Part 8

Yet the vague and colourless things that surrounded my musings composed themselves into a kind of quiet harmony, which little by little soothed the passion that had been kindled in my soul by the volcanic rock.

The walls were covered with mirrors, symmetrically divided all round into compartments by little gilt pillars, while the surface of each compartment was painted with festoons and clusters of roses alternately, and the mirrors were tarnished and green as the waters of lonely pools, and the little pillars were delicately twisted like the fair locks of girls, and the roses were faint and languid as the garlands which crown the waxen martyrs in sanctuaries. But in honour perhaps of the guest who was the donor, the long branches of almond blossom had been ingeniously wreathed among the sconces of the candelabra. They spread their still fresh and living blossoms over the ancient mirrors, and multiplied reflections in the green pallor seemed to create the semblance of a far-off watery springtime.

There was a kind of quiet charm about all these things which seemed to descend and mingle with Massimilla’s grace; so much so, that I felt as if the maiden already promised to Jesus shared their nature. She seemed already to wear the appearance of a being “who has departed from this present age,” like Beatrice in the vision of the Vita Nuova, as if, with her meek air, she were saying also: “I am about to behold the beginning of peace.”

She sat opposite me, and I looked at her, till this fancy of mine grew so strong that I began to imagine her absent and her place empty for a few moments. And immediately the empty space was filled with a deep shadow resembling the mouth of a pit into which all the kindred were to be cast, one after another. And thus I was able to attain a unique and tragic vision of all these living beings, in the extraordinarily clear relief afforded by that background of shadow.

They were eating a meal round the accustomed table; they made the ordinary movements demanded by natural necessity; from time to time they said a few simple words. But their tones and actions seemed accompanied by a mystery which at times endowed them with an almost terrible significance or again at times made them almost as laughable as the play of automatons. One contrast was cruelly clear, that between the manner of vital functions they were fulfilling and the signs of inevitable destruction which were being fulfilled in them. Seated on the right of Massimilla, Antonello displayed in his whole behaviour a sort of repressed impatience, as if he were compelled to use his hands to feed, not himself, but a stranger. And as I gazed at him, an intuition flashed through me of the horror that strangled him as he realised the presence of a stranger within him, a presence dimly felt as yet, but still certain. And my eyes, passing instinctively to Oddo, who sat on Massimilla’s left, noticed in his attitude something like a feeble reflection of his brother’s discomfort. Nothing seemed to me sweeter than that virginal figure sitting calm amidst their restlessness, like a statue of prayer.

A strange odour of honey from the almond blossom filled the warm air. Sometimes a petal, rosier than the others, dropped down the mirror and fell as into silent water. And I remembered our stay in the orchard.

Ah, indeed, how could those wretched eyes, tormented by phantoms, perceive pure and beautiful things? What was I doing there myself except holding a commemoration of the dead? Everything round me grew dim like the walls, and seemed to recede into a distant past; everything assumed an antiquated and faded look, and appeared to be covered with dust. The two servants moved slowly and dreamily about in their blue liveries and long white stockings; they looked as if they had come out of an old wardrobe of the last century;--melancholy ruins of former luxury. When they withdrew they seemed to vanish like shadows into the delusive distance of the mirrors, and to re-enter their inanimate world.

* * * * *

But the spell was broken by the voice of the prince, a voice which called up old memories. Every one kept a respectful silence while he was speaking; and no sound was heard but that of his deep aged voice, which at times became hoarse with repressed anger, or trembled with heartfelt sorrow and regret.

It chanced to be a disastrous day for the old man; it was the anniversary of the king’s flight to Gaeta; it completed the twenty-first year of exile.

“Well,” he said, as he turned to me with a glance kindling with faith, looking, with his white beard, almost like one of the ancient prophets, “well, Claudio, when a king falls as Francis of Bourbon fell at Gaeta, that is to say, like a martyr and a hero, it is impossible not to believe that God will raise him up again and restore his kingdom. Mark my words, son of Massenzio Cantelmo, and do not forget them. And God grant that this come to pass before my eyes are closed! That is my only desire.”

He was preparing an apotheosis of fire and blood on the ruins of the strong city for the pale ghost of royalty.

“Wonderful faith!” I thought, as I saw what sparks could still glow in the ashy blue of those feeble eyes. “Wonderful and vain faith! The power of the Bourbons slumbers at San Dionigi.” And as the old man’s words called up the gleaming vision of the Bavarian heroine, my contempt increased for that king of twenty-three, on whom Fortune had bestowed the very horse which carried Henry of Navarre to Paris, and who was cowardly enough, like the miserable Philip V., to have no ambition to ride anything more substantial than the imaginary horses of the tapestries that lined his walls.

“What a magnificent enterprise lay before that Bourbon prince when he departed from the palace at Caserta, where the doctors were busy embalming the corpse of his murdered father as it lay pierced with innumerable wounds!” I thought, in the eager spirit which the warlike images evoked by the venerable old man had kindled in me. “Nothing was wanting to incite him, not even the corruption and odour of corpses, which are powerful to inspire thoughts of greatness. In very truth, everything was his: the lordly power of an ancient name, youth, which attracts and carries men away, kingship over three fair seas accustomed to tyranny, a rich kingdom in sight of a curved bay sonorous as a lyre, a passionate companion, who seemed to draw in through her delicate nostrils the atmosphere of heroic ambitions, a temperament capable of trembling with the voluptuousness of power, and full of the electric current which directs the hurricane. All these were his to enjoy and to defend; and still, as exiled husband on the farthest shore of another sea, his ear was filled with the clamour of his faithful people, although another kind of clamour reached him also; and the opportunity was offered to him of a splendid struggle beyond the limits of his dominions, on fields already watered with blood, and smoking with the strength of their fermentation--fields open to the strongest thought, the noblest word, the swiftest sword. In very truth, everything was his, save the lion’s nature. Why was it Fortune’s will to heap the burden of such favours upon a feeble, lamb-like nature? Never did blood so cowardly flow in youthful veins, never was there a more torpid sensuality. The very beauty of his lawful kingdom, the divine outlines of the shore, the balmy air, the mystery of the nights, all the enchantments of the dying summer, ought at least to have touched the senses of the youth, to have awaked in him the deep desire for possession, to have communicated to him the savage rage for living. Ah, that last evening in the almost deserted palace, forsaken by the courtiers, with the strong breath of the sea wind blowing through the empty halls, and bringing with it September perfumes, and the supreme sweetness of the gulf, while the closed curtains waved mysteriously and spread a vague terror, while the lights flickered and went out on the tables, still strewn with the shameful letters announcing the flight of those the prince had counted as most devoted. And the desolation of that departure in the twilight, in the small ship commanded by a man of the people, one of the few who remained faithful; and the silent encounter with the warships, already gone over to the enemy, and full of treachery; and the long, sleepless night passed on deck in vain regrets, while the weary queen slept under the stars, exposed to the chill night air; and at last, at sunrise, the rock of Gaeta, the final refuge, fated to be the final ruin, where the royal dignity was to be forced to come to terms with a bragging soldier!”

“Treason was everywhere, like the smoke and smell of gunpowder,” continued the prince. He grew more and more troubled by these sanguinary recollections, and from time to time a gesture from the white hand on which the cameo gleamed gave animation to his words. “The most terrible day of the siege was the fifth of February; and the powder magazine of the Sant’ Antonio battery was blown up by treachery.”

“Ah! what an atrocious thing it was!” exclaimed Violante, with a shudder and an instinctive movement as if to cover her ears with her hands. “How terrible!”

“You can still remember it,” her father said, looking at her with softer eyes.

“I always shall.”

“Violante was with us at Gaeta,” he added, turning to me. “She was scarcely five years old, and was a great pet of the queen’s. The others had started for Civita Vecchia on the _Volcano_ with the Contessa di Trapani. We were staying in the artillery quarters beneath the shore batteries....”

“I can remember it all!” interrupted Violante, seized by a sudden emotion, which seemed to sweep over her from that great purple light which lit up her far-off infancy. “Everything--everything seems as distinct as if it had happened yesterday! The room was divided by two

## partitions, made of flags sewn together. I can see the colours quite

clearly; they were signalling flags, blue, yellow, and red. It was three or four in the afternoon when the explosion happened. Nina Rizzo, the queen’s lady-in-waiting, had just gone out. I was holding in my hand a cup of milk which the sisters at the hospital had sent me....”

She spoke on thus, in short sentences, in a somewhat muffled voice, with a fixed look, describing all these little details, one after the other, as if she were seeing them in a series of flashes. And the scenes called up by her words, as she sat looking into the past, stood out with an extraordinary force against the confused background of the actual scene.

The old man and the maiden, as each in turn they commemorated the ruin and slaughter of other days, seemed to annihilate all the vague, colourless surroundings, and create a kind of fiery atmosphere, in which my soul for a moment gasped painfully. The siege went on with all its horrors, in the city crowded with soldiers, horses, and mules, short of provisions and money, badly or insufficiently armed, scourged with typhus and villainy. Rain came down in torrents, filling the streets with black mire, in the midst of which the starving horses wandering about sank down and perished. The iron hailstones riddled the city, dismantled it, laid it low, set fire to it, and grew ever thicker and noisier, never ceasing save for the brief intervals appointed for the burial of the decaying corpses. In the churches divine service was celebrated, the Invincible Patroness was invoked, and all the while the stones were being torn from the walls, the windows were crashing in, and out of the distance came the groans of the wounded as they were carried away on stretchers. The sick men in the hospital raised themselves in their beds when a shell pierced through the passage walls, and expecting death, cried as the shell burst, “Long live the King!” All on a sudden a powder magazine exploded, shaking the city to its very foundations, and leaving it suffocated with smoke and with terror, while in the open cavity bastions, cannons, palisades, batteries, houses, and hundreds and hundreds of men were engulfed. But from time to time, on very sunny days, a kind of heroic madness seized the besieged, a kind of intoxication of death drove them into danger, and made them seek out the batteries where the fire was fiercest. In sight of the enemy the artillerymen sang and danced in a kind of frenzy to the sound of the bugles. A great shout of joy and affection greeted the queen’s appearance under the hail of bullets on the esplanades. She moved with a bold step, in the easy grace of her nineteen years, dressed in a shining bodice like a breastplate, her face smiling under the plumes of her felt hat. Without moving an eyelash as the bullets whistled by, she turned her encouraging eyes on the soldiers; they inspired them like the waving of banners, and beneath that gaze pride seemed to magnify its wounds, while those who were unscathed seemed to long for the glory of a crimson stain. From time to time men with eyes burning fiercely in blackened faces, with their clothes torn to tatters, as though the jaws of a wild beast had rent them--men covered with blood and powder rushed up to her from the cannons, called her by name, and kissed the hem of her skirt.

“Ah, how beautiful she was, and how worthy of her throne!” exclaimed the prince, and his voice assumed its manliest tones to celebrate her prowess. “Her presence had a magnetic power over the soldiers. When she was there, they all fought like lions. The twenty-second of January was the most glorious day of the siege, because she remained on the batteries till nightfall.”

A pause followed, a moment of meditation, in which each of us seemed to be contemplating the ideal figure of the heroine on a field of ruin and corpses.

“Tears were strange to her eyes!” said Violante slowly, absorbed in her far-away memories. “When at the last hour I saw her weep, I was overcome with terror and surprise, as if some unexpected and almost incredible thing had occurred. As she kissed me, she watered my face with her tears.” After another pause, she added--

“She wore a little green feather in her hat.”

She added again--

“She had a great emerald at her throat.”

She was sitting at my side, and a new emotion swept over me as with an involuntary movement I leant slightly towards her, and breathed the perfume which I thought was growing stronger, and overpowering the honeyed fragrance of the flowers. A sudden aversion for all the people and things present came over me; they gave me a feeling of impatience and annoyance that was almost an aversion; they seemed at that moment to be weighing on me and oppressing me in quite a peculiar way. I looked across with instinctive hostility at the prince’s cousin, Ottavio Montaga, who sat at one end of the table, a taciturn individual with something of the sinister look of a mask, the symbol of a mysterious prohibition not to be transgressed. I felt all the health, strength, and passion in me rise in hatred against the sickness, the sadness, against the mortal dulness by which this wonderful creature was being consumed without a chance of escape. The uneasiness which had troubled my spirit after the successive apparitions of the three different figures was now subdued, and I believed myself to have set my choice on her whom all the glory and solemnity of the past seemed uniting to ennoble. Once more, it was she alone who stirred my being as she had stirred it before when she lifted her head at the cry of the hawk.

The prince said to me--

“It is singular, is it not, Claudio, that Violante should be able to remember that time so clearly? Don’t you think it very strange?”

Then, smiling with his previous gentle smile--

“Maria Sophia has never ceased to show partiality for her. Knowing that she is passionately fond of scent, she sends her quantities of essences every year for her birthday. And she has never missed once, all the time we have been here!”

He turned tenderly to his daughter--

“And now you could not get on without them, could you?”

And to me he said, with a shade of sadness--

“She lives on them. You see, Claudio, how white she is!”

I fancied that Anatolia whispered--

“She is dying of them.”

* * * * *

When we rose from table, Anatolia proposed going down to the garden.

“Let us go and bask in the sun a little more!” she suggested, pointing to a shaft of sunbeams which shot down from the highest pane of a window where the faded curtains were not drawn. “Who will come?”

By the movement her hand was lit up, turned golden down to her wrist, and the rays slid through her fingers like docile hair. “We will all come,” I replied.

Don Ottavio begged to be excused, and retired (he seemed like an intruder among us); but the prince laid his arm in Anatolia’s, as Antonello had done before on the steps, and said--

“I will come down to the quadrangle with you.”

As we passed through the vast reception hall, now reduced to a disused anteroom, I noticed an old sedan chair with the two poles still in it, as if a lady had just descended from it, or was about to enter.

“Who uses the sedan chair?” I asked, as I stopped to look at it.

“None of us,” answered Anatolia after a moment’s hesitation, during which a shade of agitation passed over every face.

“It is of the time of Charles III.,” said the prince, concealing his melancholy thoughts under a smile. “It belonged to the Duchess of Cublana, Donna Raimondetta Montaga, who was the most beautiful lady of the court, and was praised as the greatest beauty of the kingdom.”

“The design is excellent,” I remarked, approaching it, for I was attracted by this piece of antiquity, which seemed hardly yet dead, and to which the memory of Donna Raimondetta gave a tender interest and grace, so that I almost imagined as I looked that she was alive again within it. “It is an exquisite work of art, and wonderfully preserved.”

But I noticed a strange feeling of uneasiness among my hosts, and that this uneasiness was caused by the object I was looking at. And by virtue of this mystery, I felt more strongly than before the imaginary life dwelling within the precious wood.

“Perhaps the soul of Donna Raimondetta lives inside,” I said lightly, and I could not resist the desire to open the pane of glass. “It could not have a more delicate casket. Let us see.”

As I opened it, a subtle odour reached my nostrils, and I put my head inside, so as to breathe it better.

“What a scent!” I exclaimed, delighted with the unexpected sensation. “Is it the Duchess of Cublana’s perfume?”

And for a few seconds my imagination hovered in the soft atmosphere created by the enchantment of the ancient dame, picturing a little round mouth like a strawberry, a powdered head-dress, and a brocade dress stiffened by a hoop.

The sedan chair was scented like a bridal chest; it was lined inside with willow-green velvet, and decorated with a little oval mirror on each side; without, it was all gilded and painted in the most refined taste, the ceiling and jointings were enriched with delicate carving, all the more harmonious and pleasing to the eye from the veil thrown over them by the hand of time; the whole was the work of a graceful imagination and a skilled hand.

“Or perhaps it is you, Donna Violante,” I added, “who have poured out one of your phials on this soft velvet, as a homage to your famous ancestress?”

“No, it is not I,” she said, almost indifferently, as if she had fallen back into her usual apathy, and was again far away.

“Let us go now,” begged Anatolia, drawing on her father, whose arm still rested in hers. “It is always so cold in this room.”

“Let us go,” repeated Antonello, shivering.

From the top of the staircase we could already hear the sound of the water; at first it sounded hoarse, then gradually clearer and louder.

“Has the fountain been turned on?” asked the prince.

“We turned it on just now,” said Anatolia, “in honour of our guest.”

“Did you notice the play of the echo in the quadrangle, Claudio?” Don Luzio inquired. “It is extraordinary.”

“Truly extraordinary,” I replied. “It is a wonderful effect of sound. It is like a musician’s trick. I think an attentive harmonist might discover the secret of unknown chords and discords in it. It would be an incomparable training for a delicate ear. Is it not true, Donna Violante? You are on the fountain’s side, against Antonello.”

“Yes,” she said simply, “I love and understand water.”

“_Laudato si, mi Signore, per sor acqua._” (Praised be Thou, O Lord, for sister water.) “Do you remember the canticle of St. Francis, Donna Massimilla?”

“Certainly,” replied the betrothed of Christ, with her faint smile, colouring slightly. “I belong to the Poor Clares.”

Her father’s look was a melancholy caress.

“_Suor Acqua_” (Sister Water), Anatolia called her, caressing the soft bands of hair on her forehead with her fingers. “Take that name.”

“It would be presumptuous,” replied the Poor Clare with laughing humility.

She recalled to me with only a slight variation the saying of the saint: _Symphonialis est aqua_.

We were all there close to the rushing fountain. Each of the mouths was pouring out its voice through a glass pipe like a curved flute. The lower shell was quite full already, and the four sea-horses were up to their bellies in water.

“The design is by Algardi, the Bolognese,” said the prince, “the architect of Innocent X.; but the sculpture was done by the Neapolitan Domenico Guidi, the same who executed the greater part of the relief of Attila at St. Peter’s.”

Violante had drawn near the edge of the basin again, and I gazed at the reflection of her figure in the liquid element, whose continual tremor melted the features as it rippled away round the horses’ hoofs.

“There is a tragic story in connection with this fountain,” added the prince, “a story which has become the source of some superstitious ideas. Don’t you know it?”

“No, I don’t,” I replied, “but tell it me, if you will.”

And I looked at Antonello, thinking of the lost soul which tormented and terrified him at night. He also was now looking intently at Violante’s reflection as it trembled in the depths of the water.

“Here in this fountain Pantea Montaga was drowned,” began Don Luzio. “In the time of the Viceroy Peter of Aragon----”

But he interrupted himself--

“I will tell you the story another time.”

I saw that he shrank from calling up these memories in presence of his daughters, and I did not press him.