size among his fellowmen since he had been charged with ameliorating their lot instead of being oppressed by them. In a word, he felt himself every inch a prince, and was no longer surprised that he had always been ambitious. But his ambition had assumed a nobler shape in his mind on the day that he had put it into words in answer to Magnani's criticisms; and now that it was gratified, far from debasing him, it exalted him and raised him above himself. There are men—and, unfortunately, they are in the majority—whom prosperity degrades and perverts; but a truly noble mind sees in the power of wealth only a means of doing good, and eighteen years is an age at which the ideals are pure and the mind open to grand and worthy aspirations.
As he entered the suburb, he saw a poor woman begging, with one child in her arms and three others clinging to her ragged skirts. Tears came to his eyes, and he put both hands in the pockets of his jacket, for on the day before he had assumed the livery of the common people, resolved to continue to wear it a long time—always if he must. But he found that his pockets were empty, and he remembered that as yet he possessed nothing.
"Forgive me, my poor woman," he said, "to-morrow I will give you something. Be here to-morrow, I will come again."
The poor creature thought that he was making sport of her, and said to him in a solemn tone, drawing herself up in her rags with the majesty of the southern peoples: "You must not make sport of the poor, my boy; it brings bad luck."
"Yes, yes!" said Michel, as he walked away; "I believe it, I am sure of it! that shall never happen to me."
A little farther on he met some laundresses who were coolly hanging their linen on a line stretched across the street, over the heads of the passers-by. Michel stooped, as he would not have done the day before; he would have thrust the obstacle aside with an impatient hand. The two pretty girls who held the line to keep it taut were grateful to him and smiled upon him; but when Michel had passed this first curtain of thebiancheria, and as he stooped to pass under a second, he heard the old laundress say to her apprentices in the tone of an angry sibyl: "Lower your eyes, Ninetta; don't turn your head like that, Rosalina! that's little Michelangelo Lavoratori, who sets himself up for a great painter, but he will never be the man his father is! A fig for children who turn up their noses at their father's trade!"
"I absolutely must adopt the profession of prince," thought Michel with a smile, "for the profession of artist would have drawn too much blame upon me."
He entered his house, and for the first time it seemed to him picturesque and attractive in its wretched disorder. "It is a genuine artist's house of the Middle Ages," he said to himself; "I have lived here only a few days, but I shall always remember them as among the sweetest and purest days of my life." It seemed to him that he already regretted that humble family nest, and the vague longing he had felt the day before for a less prosaic, a more splendid abode seemed to him an unhealthy, insane longing, so true it is that one exaggerates the value of the good things of life when one has them not.
"I could have passed years here very comfortably," he thought, "as happy as I shall be in a palace, provided that my conscience was always as well satisfied with itself as it was when Pier-Angelo said to me: 'Well, you are a man of heart, that you are!' All the portraits of the Palmarosas and Castro-Reales may tell me that they are pleased with me; they will afford me no more joy than those words from my father the artisan."
He entered as a prince that house from which he had gone forth an artisan but a few hours earlier, and he crossed the threshold with a feeling of profound respect. Then he hurried to his father's bedside, thinking to find him asleep. But Pier-Angelo was with Mila, who had not slept at all she was so disturbed because her brother had not returned. The old man suspected that the princess had kept him; but he was unable to make Mila assent to the probability of that supposition. Michel threw himself into their arms and wept tears of joy. Pier-Angelo understood what had taken place, and why the young Prince of Castro-Reale called himfatherso effusively, and would not allow him to call him Michel, but made him saymy sonwhenever he spoke.
Mila was greatly surprised when Michel, instead of embracing her with his usual familiarity, kissed her hand again and again, calling her his darling sister.
"What's the matter, Michel?" she said, "and why this act of respect with me? You say that nothing extraordinary has happened, that you have been in no danger during the night, and yet you bid us good-morning like a man who has just escaped death, or who brings us paradise in the hollow of his hand. Well, well! now that you are here, we are as happy as the saints in heaven, it is true! for I had many bad dreams while I was waiting for you. I woke poor Magnani two hours before daylight and sent him in search of you; and he is searching still. He must have gone to Bel Passo, to see if you were not with our uncle."
"Dear, good Magnani!" cried Michel; "I will go out and find him, in order to set your mind at rest and to see him the sooner. But first I want to breakfast with you two at our cosy little table; I want to eat some of the rice that you cook so deliciously, Mila, and the water-melon that nobody can select so well as you."
"See how sweet he is whenever he doesn't choose to be capricious!" said Mila, looking at her brother. "When he is in one of his fits of temper, nothing is good, the rice is cooked too much and the water-melons are over-ripe. To-day everything is delicious, even before he tastes it."
"I shall be like this every day henceforth, my darling sister," said Michel; "I shall have no more bad temper, I shall ask you no more impertinent questions, and I trust that you will have no better friend in the world than me."
As soon as he was alone with Pier-Angelo, Michel knelt before him. "Give me your blessing," he said, "and forgive me for not having been worthy of you always. I will be hereafter, and if I should hesitate a moment on the path of duty, promise that you will scold me and lecture me more severely than you have ever done."
"Prince," said Pier-Angelo, "I should have been more severe perhaps if I had been your father; but—"
"O father," cried Michel, "never call me by that name, and never say that I am not your son. Of course I am the happiest of men to be Princess Agatha's son, but it would be mingling gall with my happiness to try to accustom myself to the thought that I am not yours; and if you call me prince, I will never be one; I will insist on remaining a mechanic!"
"Very well, so be it!" said Pier-Angelo, embracing him; "let us continue to be father and son, as we were; I like that better, especially as I should cling to the old habits in spite of myself, even if you had been offended. Now, listen; I know beforehand what you will say to me in a moment. You will want to make me a rich man. I want to say to you beforehand that I beg you not to torment me on that subject. I prefer to remain as I am; I am very happy. Money brings anxiety; I have never been able to keep it. The princess will do what she thinks best for your sister; but I doubt whether the little one cares to rise above her condition, for if I am not mistaken, she is in love with our neighbor, Antonio Magnani, and has no idea of marrying anybody else. Magnani will not consent to accept anything from you, I know; he is a man like me, who loves his trade and would blush to be assisted when he earns all he needs. Don't be angry, my son; I accepted your sister's marriage-portion yesterday. That was not the gift of a prince, it was the wages of a workman, the sacrifice of a loving brother. I was proud of it, and your sister, when she knows about it, won't be ashamed; but I did not think it best to tell her yet. She would never have accepted it, she is so accustomed to look upon your artistic future as a sacred thing; and the child is obstinate, as you know.
"As for me, Michel, you know me too. If I were rich, I should be ashamed to work. People would think I did it from avarice, and to add a little to my savings. Nor could I work if I were not driven to it; I am a creature of habit, a routine workman; every day would be Sunday to me, and it would be as injurious for me to amuse myself all the week as it is advantageous for me to enjoy myself a little at table on the blessed day of rest. Ennui would lay hold of me, and melancholy after that. I should try to escape from it by intemperance perhaps, as most men do who don't know how to read and so can't keep up their spirits with beautiful written stories. But one must feed one's brain when the body is at rest, and they feed it with wine. That is worse than nothing, I know by experience. When I go to a wedding festival I enjoy myself the first day, I am bored the second, and sick the third. No, no! I must have my apron, my ladder, my glue-pot, and my ballads, or each hour seems as long as two. If you blush for me—But no, I won't finish, it is insulting to you; you will never blush for me. In that case, let me live as I please, and when I am too old and feeble to work, you shall take me in and take care of me; I agree to that, I give you my word on it. I can do nothing better for you, I am sure."
"Your wishes shall be sacred to me," Michel replied, "and I realize fully that it is impossible for me to pay my debt to you with money; it would be altogether too easy to be able to liquidate a debt running through one's whole lifetime in an instant and without the slightest trouble. Ah! if I could only double the duration of your life, and restore, at the expense of my blood, the strength you have expended in supporting and educating me!"
"Do not hope to pay me otherwise than by affection," replied the old decorator. "Youth cannot return, and I desire nothing that is contrary to the divine laws. If I have worked for you, I have done it with pleasure and without ever relying upon any other reward than that of seeing you make a wise use of your good fortune. The princess knows my way of thinking in that respect. If she should pay me for your education, she would deprive me of all my merit and pride; for I have a certain pride of my own, and I shall be proud to hear people say as they will before long: 'What a loyal Sicilian and good prince this Castro-Reale is! And yet it was that old fool of a Pier-Angelo who brought him up.' Come, give me your hand, and let us say no more about it. It would hurt me a little, I confess. It seems that the cardinal is dying. I want you to say a prayer with me for him, for he needs it sadly; he was a wicked man, and the woman who was taking you to the hospital, when my brother the monk and I snatched you from her arms, looked as if she would much rather throw you into the sea than into the orphan's crib. So let us pray with a good heart! Come, Michel, it won't be long."
And Pier-Angelo, uncovering, said in a loud voice and in a tone of the deepest sincerity: "O my God! forgive us our sins, and forgive Cardinal Hieronimo, as we ourselves forgive him. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen.—Michel, you didn't sayamen, did you?"
"Amen, with all my heart," replied Michel, filled with respect for the artless piety with which Pier-Angelo forgave his persecutor.
For Monsignor Hieronimo had been very cruel to the poor mechanic. He had had only suspicions against him, and yet he had prosecuted him, thrown him into prison, ruined him, and finally forced him to exile himself, which last was the greatest sorrow that could have been inflicted upon honest Pier-Angelo.
As Mila was beginning to be anxious concerning Magnani, who did not return, Michel started out in search of him. All the bells in the city were tolling for the dying cardinal; prayers were being said in all the churches, and the poor people who were oppressed, held to ransom and punished by him at the slightest symptom of rebellion, knelt devoutly on the steps of the churches to ask God to absolve him. Doubtless one and all rejoiced inwardly at the first stroke of the bell, and would rejoice still more at the last. But the terrors of hell acted so powerfully on those vivid imaginations that mortal resentment vanished in face of the threat which those clanging bells seemed to hold suspended over every head.
Michel, as he did not hear the final knell announcing that death had seized his prey, and, as he felt sure that his mother would not leave the deathbed until that decisive moment had arrived, bent his steps toward the hill of Mal Passo. He wished to embrace his friend and his uncle once more before they saluted him as Prince of Castro-Reale. He dreaded especially the moment when Magnani would put on the armor of pride, and perhaps of coldness, in his unjust fear of contemptuous treatment by Michel. He was determined to stipulate in advance for the continuance of their friendship, to demand his solemn promise to that effect, and to inform him first of all of his new position after he had cemented that sacred brotherhood in Fra Angelo's presence.
And then, too, Michel thought of the Piccinino. He said to himself that it was not so far from the convent to Nicolosi that he could not go and visit his brother before he had taken any measures against the princess and himself. He could not make up his mind to defy and await schemes of revenge which might attack his mother before himself; and, though he should find the bastard in a paroxysm of rage worse than that in which he had last seen him, he looked upon it as his duty as a man and a son to meet alone its first consequences.
On the way Michel remembered that he was a painter on seeing the rising sun illumine the landscape. A feeling of profound sadness suddenly took possession of him. His artistic future seemed to be at an end, and as he passed the gate of Villa Palmarosa—as he glanced at that niche with its madonna, from which he had saluted the steeples of Catania for the first time—his heart was heavy, as if twenty years, instead of half as many days, had elapsed between this dénouement of his life and his adventurous youth, overflowing with poetic aspirations, with fears and hopes. The absolute security of his new position frightened him, and he asked himself in dismay if a painter's genius would not be inadequately accommodated in the brain of a rich man and a prince. What would become of ambition, wrath, terror, the frenzy for work, obstacles to be overcome, triumphs to be defended—those powerful and necessary stimulants? Instead of enemies to spur him on, he would have only flatterers to corrupt his judgment and his taste; instead of poverty to force him to hard work and to sustain him in the fever of composition, he would be surfeited in advance with all the advantages which art pursues at least as eagerly as it pursues renown.
He heaved a deep sigh, but soon took courage, saying to himself that he would prove himself worthy to have friends who would tell him the truth, and that, while pursuing that nobler object—renown—he could renounce more completely the material profits of the profession and the vulgar judgment of the multitude.
Reflecting thus, he reached the monastery. The bells were ringing in response to those of the city, and that monotonous and depressing dialogue was carried on in the crisp morning air amid the songs of the birds and the murmuring of the breezes.
Magnani knew all, for Agatha had at least suspected his passion, if she had not actually divined it; and she had told him the story of her life. She had described her blighted, desolate past, and her present, devoted to serious pursuits and absorbed by maternal affections. By thus displaying her confidence in him and her regard for him, she had at all events healed the secret wound inflicted upon his plebeian pride. She had with delicate tact pointed out to him that the obstacle between them was not the difference in rank and in their ideas, but the difference between their ages and the decree of an inflexible destiny. In a word, she had raised him to her own level by treating him as a brother, and if she had not effected a complete cure at the first attempt, she had removed all the bitterness of his suffering. Then she had adroitly brought Mila's name into the conversation, and, when he realized that the princess desired their union, Magnani had deemed it to be his duty to comply with her desire.
That duty he determined to set about performing at once, and he fully appreciated the fact that Agatha, to punish him for his madness, had pointed out to him the easiest, not to say the most delightful of expiations. As he had not shared Mila's uneasiness with respect to Michel's absence, he had gone out simply to please her, with no idea that there was any need of going in search of him. He had called upon Fra Angelo, to consult him concerning the girl's sentiments, and to ask for his advice and support. When he reached the monastery, the monks were reciting prayers for the cardinal's soul, and he was obliged to wait in the garden, with its paths of earthenware and its borders of lava, until Fra Angelo could come to him. The doleful chanting depressed him, and he could not avoid a presentiment of evil to come as he thought that he was cherishing the hope of a happy betrothal in the midst of a funeral ceremony.
On the preceding evening, before he parted from Pier-Angelo on their return from the Della Serra palace, he had sounded the old artisan concerning his daughter's feelings. Pier-Angelo, delighted by that overture, had ingenuously replied that he believed that she loved him; but as Magnani distrusted his good fortune, and hardly dared hope, Pier-Angelo had advised him to consult his brother the Capuchin, whom, although younger than himself, he was accustomed to look upon as the head of the family.
Magnani was very uncertain and disturbed in mind. And yet a mysterious voice told him that Mila loved him. He recalled her furtive glances, her sudden blushes, her concealed tears, her deathly pallor, aye, and her words, which denoted an affectation of indifference prompted by pride. He hoped; he awaited impatiently the end of the prayers, and when Fra Angelo joined him he begged him to give him his attention, to advise him, and above all things to tell him the truth without concealment.
"This is a serious matter," the good monk replied; "I have always had the friendliest feeling for your family, my son, and a very high regard for you. But are you sure that you know me and love me well enough to believe me if the advice that I give you is contrary to your secret desires? For we monks are often consulted, and very little heed is paid to our counsel. Everyone comes and confides his thoughts and passions, even his business affairs to us, because it is commonly supposed that men with no direct interest in life have a keener insight than others. That is a mistake. In most cases our advice is either too complaisant to be worth following or so severe that it is impossible to follow it. For my part I dislike to give advice."
"Very well," said Magnani, "if you do not consider me capable of making the most of your counsel, will you promise to answer, without hesitation, and with perfect frankness, a question I am going to ask you?"
"Hesitation is not a failing of mine, my friend. But for lack of careful handling one may inflict much pain on those whom one loves, and do you want me to be cruel to you? You subject my affection to a painful test!"
"You frighten me beforehand, Padre Angelo. It seems to me that you have already guessed the question I am going to ask you."
"Ask it, so that I may see if I am not mistaken."
"And you will answer?"
"I will answer."
"Well," said Magnani, in a trembling voice, "should I do well to ask your brother to give me Mila's hand?"
"Precisely, that is what I expected. My brother has already spoken to me about it. He thinks that his daughter loves you; he thinks that he has detected it."