"La Biondina in gondoletaL'altra sera mi o mena;Dal piazer la povaretaLa x' a in boto adormenta.E la dormiva su sto bracioMe intanto la svegliava;E la barca che ninavaLa tornava a adormenzar."
"La Biondina in gondoletaL'altra sera mi o mena;Dal piazer la povaretaLa x' a in boto adormenta.E la dormiva su sto bracioMe intanto la svegliava;E la barca che ninavaLa tornava a adormenzar."
I sat down upon one of the Jewish tombstones on the Lido, and remained there a long while; I purposely compelled her to wait for me. Then, of a sudden, thinking that she might be suffering with thirst, I ran, stricken with remorse, to fetch the drink for which she had asked me, and carried it to her with deep solicitude. And yet I hoped that she would reprimand me; I would have liked to be dismissed from my employment, for it had become intolerable to me. She received me with no trace of anger; indeed she thanked me sweetly as she took the glass I handed her. Thereupon I saw that her hand was bleeding, it had been cut by the broken glass. I could not restrain my tears. I saw that hers were flowing too; but she did not speak to me, and I dared not break that silence, fraught with loving reproaches and timid passion.
I determined to stamp out my insane love and to leave Venice. I tried to persuade myself that the signora had never returned it, and that I had flattered myself with an impertinent hope; but every moment her glance, her tone of voice, her gesture, even her sadness, which seemed to increase and decrease with mine, all combined to revive my insane confidence and to lead me to dangerous dreams.
Fate seemed determined to deprive us of what little strength we still retained. Mandola did not return. I was a very indifferent oarsman, despite my zeal and strength; I was not familiar with the lagoons, I had always been so absorbed by my own thoughts as I went in and out among them! One evening I went astray in the salt marshes that stretch from the St. George canal to the Marana canal. The rising tide covered those vast plains of sand and seaweed; but it began to fall again before I succeeded in rowing back into clear water; I could see the tops of the aquatic plants moving in the breeze amid the foam. I pulled hard, but in vain. The ebb tide laid bare a vast expanse of marsh, and the gondola stranded gently on a bed of seaweed and shells. Night had spread its veil over the sky and the waters, the sea-birds lighted all around us, by thousands, filling the air with their plaintive cries. I called for a long time, but my voice was lost in space; no fishing vessel chanced to be at anchor near the marsh, no craft of any sort approached us. We must needs resign ourselves to the necessity of awaiting some chance succor or the next morning's tide. This last alternative was exceedingly disquieting; I dreaded the cold night air for my mistress's sake, and above all, the unhealthy vapors that rise from the marshes at daybreak; I tried in vain to pull the gondola to a pool of water. Aside from the fact that we should simply have gained a very few feet, it would have taken more than six men to raise the boat from the bed she had made for herself. Thereupon I determined to wade through the swamp, up to my waist in mud, until I reached the channel, and to swim across in quest of help. It was an insane undertaking; for I did not know the lay of the land, and where the fishermen adroitly walk about to gathersea-fruit, I should have been lost in bogs and quick-sands after a very few steps. When the signora saw that I was inclined to resist her prohibition, and was about to take the risk, she sprang to her feet, and, mustering strength to remain in that position for an instant, she threw her arms about me and fell back, almost pressing me to her heart. Thereupon I forgot all my anxiety, and cried frantically: "Yes! yes! let us stay here; let us never leave this spot; let us die here of joy and love, and may the Adriatic not wake to-morrow to rescue us!"
In the first moment of emotion she was very near abandoning herself to my transports; but she soon recovered the strength with which she had armed herself.
"Well, yes," she said, kissing me on the forehead; "yes, I love you, and I have loved you for a long while. It was because I loved you that I refused to marry Lanfranchi, for I could not make up my mind to place an everlasting obstacle between you and me. It was because I loved you that I endured Montalegri's love, fearing that I might succumb to my passion for you, and being determined to combat it; it was because I loved you that I sent him away, being unable to endure longer that love which I did not share; it is because I love you that I am still determined not to give way to what I feel to-day; for I propose to give you proofs of a veritable love, and I owe to your pride, so long humbled, some other recompense than vain caresses, another title than that of lover."
I did not understand that language. What other title than that of lover could I desire, what greater happiness than that of possessing such a mistress? I had had some absurd moments of pride and frenzy, but at that time I was unhappy, I did not think that she loved me.
"So long as you do love me," I cried; "so long as you tell me so as you do now, in the mystery of darkness, and every evening, out of sight of the curious and envious, give me a kiss as you did just now; so long as you are mine in secret, in God's bosom, shall I not be prouder and happier than the Doge of Venice? What more do I need than to live beside you and to know that you belong to me? Ah! let all the world remain in ignorance of it; I do not need to make others jealous in order to be happy beyond words, and the opinion of other people is not necessary to the pride and joy of my heart."
"And yet," replied Bianca, "it will humiliate you to be my servant after this, will it not?"
"I was humiliated this morning," I cried; "to-morrow I shall be proud of it."
"What!" she said, "would you not despise me if, after abandoning myself to your love, I should leave you in a state of degradation?"
"There can be no degradation in serving one who loves me," I replied. "If you were my wife, do you think that I would allow anybody but myself to carry you? Could I think of anything except taking care of you and amusing you? Salomé is not humiliated to be in your service, and yet you do not love her as much as you love me,signora mia?"
"O my noble-hearted boy!" cried Bianca, pressing my head against her breast with deep emotion; "O pure and unselfish soul! Who will dare now to say that there are no great hearts save those that are born in palaces! Who will dare deny the honor and saintliness of these plebeian natures, ranked so low by our hateful prejudices and our absurd disdain! You are the only man who ever loved me for myself alone, the only man whose aim was not my rank or my fortune!—Very well! you shall share them both, you shall make me forget the miseries of my first marriage, and replace with your rustic name the hateful name of Aldini, which I bear with regret! You shall command my vassals and be at once the lord of my estates and the master of my life. Nello, will you marry me?"
If the earth had opened under my feet, or if the skies had fallen on my head, I could not have experienced a more violent shock of amazement than that which struck me dumb in the face of such a question. When I had recovered somewhat from my stupefaction, I do not know what reply I made, for my head was going round, and it was impossible for me to think coherently. All that my natural good sense could do was to put aside honors too heavy for my age and my inexperience. Bianca insisted.
"Listen," she said; "I am not happy. My cheerfulness has long been a cloak for intense suffering, until now, as you see, I am ill and can no longer conceal my ennui. My position in society is false and very distasteful to me; my position in my own esteem is worse still, and God is dissatisfied with me. You know that I am not of patrician descent. Torquato Aldini married me on account of the great fortune my father had amassed in business. That haughty nobleman never saw in me anything more than the instrument of his fortune, he never deigned to treat me as his equal; some of his relatives encouraged him in maintaining the absurd and cruel attitude of lord and master which he assumed toward me at the outset; others blamed him severely for having contracted a misalliance in order to pay his debts, and treated him coldly after his marriage. After his death they all refused to see me, and I found myself without any family; for by entering the family of a noble I had forfeited the esteem and affection of my own people. I had married Torquato for love, and those of my relatives who did not consider me insane believed me to be guided by foolish vanity and vile ambition. That is why, despite my wealth and my youth and an obliging and inoffensive disposition, you see my salons almost empty and my social circle so restricted. I have some warm friends, and their company satisfies my heart. But I am entirely unfamiliar with the intoxication of society at large, and it has not treated me so well that I am called upon to sacrifice my happiness to it. I know that by marrying you I shall draw down upon myself not its indifference simply but its irrevocable malediction. Do not be alarmed; you see that it is a very trifling sacrifice on my part."
"But why marry me?" said I. "Why invite that malediction to no purpose? for I do not need your fortune to be happy, nor do you need a solemn contract on my part to be sure that I shall love you forever."
"Whether you are my husband or my lover," Bianca replied, "the world will find it out all the same, and I shall be cursed and despised none the less. Since your love must necessarily, in one way or the other, separate me altogether from society, I desire at least to be reconciled to God, and to find in this love of mine, sanctified by the Church, the strength to despise society as it despises me. I have lived in sin for a long while, I have sinned without adding to my happiness, I have risked my salvation and have not found gladness of heart. Now I have found it and I wish to enjoy it, stainless and cloudless; I wish to sleep, free from remorse, on the bosom of the man I love; I wish to be able to say to the world: 'It is you who destroy and corrupt hearts. Nello's love has saved and purified me, and I have a refuge against you; God permitted me to love Nello, and bids me love him until death.'"
Bianca talked to me a long while in this strain. There was weakness, childishness and pure goodness in these ingenuous plottings of her pride, her love and her piety. I was not very strong myself. It was not long since I had been accustomed to kneel, night and morning, on my father's boat, before the image of St. Anthony painted on the sail; and although the beautiful women of Venice diverted my thoughts sadly in the basilica, I never missed attending mass, and I still had on my neck the scapulary my mother hung there as she gave me her blessing on the day I left Chioggia. So I allowed Signora Aldini to triumph over my scruples and persuade me; and without further resistance or promises, I passed the night at her feet, as submissive as a child to her religious scruples, intoxicated with the pleasure of simply kissing her hand and inhaling the perfume of her fan. It was a lovely night. The twinkling stars trembled in the little pools which the tide had left on the marsh; the breeze murmured in the green grasses. From time to time we saw in the distance the light of a gondola gliding over the waves, but it did not occur to us to call for help. The voice of the Adriatic breaking on the farther shore of the Lido reached our ears, monotonous and majestic. We indulged in countless enchanting dreams; we formed countless deliciously trivial plans. The moon sank slowly and was shrouded in the dark waves on the horizon, like a chaste virgin in her winding-sheet. We were as chaste as she, and she seemed to glance at us with a friendly expression before plunging into the sea.
But soon the cold made itself felt, and a sheet of white mist spread over the marsh. I closed thecamerinoand wrapped Bianca in my red cape. I sat down beside her, put my arms about her to shelter her, and warmed her arms and hands with my breath. A delicious calm seemed to have descended upon her heart since she had almost extorted from me a promise to marry her. She rested her head lightly on my shoulder. The night was far advanced; for more than six hours we had poured forth the ardent love of our hearts in tender and impassioned words. A pleasant sensation of weariness stole over me as well, and we fell asleep in each other's arms, as pure as the dawn that was beginning to appear on the horizon. It was our wedding-night—our only night of love; a spotless night, which was never repeated, and its memory never marred.
Loud voices woke me. I ran to the bow of the gondola and saw several men approaching us. At the usual time of starting out to fish, a family of fishermen had discovered the stranded craft, and they assisted me to drag her to the Marana Canal, whence I rowed rapidly to the palace.
How happy I was as I placed my foot on the first step! I thought no more of the palace than of Bianca's fortune; but I had her in my arms who thenceforth was my property, my life, my mistress in the noble and blessed sense of the word! But my joy ended there. Salomé appeared in the doorway of that terror-stricken house, where no one had closed an eye during the night. Salomé was pale, and it was evident that she had been weeping; it was probably the only time in her life. She did not venture to question her mistress: perhaps she had already read upon my brow the reason why the night had seemed so short to me. It had been long enough to all the occupants of the palace. They all believed that some horrible accident had befallen their dear mistress. A number of them had wandered about all night, looking for us; others had passed the time in prayer, burning little tapers before the image of the Virgin. When their anxiety was allayed and their curiosity gratified, I noticed that their thoughts took another direction and their faces a different expression. They scrutinized my face—the women especially—with insulting eagerness. As for Salomé's expression, it was so withering that I could not endure it. Mandola arrived from the country in the midst of the commotion. He understood in an instant what was going on, and, putting his mouth to my ear, begged me to be prudent. I pretended not to know what he meant; I did my best to submit with an air of innocence to the investigations of the others. But in a few moments I was unable to endure my anxiety, and I went into Bianca's room.
I found her weeping bitterly beside her daughter's bed. The child had been awakened in the middle of the night by the noise of the constant going and coming of the frightened servants. She had listened to their comments on the signora's prolonged absence, and, believing that her mother was drowned, she had gone into convulsions. She had barely become calm when I entered, and Bianca was blaming herself for the child's suffering, as if she had wilfully caused it.
"O my Bianca," I said to her, "be comforted and rejoice because your child and all those about you love you so passionately. I will love you even more than they do, so that you may be the happiest of women."
"Do not say that the others love me," she replied with some bitterness. "It seems to me that under their breaths they are calling this love of mine, which they have already divined, a crime. Their glances are insulting to me, their words wound me, and I greatly fear that they have let slip some imprudent remark in my daughter's hearing. Salomé is openly impertinent to me this morning. It is high time for me to put an end to these insolent comments on my conduct. You see, Nello, they look upon my loving you as a crime, and they approved of my supposed love for the avaricious Lanfranchi. They are all low-minded or foolish creatures. I must inform them this very day that I passed the night, not with my lover, but with my husband. It is the only way to make them respect you and refrain from betraying me."
I dissuaded her from acting so hastily. I reminded her that she might perhaps repent; that she had not reflected sufficiently; that I myself needed time to consider her offer seriously; and that she had not sufficiently weighed the consequences of her decision, with respect to its possible future effect upon her daughter. I obtained her promise to be patient and to act prudently.
It was impossible for me to form an enlightened judgment regarding my situation. It was intoxicating, and I was a mere boy. Nevertheless, a sort of instinctive repugnance warned me to distrust the fascinations of love and fortune. I was excited, anxious, torn between desire and fear. In the brilliant destiny that was offered me, I saw but one thing—possession of the woman I loved. All the wealth by which she was surrounded was not even an accessory to my happiness, it was a disagreeable condition for me in my heedlessness to accept. I was like one who has never suffered and can conceive of no better or worse state than that in which he has always lived. In the Aldini Palace I was free and happy. Petted by all alike, permitted to gratify all my whims, I had no responsibility, nothing to fatigue my body or my mind. Singing, sleeping, and boating, that was substantially the whole of my life, and you Venetians who are listening to me know whether any life is sweeter or better adapted to our indolent and careless natures. I imagined the rôle of husband and master as something analogous to the superintendence exercised by Salomé over household affairs, and such a rôle was very far from flattering my ambition. That palace, of which I had the freedom, was my property in the pleasantest sense of the word: I enjoyed all its pleasures without any of its cares. Let my mistress add the joys of love, and I should be the King of Italy.
Another thing that disheartened me was Salomé's gloomy air and the embarrassed, mysterious and suspicious demeanor of the other servants. There were many of them, and they were all excellent people, who had treated me hitherto as a child of the family. In that silent reprobation which I felt hovering over me, there was a warning which I could not, which I did not wish to disdain; for, while it was due in some measure to a natural feeling of jealousy, it was dictated even more by the affectionate interest which the signora inspired.
What would I not have given in those moments of dire perplexity to have a judicious adviser? But I did not know whom to apply to, and I was the sole confidant of my mistress's secrets. She passed the day in bed with her daughter, and sent for me the next day, to repeat to me all that she had said on the marsh. All the time that she was speaking to me, it seemed to me that she was right, and that she had a triumphant answer to all my scruples; but when I was alone again, my distress and irresolution returned.
I went up into the gallery and threw myself upon a chair. My eyes wandered absent-mindedly from one to another of that long line of ancestors whose portraits formed the only heritage that Torquato Aldini had been able to bequeath to his daughter. Their smoke-begrimed faces, their beards, cut square, and pointed, and diamond-shaped, their black velvet robes and ermine-lined cloaks, gave them an imposing and depressing aspect. Almost all had been senators, procurators, or councillors; there was a multitude of uncles who had been inquisitors; those of least consequence were minor canons orcapitani grandi. At the end of the gallery was the figure-head of the last galley fitted out against the Turks by Tiberio Aldini, Torquato's grandfather, in the days when the powerful nobles of the republic went to war at their own expense, and esteemed it glorious to place their property and persons voluntarily at the service of their country. It was a tall glass lantern, set in gilded copper, surmounted and supported by metal scroll-work of curious design, and with ornaments so placed that the bow of the vessel ended in a point. Above each portrait was a long oak bas-relief, reciting the glorious deeds of the illustrious personage beneath. It occurred to me that, if we should have war, and the opportunity should be offered me to fight for my country, I should be as patriotic and as brave as all those noble aristocrats. It seemed to me to be neither very extraordinary nor very meritorious to do great things when one was rich and powerful, and I said to myself that the trade of great nobleman could not be very difficult. But in those days, we were not at war, nor were we likely to be. The republic was merely a meaningless word, its might a mere shadow, and its enervated patricians had no elements of grandeur except their names. It was the more difficult to rise to their level in their opinion, because it was so easy to surpass them in reality. Therefore to enter into a contest with their prejudices and their contempt was unworthy of a true man, and the plebeians were fully justified in despising those among themselves who thought that they exalted themselves by seeking admission to fashionable society and aping the absurdities of the nobles.
These reflections passed through my mind confusedly at first; then they became more distinct, and I found that I could think, as I had found one fine morning that I could sing. I began to understand the repugnance I felt at the thought of leaving my proper station in life to make a spectacle of myself in society as a vain and ambitious fellow; and I determined to bury my love-affair with Bianca in the most profound mystery.
Absorbed by these reflections, I walked along the gallery, glancing proudly at that haughty race whose succession was disdained by a child of the people, a boatman from Chioggia. I felt very happy; I thought of my old father, and as I remembered the old house, long forgotten and neglected, my eyes filled with tears. I found myself at the end of the gallery, face to face with Messer Torquato, and for the first time I scrutinized him boldly from head to foot. He was the very incarnation of hereditary nobility. His glance seemed to drive one back like the point of a sword, and his hand looked as if it had never opened except to impose a command on his inferiors. I took pleasure in flouting him. "Well!" I said to him mentally, "whatever you might have done, I would never have been your servant. Your domineering air would not have frightened me, and I would have looked you in the face as I look at this canvas. You would never have obtained any hold on me, because my heart is prouder than yours ever was, because I despise this gold before which you bowed, because I am a greater man than you in the eyes of the woman you possessed. In spite of all your pride of birth, you bent the knee to her to obtain her wealth; and when you were rich through her, you crushed and humbled her. That is the conduct of a dastard, and mine is worthy of a genuine noble, for I want none of Bianca's wealth except her heart, of which you were not worthy. And I refuse what you implored, so that I may possess that which is precious above all things in my eyes, Bianca's esteem. And I shall obtain it, for she will understand the vast superiority of my heart to a debt-ridden patrician's. I have no patrimony to redeem, you see! There is no mortgage on my father's fishing-boat; and the clothes I wear are my own, because I earned them by my toil. Very good! I shall be the benefactor, not the debtor, because I shall restore happiness and life to that heart which you broke, because I, servant and lover, shall succeed in winning blessings and honor, while you, nobleman and husband, were cursed and despised."
A slight sound caused me to turn my head. I saw little Alezia behind me; she was crossing the gallery, dragging a doll larger than herself. I loved the child, despite her haughty nature, because of her love for her mother. I tried to kiss her; but, as if she felt in the atmosphere the disgrace which had been weighing upon me in that house for two days past, she drew back with an offended air, and crouched against her father's portrait, as if she had some reason to fear me. I was instantly struck by the resemblance which her pretty little dark face bore to Torquato's haughty features, and I stopped to examine her more closely, with a feeling of profound sadness. She seemed to me to be scrutinizing me attentively at the same time. Suddenly she broke the silence to say to me in a tone of great bitterness, and with an indignant expression beyond her years:
"Why have you stolen my papa's ring?"
As she spoke, she pointed with her tiny finger at a beautiful diamond ring, mounted in the old style, which her mother had given me several days before, and which I had been childish enough to accept; then she turned and, standing on tiptoe, placed her finger on one of the fingers in the portrait which was adorned with the same ring accurately copied; and I discovered that the imprudent Bianca had presented her gondolier with one of her husband's most valuable family jewels.
The blood rose in my cheeks, as I received from that child a lesson which disgusted me more than ever with ill-gotten wealth. I smiled and handed her the ring:
"Your mamma dropped it off her finger," I said, "and I found it just now in the gondola."
"I will take it to her," said the child, snatching rather than taking it from my hand. She ran away, leaving her doll on the floor. I picked up the plaything to make sure of a little circumstance which I had often noticed before. Alezia was in the habit of running a long pin through the heart of every doll she owned, and sometimes she would sit for hours at a time, absorbed in the profound and silent pleasure of that strange amusement.
In the evening Mandola came to my room. He seemed awkward and embarrassed. He had much to say to me, but he could not find a word. His expression was so curious that I roared with laughter.
"You are doing wrong, Nello," he said with a pained look on his face; "I am your friend; you are doing wrong!"
He turned to go, but I ran after him and tried to make him explain himself; it was impossible. I saw that his heart was full of sage reflections and good advice; but he lacked words in which to express himself, and all his abortive sentences, in his patois in which all languages were mingled, ended with these words:
"E molto delica, delicatissimo."
At last I succeeded in making out that the rumor of my approaching marriage to the signora was current in the house. A few impatient words which some one had heard her say to Salomé were sufficient to put that rumor in circulation. The signora had said just this, speaking of me: "The time is not far away when you will take orders from him instead of giving him orders."—I obstinately denied that these words had any such meaning, and pretended that I did not understand them at all.
"Very good," said Mandola; "that's the answer you ought to make, even to me, although I am your friend. But I have eyes of my own; I don't ask you any questions, I never have done it, Nello! but I came to warn you that you must be prudent. The Aldinis are just looking for an excuse for taking the guardianship of Signora Alezia away from the signora, and she will die of grief if they take her child away from her."
"What do you say?" I cried; "what? they will take her daughter away because of me?"
"If you were to marry her, certainly," replied the worthy gondolier; "otherwise—as there are some things that can't be proved,—"
"Especially when they don't exist," I rejoined warmly.
"You speak as you should speak," replied Mandola; "continue to be on your guard; trust nobody, not even me, and if you have any influence over the signora, urge her to hide her feelings, especially from Salomé. Salomé will never betray her; but her voice is too loud, and when she quarrels with the signora, everybody in the house hears what they say. If any of the signora's friends should suspect what is happening, everything would go wrong; for friends aren't like servants; they don't know how to keep a secret, and yet people trust their friends more than they do us!"
Honest Mandola's advice was not to be despised, especially as it was in perfect accord with my instinct. The next evening we took the signora to the Zueca Canal, and Mandola, understanding that I had something to say to her, obligingly fell asleep at his post. I put out the light, stole into the cabin, and talked a long while with Bianca. She was surprised by my objections and said everything that she considered likely to overcome them. I spoke firmly, I told her that I would never allow it to be said of me that I had married a woman for her wealth; that I cared as much for the good name of my family as any patrician in Venice; that my kinsmen would never forgive me if I afforded any such cause for scandal, and that I did not propose either to fall out with my dear old father or to make trouble between the signora and her daughter; for she ought to and doubtless did care more for Alezia than for all the world beside. This last argument was more powerful than any other. She burst into tears and poured forth her admiration for me and gratitude to me with the enthusiasm of passion.
From that day peace reigned once more in the Aldini Palace. That little secondary society had passed through its revolutionary crisis. It had its own peacemaker, and I laughed to myself at my rôle of great citizen, with childlike heroism. Mandola, who was beginning to acquire some education, was amazed to see me engage in the hardest sort of work, and would call me under his breath, with a paternal air, his Cincinnatus or his Pompilius.
I had in fact resolved—and I kept steadfastly to my resolution—not to accept the slightest favor from a woman whose lover I wished to be. Inasmuch as the only means of possessing her in secret was to remain in her house on the footing of a servant, it seemed to me that I could re-establish equality between her and myself by making my services correspond to my wages. Hitherto my wages had been large and entirely out of proportion to my work, which, for some time past, had been absolutely nothing. I determined to make up for lost time. I set about keeping things in order, cleaning, doing errands, bringing wood and water, polishing and brushing the gondola—in a word, doing the work of ten men; and I did it cheerfully, humming my most beautiful operatic airs and my noblest epic strophes. The task that afforded me the most amusement was the taking care of the family pictures and brushing off the dust which obscured Torquato's majestic glance every morning. When I had completed his toilet, I would remove my cap with profound respect and ironically repeat to him some parody of my heroic verses.
The Venetian lower classes, especially the gondoliers, have, as you know, a liking for jewels. They spend a good part of what they earn in antique rings, shirt studs, scarf pins, chains and the like. I had previously accepted many trinkets of the sort. I carried them all back to Signora Aldini, and would not even wear silver buckles on my shoes. But my most meritorious sacrifice was my abandonment of music. I considered that my work, laborious as it was, was no compensation for the expense which my constant theatre-going and my singing lessons imposed on the signora. I persistently declared that I had a cold in my head, and instead of going to the performance at La Fenice with her, I adopted the practice of reading in the lobby of the theatre. I realized that I was ignorant; and, although my mistress was scarcely less so, I determined to extend my ideas a little, and not to make her blush for my blunders. I studied my mother tongue earnestly, and strove to break myself of the habit of murdering verses, as all gondoliers do. Moreover, something told me that that study would be useful to me later, and that what I lost in the way of progress in singing I should gain in the perfecting of my pronunciation and accent.
A few days of this judicious conduct served to restore my tranquillity. I had never been more manly, more cheerful, and, as Salomé said, more comely than in my neat and modest clothes, with my amiable expression and my sun-burned hands. Everybody had accorded me confidence and esteem once more, and I was again the recipient of the innumerable little attentions which I formerly enjoyed. Pretty Alezia, who had the greatest respect for the judgment of her Jewish governess, allowed me to kiss the ends of her black braids, embellished with scarlet ribbons and fine pearls.
A single person remained depressed and unhappy—the signora herself. I constantly surprised her lovely blue eyes, filled with tears, fastened upon me with an indescribable expression of affection and grief. She could not accustom herself to see me working so. If I had been her own son she could not have been more grieved to see me carrying burdens and standing in the rain. Indeed, her solicitude vexed me a little, and the efforts she made to conceal it made it even more painful to her. An entirely unforeseen revolution of sentiment had taken place in her. That love which had hitherto been, as she herself told me, her torment and her joy, seemed now to cause her naught but shame and consternation. She no longer avoided opportunities to be alone with me, as she used to do; on the contrary, she sought them; but, as soon as I knelt at her feet, she would burst into sobs and change the hours promised to the joys of love into hours of painful emotion. I strove in vain to understand what was taking place in her heart. I could obtain nothing but vague replies, always kind and affectionate, but incoherent, which caused me the utmost perplexity. I had no idea what to do to comfort her and strengthen that discouraged heart. I was consumed by desire, and it seemed to me that an hour of mutual effusion and passion would have been more eloquent than all that talk and all those tears; but I felt too much respect and devotion for her not to sacrifice my transports of passion to her. I felt that it would be very easy to take her by surprise, weak as she was in body and mind; but I dreaded the tears of the next day too much, and I wished to owe my happiness to her confidence and love alone. That day did not come, and I must say, to the discredit of feminine weakness, that, if I had shown less delicacy and unselfishness, my desires would have been fully gratified. I had hoped that Bianca would encourage me; I soon discovered that, on the contrary, she was afraid of me, and that she shuddered at my approach, as if crime and remorse approached with me. I succeeded in reassuring her only to see her plunge into still deeper dejection, and upbraid fate, as if it had not been in her power to put a better face upon her destiny. Then, too, a secret sense of shame helped to crush that shrinking heart. Religion took possession of her more and more completely; her confessor controlled her and terrified her. He forbade her to have lovers, and, although she resisted him when it was a question of Signor Lanfranchi and Signor Montalegri, she had not the same courage with respect to me. I succeeded little by little in extorting from her a confession of all her sufferings and internal struggles. She had confessed to the confessor all the details of our love, and he had declared that that low, criminal affection was a heinous crime. He had forbidden her to think of marriage with me, even more peremptorily than to give way to her passion; and he had frightened her so by threatening to cast her out from the bosom of the Church, that her gentle, timid mind, torn between the desire to make me happy and the fear of destroying her own soul, was suffering veritable agony.
Hitherto Signora Aldini's piety had been so pliant, so tolerant, so truly Italian, that I was not a little surprised to see it become serious just at the height of one of those paroxysms of passion which seem most inconsistent with such changes. I worked hard with my poor inexperienced brain to understand this phenomenon, and I succeeded. Bianca probably loved me more than she had loved the count and the prince; but she had not sufficient courage nor a sufficiently enlightened mind to rise above public opinion. She complained of the arrogance of other people; but she gave real value to that arrogance by her fear of it. In a word, she was more submissive than anybody else to the prejudice which she had attempted for an instant to defy. She had hoped to find in the church, through the sacrament, and by redoubling her pious fervor, the strength which she failed to find in herself, and which she had not needed with her former lovers, because they were patricians and society was on their side. But now the church threatened her, society would heap maledictions upon her; to fight against the church and society at the same time was a task beyond her strength.
Then too, it may be that her love subsided as soon as I became worthy of it; perhaps, instead of appreciating the grandeur of soul which had led me to descend of my own motion from the salon to the servant's quarters, she had fancied that she could detect in that courageous behavior a lack of dignity and an inborn liking for servitude. She believed too that the threats and sarcasms of her other servants had frightened me. She was astonished to find that I was not ambitious, and that very absence of ambition seemed to her an indication of an inert or timid spirit. She did not admit all this to me; but as soon as I was once on the track I divined it all. I was not angry. How could she understand my noble pride and my sensitive honor, she who had accepted and returned the love of an Aldini and a Lanfranchi?
Doubtless she ceased to consider me handsome when I refused to wear lace and ribbons. My hands, calloused in her service, no longer seemed to her worthy to press hers. She had loved me as a gondolier, in the thought and hope of transforming me into an attractive cicisbeo; but the instant that I insisted upon reverting to the system of a fair exchange of services between her and myself, all her illusions vanished, and she saw in me only the vulgar fisherman's son of Chioggia, a species of stupid and hard-working beast of burden.
As these discoveries cleared the mists away from my mind, the violence of my passions diminished. If I had had to deal with a great soul, or even with a forceful nature, it would have been in my eyes a glorious task to efface the distressing memories left behind in that heart by my predecessors. But to succeed such men simply to be misunderstood, and in all probability to be some day cast aside and forgotten like them, was a happiness which I no longer cared to purchase at the cost of an enormous expenditure of passion and will-power. Signora Aldini was a sweet and lovely woman; but could I not find in a cottage at Chioggia beauty and sweetness united, without causing tears to flow, without causing remorse, and above all without leaving shame behind me?
My mind was soon made up. I resolved not only to leave the signora, but to cease to be a servant. So long as I had been in love with her harp and her person, I had had no time to reflect seriously on my condition. But, as soon as I abandoned my foolish aspirations, I realized how difficult it is to retain one's dignity unimpaired under the protection of the great, and I recalled the salutary arguments which my father had urged upon me, and to which I had paid little heed.
When I gave her an inkling of my purpose, I saw, although she opposed it, that she was greatly relieved; happiness might return and dwell once more in that affectionate and beneficent heart. The charming frivolity which was the basis of her character would reappear on the surface with the first lover who should be able to push aside her confessor, her servants, and society. A great passion would have shattered her system; a succession of mild passions and a multitude of lukewarm attachments would keep her alive in her natural element.
I forced her to admit all that I had divined. She had never studied herself very much, and she was always most sincere. If there was no heroism in her character, neither was there any pretension to heroism, nor the overbearing despotism which is its consequence. She approved my determination, but she wept and was dismayed at the thought of the blank my departure would leave in her life; for she loved me still, I am sure, with all the strength of her nature.
She attempted to worry and fret about what was to become of me. I would not allow it. The abrupt and haughty tone in which I interrupted her when she spoke of offering her services closed her mouth once for all in that respect. I would not even take the clothes she had had made for me. On the day before I was to take my leave, I purchased the complete outfit of a sailor of Chioggia, new, but of the coarsest materials; and in that guise I appeared before her for the last time.
She had requested me to come to her at midnight, so that we could part without witnesses. I was grateful to her for the affectionate familiarity with which she embraced me. I do not believe there was another society woman in all Venice sufficiently sincere and sympathetic to be willing to repeat the assurance of her love to a man dressed as I was. Tears poured from her eyes when she passed her little white hands over the rough material of my scarlet-lined cape; then she smiled, and, pulling the hood over my head, gazed at me lovingly, and exclaimed that she had never seen me look so handsome, and that she had done very wrong ever to make me dress in any other way. The warmth and sincerity of my thanks, the oaths I took to be faithful to her until death, and never to think of her except to bless her and commend her to God's keeping, touched her deeply. She was not accustomed to being left in that way.
"You have a more chivalrous heart," she said to me, "than any of those who bear the title of chevalier."
Then she gave way to an outburst of enthusiasm: the independence of my nature, the indifference with which I laid aside luxury and indolence for the hardest of lives, the respect with which I had never failed to treat her when it would have been so easy for me to abuse her weakness for me; all this, she said, raised me far above other men. She threw herself into my arms, almost at my feet, and again begged me not to go away, but to marry her.
This outburst was sincere, and, although it did not change my resolution, it made the signora so lovely and so fascinating that I was very near casting my heroism to the winds and taking my reward in that last night for all the sacrifices I had made to my peace of mind. But I had the strength to resist, and to go forth chaste from a love affair which nevertheless had its origin in sensual desire. I took my leave, bathed in her tears, and carrying away, as my sole treasure and trophy, a lock of her lovely fair hair. As I withdrew I went to little Alezia's bed, and softly put aside the curtains to take a last look at her. She at once woke, and did not recognize me at first, for she was frightened; she did not cry out, but simply called her mother in a voice which she tried to keep from trembling.
"Signorina," I said, "I am theOrco,[3]and I have come to ask you why you pierce the hearts of your dolls with pins."
She sat up in bed, and replied, glancing at me with a mischievous expression:
"I do it to see if their blood is blue."
Blue blood, you know, is synonymous with noble in the popular language of Venice.
"But they have no blood," I said; "they are not noble!"
"They are nobler than you," was her retort, "for their blood isn't black."
Black, you know, is the color of thenicoloti, the association of boatmen.
"Signora mia," I said in an undertone to her mother, as I drew the child's curtains, "you have done well not to splash ink on your azure crest. Here is a little patrician who would never have forgiven you."
"And my heart," she replied sadly, "is pierced, not with a pin, but with a thousand swords."
When I was in the street, I stopped to look at the corner of the palace which stood out in the moonlight from the eaves to the depths of the Grand Canal. A boat passed, and, causing a ripple in the water, cut and scattered the reflection of that pure line. It seemed to me that I had just had a beautiful dream and had awakened in darkness. I began to run at full speed, never looking behind, and did not stop until I reached the Paglia bridge, where the boats for Chioggia await passengers, while the boatmen, wrapped in their capes in winter and summer alike, lie sound asleep on the parapet, and even across the steps, under the feet of passers-by. I asked if anyone of my fellow-townsmen would take me to my father's house.
"Is it you,kinsman?" they cried in surprise.
That wordkinsman, which the Venetians ironically bestow on the Chioggians, and which the latter have had the good-sense to accept,[4]was so sweet to my ear that I embraced the first man who called me by it. They promised to start in an hour, and asked me several questions, but did not listen to my answers. The Chioggian hardly knows the use of a bed; but he sleeps while walking, talking, even rowing. They suggested my taking a nap on the common bed, that is to say on the flagstones of the quay. I lay on the ground, with my head on one of those worthy fellows, while another used me as a pillow, and so on. I slept as in the happiest days of my childhood, and I dreamed that my poor mother—who had been dead a year—appeared in the doorway of our cottage and congratulated me on my return. I was awakened by the repeated shouts ofChiosa!Chiosa![5]with which our boatmen wake the echoes of the ducal palace and the prisons, to attract passengers. It seemed to me a cry of triumph, like theItalia!Italia! of the Trojans in theÆneid. I jumped aboard a boat with a light heart, and, thinking of the night Bianca must have passed, reproached myself a little for sleeping soundly. But I was reconciled to myself by the thought that I had not poisoned her future peace of mind.
It was midwinter and the nights were long; we reached Chioggia an hour before dawn. I ran to our cabin. My father was already at sea; only my youngest brother was left behind to look after the house. It took a long while for him to wake up and recognize me. It was easy to see that he was accustomed to sleep amid the roar of the waves and the storm; for I nearly broke the door down trying to make him hear me. At last he came out, leaped on my neck, put on his cape and rowed me half a league out to sea, to the spot where my father's boat lay at anchor. The excellent man, awaiting the best time to set his nets, was asleep, according to the custom of old fishermen, stretched out on his back, his body and face sheltered by a coarse blanket, while the stinging north wind whistled through the rigging. The white-capped waves beat against the vessel and covered him with spray; no human voice could be heard in the vast solitude of the Adriatic. I softly put aside the blanket and looked at him. He was the image of strength in repose. His gray beard, as tangled as the seaweed when the tide is rising, his earth-colored jacket and his dull green woollen cap made him resemble an old Triton asleep in his shell. He displayed no more surprise when he woke than if he had been expecting me.
"Oho!" he said, "I was dreaming of the poor woman, and she said to me: 'Get up, old man, here's our son Daniel back again.'"